HELLO!!!! Thank you for the wonderful update, “dod”!! You’re great, but you know that already.
Thank you for sending on Camille’s wedding announcement. Congrats to her for the thousandth time!!! yay weddings!!! eternal families!!!!!!!!! What a blessing!!!! yayayaya!!!!
I have not seen the TGIfridays here, but I have heard of it... never been, don’t care to go.
AH!!! E. Abbott gets home is 9 days!!!!!! I am happy that you are going to his homecoming. Tell that family hello for me.
YES! I got a new camera today. It isn’t the one that I would normally get, but they were very limited on their selection. They had like, 2. So I got one of them. At first, my card wasn’t working, and so I had to go and take out the money from a cajero, and so I carried around some cash. I hate spending money. If I didn’t take so many pictures, I wouldn’t have bought it, but whatever. Thank you for putting the money into my account. Also, I didn’t have time to take my 8 month marker picture, so I will send that next week. Sorry to disappoint.
Wow, I have a hard time believing that I have 8 months. It’s especially weird because I have pretty much been with Hermana G the whole time, or for at least... 6 months of it. It’s crazy. I guess I am supposed to be super close with her :), which I don’t mind. She’s funny.
Mom, thank you for the recipe. I am glad you attached it to this email. Man, we’re gonna be making that real soon. I actually was thinking about those the other day. Ah, I love your cookies, good stuff.
Also, I read that talk from E. Holland. -- Good man. I enjoyed it. Thank you for that link :) (Jan. 15th - MTC devotional talk about missionaries investing in the work.)
And also, I have heard about them, only from Brent. He told me that his cousin is one of the pilot missions and has them. Have you heard anything about us getting them? Why not Riss's mission? I hope we don’t get them. It seems unnecessary. Buy more copies of The BOOK OF MORMON instead. We’re always short on those here. Those change people's lives, not iPads. Feel free to send that sentence to the prophet ;) haha
• What was your best thing you ate this week? Well...... we’ve been limited on food this week. I will tell you the story in a bit, but we did have some ice cream that was super good. Also, I have been on a yogurt and oatmeal kind of diet. Just because I love them both so much. I love them. OH!!!! We had come fresh cookies, and those were really great. I loved them. Also, this nice lady always makes us fresh juice. Yum!!!! I love the juice here, it’s so fresh and delicious. ONE MORE THING! There are these candies here called trululus, and I love them! I am eating them, as we speak. They are like peach-ios, but strawberries, they are so addicting. I eat them a lot, kinda – I would eat them more if I could and wasn’t so worried about cavities. Those things are packed full of sugar, but so great. Love those. Maybe I will send some home for you to try.
• What was the worst thing you ate? Well... I would have to say yogurt, or oatmeal. The yogurt that I had was warm, and the oatmeal was flavored gross. We tried to flavor it with syrup and cinnamon, not super great, but we were on short supply of items to flavor oatmeal with...
• Have you tried something new on your mission that we don't have back home? Yeah, we eat this type of rice, and I really like it. I will for sure make it for you when we get home. Also, we have fried plantains. I do love those!! One thing that we don’t have back home (thank goodness) is Habituelas con dulce, or sweet beans. Super gross. But we do eat beans a lot, and I don’t like those. You can’t be picky yourself. I have to just suck it up and be a man.
• Did you like it? The beans were NASTY!. Never eating those again, so gross. I think mom would even hate it.
But yeah!!! I am going to tell you about my week now. Not much happened, but whatever. :)
Ok, so last Sunday, our ice box froze over big time. It was super icy, and annoying because we couldn’t use it. Super annoying. So, Herm B. decided to knock off the ice from the box, and in doing so, she ruptured one of the valve things. All of a sudden, a lot of smoke and stuff came from the freezer... but hey, the ice was gone! Anyways, we kept the food in the fridge because we figured that the piece of gum would stop the leak from the freezer. Not true, by the end of Monday, the fridge was warm. Uh oh. We told the elders and went to bed. We cooked all of our chicken, so it wouldn’t go bad, and we worked on eating our yogurt that we had just bought. Turns out that our fridge was broken. We would buy ice and put it in for the stuff that needed to be cold, but ice only lasts so long on an island. The fridge started to smell really bad. There were already flies getting in, and making it their home. We just kept things covered, next to the bags of ice. It worked for a bit, but then one day, I think it was Friday morning, I go to the fridge to eat a piece of left over pizza. I open the fridge, and I see little tiny worms all over. NOPE! They were not worms, they were MAGGOTS! All over in our fridge that already smelled like poop. Yuck. Kinda grossed me out a bit. Not super a lot, because our house is already pretty unsanitary (but no worries, I have not gotten sick-- yet!) and so Herm B. cleaned it out, and the house still smells pretty bad. We still had a bit of food left. We threw a lot of our original food away, but there were a few things that we couldn’t part with, like the yogurt. So, we bought another bag of ice, cleaned out the metal sink, and made our own little fridge. It was nice.
We still don’t have a fridge. So....... I guess we’ll have to not buy stuff for the fridge. That’s too bad, cuz I really love yogurt. And it’s not normal yogurt. It’s all drinkable stuff. Ah, I like it.
The other night our district leader called us. The other 2 herms in the house had been having really bad numbers. Like, 3 lessons a week-type of bad numbers. And he didn’t know why. So we told him H. G. was sick, and she hurts a lot, and all that stuff. Then, he goes on to tell us that we are really great missionaries. That "All of the other herms in the zone have really been struggling," but we’ve been doing really well. So that made us feel happy. We really are having a lot of success, and a lot of fun. I love it, because I didn’t think a mission would be this fun. Can’t complain. I have a great companion. I really love Herm B. But next week, we are going to try to get a lot a lessons in, it’ll be our "week of excellence" where we DOMINATE! I am excited. You know how I love to dominate at everything. :) I will let you know how it goes. Next week, I guess...
I HAVE EIGHT MONTHS ON A MISSION! Time flies. So sad.
So A is really progressing. I love her so much. We have a FHE with her tonight, and we’re excited about that. She’s getting excited to get baptized. She told us that she wanted to come to Utah when we get back, so we could introduce her to the prophet. I will have to take some pictures tonight with my new camera, so you can "meet her" and see how adorable she is.
Also, there is the menos activa in our area named E. She’s the best. The only reason that she is MA is because she had surgery on her mouth - so half of her mouth is gone, and she’s not allowed to leave her house. So we talked with her, and I love her. She’s the funniest Dominican lady I have ever met. She has such a zeal for life, or a zest as mom would probably say. Ah, so much love for that lady.
So we dropped this lady a while ago because she wasn’t showing much interest. Then, her sister comes up to us the other day, and chews us out, so we decided to go back. We go to N's house, and she is there, so we climb up to her small house, on some really steep and thin stairs. I honestly don’t know how these old ladies climb, especially when they are overweight. It’s a talent for sure. Anywho, we go into her house and she asks us if we can help her paint her nails. SERVICE! So we did. We chat for a bit, and laugh and talk about life. Then, we had a really spiritual lesson about the Book of Mormon. It was super filled with the spirit. No tears, but the spirit was there. She opened up to us and told us about her difficult life, and all that stuff. We told her the BOM could help her, and just yeah, great lesson! She had 2 of her daughters (probably granddaughters) on their small bed, and one of them was super restless, but they were sleeping, and all of the sudden, the big girl, who is restless, mutters, "quiero refresco"- which translates, "I want a soda" and then lets a HUGE FART out! It lasted about 5 seconds. It was by far the BIGGEST fart I have ever heard coming from a 5 year old. We all looked at each other, and then just laughed for a long time. I think that really bonded us. We kept talking about the power of her gas... and then we’d bring it back to the spirit, but it’s hard to focus and not crack a smile when it repeats in your head a gazillion times. :) hhhhahhhahah. I love the mission. And potty humor. Definitely get that from dad :)
We also MIGHT have a baptism this week. I say might because this girl, N., has had a date before, and she failed, so... we’ll see. I think she will, but she could back out. She backed out the day of-last time, when I wasn’t here. So... we’ll see! She is 16 and neighbors with the ward mission leader.
My personal progress is progressing. I am chugging along, and I am for sure going to finish on time. I will not quit. I am excited. Hopefully I can get a medallion. If not, I am going to buy one from the temple. They are like, 40 pesos. :) It’s not really cheating, right?
Other than that, my week has been pretty normal. I am loving it here. It rained the other day, and then one day, it was just thundering all the day long, with not much rain. I love this country. I love it so much. Not enough to live here when I am older, but I will definitely come back. I love it. I feel so attached to it. I love that I can serve God and have these cool experiences all at the same time.
The other day, at district meeting, the DL told me, "Hey Hermana Erickson, I really like your get up today." I was wearing that coral blouse you and Jake picked out. And the DL is pretty stylish, so when he compliments you, he means it ahah. Well done.
Well, that is all for now. Thank you for all that you do. I love you more than I love yogurt, and we all know that is a lot. Thank you for your help with personal progress and everything else. I am very lucky to have a great family. Thank you :)
I love you all. I will write you next week! I hope you have a happy, healthy, safe, productive, relaxing, eventful, spiritual week!!!
With demasiado love and appreciation,
Hermana Erickson 1. aka, RACHEL!
Ps, sorry if my emails sounds immature for a missionary. I am the worst at writing things down and expressing my thoughts well, BYE!
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