2 MONTHS!

Hola mi familia y amigos!

I hope you've all had a great week!

So this past week I had my first cumplemez out in the field.  Cumplemez is like your birthday from the first day in the mission.  On Feb 17, I hit my 2 month mark here in the Dominican Republic.  Its crazy how time flies.  Also its funny because I definitely feel like I've been here much longer than 2 months!

This past week was full of a lot of awesome experiences. I'll share just a couple.

So my district here in Vicente Noble consists of me and 3 other Hermanas who live in the house with me and 2 Elders, who actually work in a small pueblo called Tamayo which is like a 45 minute or hour long walk away.  On Sundays, we spend the morning at church in Vicente Noble and then walk to Tamayo to attend the church service for those who live there.  When we walk there, its literally just along the side of the road and its so beautiful to see the campo everywhere around us.  We usually try to catch a bola each week.  A bola is basically hitch hiking.  We yell Tamayo at a passing truck and if they stop we hop in the back.  This past Sunday was my first time successfully catching a bola and it was one of the most simple but funnest moments on my mission so far.  We just hoped into the back of this truck and he drove us into Tamayo.  It was so fun to have the wind blowing our hair and get to see the beautiful Domincan countryside passing us by.

We also got to attend a Zone Conference in Azua this week which was amazing.  A zone conference is when several  zones meet together for a conference with President & Hermana Nuckols.  It was great to see some missionaries from other zones, including Hermana Larson who is also serving in the South in San Juan.  The conference was an awesome learning experience and it was great to hear advice and instruction from our mission leaders about how to be better missionaries.  The focus of the mission this month is helping people keep commitments.  As part of teaching, we invite our people to do certain things to increase their faith, like pray or read or attend church.  In the conference, we talk about how essential these commitments are to helping people come unto Christ.  Its so simple but powerful.  In order to truly come unto Christ, we must make changes in our lives and really actively seek after the Spirit in our lives.  It was so nice to attend this conference and learn so much.

Also on our way home from the conference, I had a really cool experience.  So in order to travel from city to city, we take a bus called a gwagwa.  Its basically just these people who have large vans and drive people from city to city.  So we got onto a gwagwa in order to go back to Vicente Noble.  The gwagwa was really full so we all ended up sitting separately from one another because there was no room.  As soon as the missionaries in my district sat down, they immediately started contacting the person next to them.  They started a conversation on get to know them and introduced themselves as missionaries for the church.  It was such a cool and funny missionary moment to see how naturally all these missionaries just immediately started to contact these people.  I ended up finding the courage to talk to the girl next to me as well, which was nerve wracking because I had to carry out the whole conversation in Spanish by myself. She was a sweet 20 year old who lives our near Tamayo and is going to school is be a history teacher. Even though I was nervous, I was able to talk to this sweet Dominican woman and get to know her.  It was such a sweet opportunity to speak the language and get to know another awesome person who live here in the DR.

While my experience with the language is still small, I know the Lord provides opporunities for me to practice and become more comfortable as a missionary.  The longer I'm here, the more I want to learn and be better at using Spanish.  With time, I will  finally be able to speak and get to know these people like I really want to.  And then I can be better at really serving them and helping them learn of Christ's love for them.

I hope you all have a great week!

CON AMOR,

Hermana Graham