Associations

Hna Varela and I are getting along way better now. We eat well, like queens. We talk in English more, this helps. And we joke around. It's such a relief to finally be getting along. I definitely had to lighten up. I was stressing out about everything. Now I feel way better about what we're doing. It took me a month. I hope it doesn't take me this long every time.

This week we made a cake for district meeting. We didnt have a cake pan, so we used an aluminum sauce pan. It didn't work well, but it worked. In a year I'll make brownies. I love food. Today we ate carne asada and bought a mountain of fruit and vegetables. Yes! The fresh produce here is great. I am glad we have consistent access to it. I'm trying to eat better than we ate at first. We fried a lot of stuff that first week. We're cutting back.

I also remembered no-bake cookies. Except I couldn't find peanut butter in the store we went to today...so I'll try and find it at another store. If I can't find it anywhere...that's what I'd like in my next package. Be it Christmas or whenever. We ate something bad yesterday. I don't know what it was, but we both had boo today and cramps. That's code or spanish for Diarrhea. We get it a lot, but it's not constant like it was. And...my bowel movements have never ever been so consistent. 4 times a day. Not joking. Twice in the morning and twice sometimes at night. Wow, I'm sure getting healthy here. My legs are like rocks. Or stones..Josh..or is that Grant? I don't know whose name means stone, but it's like my legs.

Now I just need a stone ab set and my body'll match. Food is my grand release in the middle and end of the day. I've never liked corn flakes so much. I don't really like cereal, but the milk I get is like evaporated milk, so it's rico..or delicious.

We have some families right now. We have some investigators. It's hard to keep them progressing b-c they lose interest really fast. I need to figure out how to not let that happen. Probably we need to visit more often, maybe at a different time with a different companion. Right now we're getting along fine and we're talking to a lot of people. It's a nice change. Thanks for the marriage tips. It's true.

I had a dream about this guy who wanted to ask me to marry him and I didn't want him to..two nights ago. I guess that means I'm still scared about marriage. Luckily I've got loads of time to get over that. Meanwhile I will try and keep a healthy relationship with food and pray for peanut butter so we can have some real cookies. We have cookies a lot for easy snacks, food. I know, it's bad for me,but fruit gets really messy on the go and sometimes it's just easier to eat cookies. Usually though, we're eating pretty healthy stuff.

Lots of love! The church is true! Love, Hna Peterson

Merilee and District

Merilee and Companion

Love those Clouds!

Wow,MOM, I'm glad you have a tubular calling. Sorry it's so huge, but you'll do great. I'm really pleased to hear I have a package on the way. Can't wait! I'll probably get it at our next zone conference in 5 weeks. Still can't wait!

I'm glad you and Dad are starting to do stuff together again. Sounds like it's going well. Good luck with the primary and tell Caryn I said hi. Thanks for the letters. I always love reading my emails.

I sent Cookie's family a letter in the mail today. I forgot to tell Allyson Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday Allyson!

Surprisingly, it's really not that hot here. It seems to be perfect weather all the time except when it rains. Nobody answers their doors when it rains. Unfortunate, but rain happens here a lot. When the sun shines and there are no clouds it's unbearably hot. Luckily, there are almost always clouds. I never ever thought I would say this after Alaska, but thank goodness for clouds. Love you! Love, Hna Peterson

June 21...short and sweet

Glad you enjoyed the brownies for me. Yeah, a zipper cover would be cool. I'm glad you got the letter in time for Father's day. I wish my mail came that fast. Here are some pictures from our field trip today. Could you send them around for me?

Yeah, big families are fun, but sacrifices must be made for them. I'm glad everyone in our family is in our family. A tour bus family trip would be awesome. We should go somewhere cool.

Frozen yogurt sounds amazing, I want it. Gross yogurt chunks..had some of those in the mtc. Nothing to miss out on. Where you there with ladies in the ward? Your baby dance group perhaps?

Transfers are every six weeks. I just had zone conference last Wednesday, so in another 6 weeks I guess. Zone Conference was a blessing. I really enjoyed seeing all the other missionaries and having some tips from the Pres. I got 4 letters and a package from mom. Thanks mom! Thought there might be some candy in there but no. Either way, packages are nice to see for you, no matter what{s inside. I don{t think I need a toaster oven here.

We have a gas burner and got an electric burner at our zone conference. Everyone did. Sorry Durago died, but he definitely served his time and his creakiness made me sad. Good thing most of the boys are gone, who would protect us from tpers w-o big D? I{m glad the bishop enjoys our emails. I{m sure Canute{s has more news and mine has more drama. Figures, since I{m a girl and quite dramatic. Amen to the gross long hair Elder P. About time to cut it.

Pretty sure I do have bed bugs. I never took my pillow out of its plastic cover and if you wanted to send me a plastic mattress cover I would not complain. As long as it sealed and was worthwhile I would totally use it. I wash my sheets every week, but I get bit. We got some insecticide from our mission pres{s wife at zone conference. I sprayed it down. I don{t know how long it lasts, but a cover would be great.

Today was a rough day for me. I had a field trip with my zone and we woke up at 3 in the morning. Note' I do not do well with little sleep. Not only that, but I had to walk with the sisters. Probably the most stressful day of my life. I have never wanted to be a man before. Today, I wanted to be a man all day. The sisters just took a million pictures in the same spot of themselves. Instead of exploring like I wanted, I had to stand there and wait for them to take picture after picture. I hated it. Have you ever wanted to scream? I know America has. I wanted to scream all day. I was screaming inside.

I think that means I need patience. I think that{s why the Lord wouldn{t let me get married and have children. B-c my children, if they were like that, would not live for long. And I have to stand directly next to my companion at all times. Or she gets mad. We get along when we eat, talk about boys, and talk in English. This means we need to talk in English more I think. Yes, definitely.. I will do better tomorrow with patience. The trip was awesome. We took some great pictures. Thanks for thinking of me and telling me where Josh is.

Um, today was a really stressful day for me.

We went to a place in Guat about 3 hours from Cobon. We saw lots of really cool natural pools in tierras. Lots of people were swimming in them. We could not. I had to walk with the sisters. I haven{t never ever in my life ever actually wanted to be a man until today. Today, when there were all sorts of cool things to see, the sisters spent the whole time in three spots taking picture after picture of themselves.

Have you ever wanted to scream? I scream inside all the time here. Especially today. Today I screamed inside all day. And my companion just kept telling me to be patient. Patience hermana. You need patience. Wait another hour for the same pictures to be taken again and again and again. Remember how I hate shopping? I hate watching other people take pictures of themselves more. And it was the whole day. But the fountains were cool. I just didn{t want to miss anything cool. So I stressed about missing the cool stuff all day as we saw the cool stuff.

In other news, I woke up at 3 in the morning. That{s my excuse. I think the elders...and sister in my zone think I{m a crab. I always seem to be crabby when we have zone activities. Probably because my companion makes me stand exactly next to her at all times and tells me to talk to people. And if we are not exactly next to each other she lectures me in a language I do not understand.


Thanks for all the updates. Love, Hna Peterson

Merilee at stream in Guatemala

Guatemalan Missionaries

Provo MTC district in front of temple

Hot and Steamy

Wow, thanks for all the news. The porch by the house looks great with all that grass. Gardening sounds fun. Where's Josh? Still living at Graydon and Amy's? Thanks for the pictures, it's nice to see them.

Guati is raining a lot too. Sounds like it's just the same in both places, but the roads are probably better there. Also, thanks for letting people know how we're doing. We're all trying to do better I guess.

Let Sarah know brownies here are about $5 a box and we get about $40 a week for food and other items, so $5 for brownies or $5 for chocolate chips isn't going to happen. But if you want to send me some love, please do. Also, I love you. Love, hna p

Sorry, the computer I was on went crazy and stopped working. MOM, Glad to know Bonnie's still alive and working hard. You just tell her I love her and she's doing great. Hard work really pays off and I know she's working hard and she's doing great. I'm glad she's calling and letting you know how she is, b-c I wanted to know too.

This week was a good week. I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures. I'll try to remember to take more. For further pictures on houses and stuff, look at Neal's mission pictures from El Salvador . I'm sure it's about the same. Also, Happy Father's Day this week! We have an activity for Father's Day Thursday. They had a bunch of rice they passed out in RS and the ladies in RS are cooking it. I'm pretty sure it's a stake activity.

Also, please let Sarah know we don't have an oven. I forgot to put that. I figured with brownie mix I'd just put some water in it and eat it raw. So if it's too expensive, don't worry about it. Also, I guess sunblock and tampons are expensive here, so if you want to send some of that with the maybe brownies, please do. And some of that stuff Dad talked about b-c of my sugar cravings. B-c otherwise, I'm going to be a tank when I come home.

The bugs love me. Family. I love you. Friends. I love you. The church is true. Spread the word. Please give the missionaries their contacts. They would really appreciate some. Those are the bomb! Love you all! Hna Peterson

Newz

Grant, and family,
Please know I love these emails I get from you. Never stop. Please send this around, I think it will be the big email for the week, or tell dad to send his around, b-c it's pretty big also. But I didn't have a p-day last week, so that's why I haven't written for a while. They have p-day on Mondays here in my mission instead of Wednesdays like at the MTC, so I sadly missed it. Boo. My favorite day of the week.

The first night I saw 5 roaches and they were huge. My comp, Hna Varela kind of rolled her eyes and said "you're not in the MTC anymore". That was a mind blower. Anyway, it took me like 2 hours to fall asleep after that b-c I kept thinking they were on me. Ugh, I hate roaches. And there's a new one every night. But we have a nice clean apartment. It's on the ground floor like everything here. We have a floor. We are blessed. Most of the people here don't have real floors, unless you count dirt as real.

Also, it's been pretty rainy here.
I don't know if you heard, but a volcano erupted close by here and we had epic rain Saturday. Which means we didn't have church Sunday and we got our 72 hour kits put together. We could have done everything normally, but you know how it goes.We had about 5 people who were going to attend church with us Sunday but it was canceled, that's hard. We didn't have church, so we just studied all morning and at 2 began the day as normal. We went tracting and had some lessons with members, investigators. But Sunday it was hot and there was no water anywhere. Weird, so we just studied until 2 and ate lunch with the ward mission leader. It had 1/4 head of cabbage, a chunk of beef, and a platano chunk, peel included. Platanos are like bananas, but I guess they're a vegetable, very good fried. Bananas, not so good fried. Blech, I tried to this week b-c it was brown and I don't like brown bananas much. Better raw.

I also found out my mail won't come except transfers, so every 6 weeks. So please still write me, even though I won't respond to those letters until 6 weeks after you send them. At least. This is going to be a mail adventure I can already tell. I also miss brownies. Tell mom the next package she decides to send should have brownie mix in it. I miss my sugar. We have lots of roaches here. One a night in the bathroom. I cleaned the bathroom this morning. I'm pretty sure it hadn't been cleaned in a month.

Grant, A second job will be amazing. Find a close one and you won't need a car. Walking is good exercise, even in the rain. If you need more incentive, go back and clean some more buses. Oh how I hated that. Please let mom know I got her May 16 dear elder on May 25. So it takes about 10 days to get to me I think. I don't know. But yeah, mail takes a while b-c they send it when we have transfers.

I have lukewarm showers, we don't have hot and cold here, only on and off. Which means I don't like showering. And I zapped myself this morning b-c I was brushing off a spider web from the pipe and I accidentally touched it. Which means my showers are luke b-c they are heated by electricity. If I don't die here, I will be stronger when I get home. I am so ready to serve people here, but a year and a half seems like eternity right now. I've only been here a freaking week.

Also, I love my companion, but it's hard to work when you don't understand 70 percent of what's going on.I love serving the Lord, but sometimes it's hard. It's hard for different reasons than I thought. It's hard b-c half the people we talk to don't speak Spanish, they speak Ketchi. It's totally different and I don't know Ketchi, and I hardly know Spanish. That makes it hard. My comp's name is Hna Varela. She has much patience with me. B-c of this patience, when I cry, she is very nice and tells me how smart I am and that I need patience. I need way more patience with myself than with other people. So far. I'm sure it'll change. My comp is a little jaded, though...I try talking to everyone and she kind of rolls her eyes and gives the minimum. She loves the members and investigators though. We'll be comps for 2 transfers at least the pres told her, so I should serve her more. She's very loving, but at times a little bossy..prob. b-c she's a trainer. It's hard when people don't have addresses.
They just have hovels of different types and colors. So you can't get addresses to contact them later, you have to follow people to their houses, or just teach them in the streets. And when it rains nobody will come outside. They don't have bells, you just yell, "Buenas". and they come or don't come to the fence to let you in.


But I'm glad to be here. Even if I cry a lot..and I've only been here a week. I have it pretty cush compared to most of the people who live here. Their entire lives they live like this. I only have a lukewarm shower for a year and a half.

In the mornings I always want to cry b-c I don't memorize well and we're supposed to have D&C 4 memorized, our purpose, and JS History.It's slow. I have most of the parts memorized of our purpose and JS first vision, but I miss parts or forget connector words. I'm the worst. I don't want to be home, but sometimes I don't want to be in the middle of Spanish speaking land either. But the people here are very loving and it's wonderful to be here. Time is slow and passes. I like the burritos and eggs we eat every day. We don't have cooks...our mission was having morality problems with the cooks and their assistants, so our Pres. canceled the food program. We still have a lady who does our laundry though.
I think the food we cook ourselves is better...another reason they don't have cooks is b-c people were complaining about hair in their food and not knowing what was in it. I like knowing what I'm eating. I try and keep my hair to myself. Mostly I braid my hair every day. I think I have bed bugs, I get at least two new bites a night, even though I'm eating B6 regularly. I don't know about mosquitoes. I don't see many, but I'm sure they're around.

I'll be here a while. It's nice here. The people are angels.
They're so humble and nice. It's nice to be here. I hope some time soon I will understand the other 70 percent of what is going on around me..I speak Spanish, but mostly gospel terms. I'm working through it.

The church is true. Love you! Thanks for writing. Love, Hna Peterson