MTC & Arizona pics..i'm sure you can tell which is which!

 

Week 2 in beautiful Mesa, AZ!

Hola Familia!!

Another week down in BEAUTIFUL Mesa, AZ! What is one word that I could describe this week....Bipolar...seriously. But, I guess I learned that the whole mission you become bipolar. That is definitely me right now. We said goodbye to our comp-Hna Aranda, she is back in SLC. Now it is just Hna Sordes and I!! It's been super fun and crazy crazy crazy busy. Holy crap, let me tell you.

So, we are Visitor's Center sisters, yeah? So that means that we get to be there every flipping day from 5-11pm. Wow, it is freaking crazy. It's the Christmas lights like SLC has except not NEARLY as cool as SLC, but that's ok haha. Anyways, so about 6,000 people come through JUST the VC. That means that there are still like 10,000 people that walk around the temple grounds and then about 6,000 of them come through the VC. We all get assigned different companions every night and then you stay together and put on presentations. So, for one hour I am with my comp at the big Christus statue and we introduce it and then play the narration and then bear our testimonies at the end. The next hour, we got to the Luke 2 movie that we have. It is about 5 mins long about the birth of Christ and once again we introduce it and then bear our testimonies at the end of it. Then we go the Nativity Room for an hour and talk to people, then back to another Luke shift, then go to our God's Plan movie thingy, then float for a while....bla bla bla, we are busy, running around, feeling the spirit, testifying every two seconds, praying for inspiration, speaking really bad Spanish....it is pretty dang fun and exhausting haha. I am always paired up with an English sister because it's about 70% white people and 30% mexicans. So we always have an english part and then me, the spanish part. I am getting really good at just bearing my testimony and saying, "Bievenidos al centro visitantes!!" I hope that's right because I say that every time haha. Then, we get back around 11pm at our mansion house and then get to sleep around 11:45pm or sometimes midnight. We don't really have a bedtime when we are doing the Christmas lights. Then, we actually get up at 7:30 and we have permission to take an hour nap during the day. Pretty snazzy huh? This doesn't even sound like a missionary schedule! haha sometimes I don't really feel like a missionary, I feel like I am an employee at the VC. I am not sure if that's a good thing or not haha

The other half of the day we are doing our proselyting...however you spell that...I only know how to spell it in Spanish. We have a baptism date!! Yayeahhhh, it's a 13 year old mexi boy, Ethan, who speaks perfect English, so we only teach in English, which is probably why I love him so much hahaha. He is super solid and awesome. Then we have another mexi, Ramon. He is like 40 and super super chill and awesome. We are working to get him baptized. He is still worried about committing but dang, this dude is gonna be serious Church leader soon. I know it! Anyways, he only speaks Spanish, which means that I only bear my testimony and say stupid things throughout the lesson that don't even make sense. Ramon is way nice to me and appreciates when I try to speak. My little Ramoncito...haha he's awesome. AND THENNNN my favorite two boys in the ENTIRE world!!! Jason y Paulo. Love them so freaking much. They are 12 and 9 years old and they are also mexi's but speak perfect English...once again which is why I probably love them so freakin much haha. Their mom understands English because her boys only speak in English to her, but she only speaks Spanish. She is like a model. Drop dead gorgeous and her boys are SOOOO CUTE! I want them haha. So, the mom is divorced and her husband is some loser who was never a member and hates our church and he refuses to let his sons get baptized. They want to be baptized soooo bad and they can't because their dad won't allow it. So this is very very hard for us. These boys have been taught for like months and have heard every lesson ever and are just waiting for their dad to have this heart softened. Jason and Paulo even told us that they put their story in one of the Church magazines so that people can pray for them. HOW COOL IS THAT?! I don't remember which magazine...but you should look for them!! Jason and Paulo...Diez I think. They are dang dang cute. I love them. It was so sad though because we took them to the Christmas lights last night and the little one, Paulo said, "Do we get to go into the tower?? I have always wanted to go inside!!" He was referring to temple and I was like super sad to tell him that we weren't going in and that they couldn't go in...but I gave him hope and said he will be able to go in someday :) He was a little upset and wanted to know more about the temple. I am super excited to have our next lesson with them about temples now!

We have other less actives that we are working with...they are a pain sometimes. We also have a huge family that are investigators but they suddenly started to ignore us...awesome. It was probably because they think that I hate them because I never speak to them in Spanish. My Spanish is still the same, not very good haha. I have been speaking A LOT of English because we are always at the VC and then we mainly teach Ethan and Jason/Paulo who also only speak English. I only use Spanish when I testify at the VC christmas lights and then for Ramon's lessons. I occasionally speak with my comp in Spanish, but we speak a lot of English ever since Hna Aranda left. She was the one that forced Spanish at all times and then we both got burned out on it so we never speak Spanish....ooops, not the best. But, at the same time, I don't care too much. I am doing my best though, I swear!!

So overall, this week has been fun/crazy busy and I have had some super rude members actually. WHITE members. I won't complain, but we get some nasty ones that come in the VC and get really mad when we try to talk to them and ask for referrals...anyyyways, missionary work is super hard and exhausting and I still have no idea how I will learn Spanish while speaking so much English, BUT I know that I'll get to Spain soon and I'll pick it up in like two seconds :) That's my theory anways haha.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM AND JOHN DUCUARA! I know it's late...but I hope it was awesome!! OH! Thanksgiving...it was soooo good! We had like 3 dinners at 3 different member's houses, two were White people families and one was a mexi. So we had two EXCELLENT Thanksgiving dinners and one super weird Mexican version of Thanksgiving haha. Then we worked 5-11 that night at the VC for our opening night of the lights. I have run into SO MANY cool members that tell me about Spain and friends that they know that are in Malaga and totally loving it right now, so that gets me super excited.

I hope you all had an wonderful Thanksgiving and that you watched the new TWILIGHT like 80 times already ;) LOVE YOU and miss you all so so so much. Family, you did super well at emailing me this week. THANK YOU :) Bien Hecho. Adios!

Love,

Hermana Daly

The Newest Mesa Temple Visitor Center Missionary

HOLA from MESA!!!

Hey everyone!! This week has felt like a freaking eternity and it hasn't actually been a full week here in Mesa yet...oh my gosh haha The mission is HARD. So so so so hard. Let me quickly give a funny summary of my life so far. 

Hispanics are mean, blunt, and love making white girls feel completely stupid. I love my mission presidents, Pres and Sister Ellsworth. They are super nice and caring. The missionaries in the my mission are SO NICE! All of the sisters are GORGEOUS! Seriously, drop dead gorgeous. I am currently in a trio with Hna Sordes and Hna Aranda. Sordes is from France! She looks EXACTLY like Alysia haha no joke. She is 22 and fluent in French, English, and Spanish. Super gorgeous and the nicest person on the planet. The whole mission loves her to death. I am so happy to have her :). Hna Aranda is from Chihuahua, Mexico...however you spell that. She is also fluent in English and of course, Spanish. She is actually serving in the SLC Temple Square Mission but I guess they send you somewhere for a couple months for a full in field experience. She has been here 3 months and leaves this Wednesday to go back to SLC. Both of them have only 3 months left in the mish. I love them both and they are both pros here!! The down side...they speak ONLY Spanish 24/7. This has been super difficult for me and they speak a million miles an hour. I have no idea what is going on...ever. OH AND GET THIS! I am a Visitor's Center missionary now. Yay. Not too thrilled about it but it's been pretty fun because it's the Christmas season and they do Christmas lights like SLC. Salt Lake will always have the best lights in the world but Arizona tried haha they have some cool lights. Hna Sordes is a Visitor's Center missionary so that's why Aranda and I got roped into it. We have to always be together which means that I have to be a VC missionary too. We work there like three hours every day. I will be speaking a ton of Spanish starting the 1st of December when the lights are officially up. I hear thousands of people come every week. WOWWW! So excited for all of that Spanish speaking.....Ok, sorry this is all over the place haha

First day I got here, Hna Stark and I went to the Visitor's Center with our huge crowd of new missionaries and we had a little testimony meeting and took pictures. I am sorry to say that I have only taken one picture since being here. That shows how much time we have...no time at all. We then went to the Church where all of the mission gathers for transfer meetings n stuff. I immediately was told that they needed me to be approved to be a driver in the mission. Since my comps are not Americans, I have to drive them everywhere. I took a freaking 2 hour test about how to drive. So stupid. I am now driving everywhere. It's kinda fun though :). The first day I was put with two expert missionaries and one newbie like me. We ate at Five Guys. HALLELUJAH!! FOOOOOD! It was glorious. We then contacted in the streets for a couple hours. Kill me. I said like two words and the rest of the time, I just walked around with wide eyes and had no idea what these people were speaking.

Next day (Wednesday) Transfers. I got put with Sordes and Aranda. We are in the Valencia Branch area. I had no idea it was the toughest area of the entire mission until yesterday when we were having a meeting with the ward mission leaders and they mostly spoke Spanish. But, one of them (a white guy haha) said, "Are you new?? I can't believe Pres. Ellsworth stuck you in this mission. He must really think highly of you then. Good luck." That was it. I was like, WHAT?! Get me out of here! haha SERIOUSLY THOUGH! The people are pretty much ALL less actives and they speak the fastest Spanish I have ever heard in my entire life. My companions speak pretty dang fast. But these people speak soooo fast. Sordes and Aranda were like, "yeah, these are the fastest speakers you'll ever run into." Awesome. I love this. I am having so much fun. I understand everyone so well. 

On the positive side...I have been humbled so incredibly much. I now understand normal Spanish speakers pretty dang well. I still can't even bear my testimony because I am too intimidated by everyone. I love the members though. They are pretty nice to me and they understand how hard it is. All of the kids speaking both English and Spanish of course and they are always brutally honest to me. They say things like, "you talk funny. Why can't you speak Spanish?" Other Hispanics have been saying things such as, "Do you need me to draw pictures for you? She looks so lost. I bet you have never seen people like me wearing a tank top and shorts. You probably think I'm like Satan or something, little girl...." It goes on and on. I never know they are actually saying these things until my comps tell me after when we get in the car. Ughhhh. BUT, we have an epic investigator, Ramon. He is the shiz. So cool and chill. He like whispers while he talks though. I don't think I have said anything more than my testimony about the BOM, but I like him a lot. He is going to get baptized in the very near future. 

So basically at the moment, I am still super lost. I am running between the temple VC and member's houses, less active's houses, and we have like 3 investigators. The investigators are my favorite part. We have the Lopez family. They are super cool and have like 5 kids...hello baptisms. Then an ADORABLE 13 year old kid, Ethan. He speaks English to us all the time so that's super nice for me haha. He is way quiet but loves having us over. 

Mesa is super gorgeous and super warm! The people dress like it's 10 degrees outside. They have their heaters just pumping! CRAZIES! What is wrong with them?? They wear scarves and huge jackets when it's seriously like 80 outside. I don't get it. We go running outside every morning and it is like a glorious 65 degrees and my comps are like, AHHH it's FREEZING! They are so weird haha. I am still somehow smiling after all of this. I feel like I'm not really doing any good at the moment because my Spanish is the worst thing ever haha but I love the people...some of them. Some are just mean and nasty and others are way nice to me. I love the kids the most. They are so sweet to me and talk to me in English :) haha love it! ok, gotta run. I love you all so much and I absolutely loved all of your letters :) They made my life. LOVE YOU ALL! Have a great week. I am sorry that this email isn't super positive and spiritual.

Here's my spiritual note...The Lord is mindful of all of us. I have felt is comfort every second of the day because I am seriously praying every 10 minutes. I know he is challenging me a lot right now and sometimes I think it is more than I can handle, but I know that he has a reason for it. I am happy to be out here and learning so much. My companions are great! Hna Sordes is the greatest sister alive. Aranda pushes me more and more which I hate but I know it's good for me haha, she's awesome. KEEP PRAYING AND READING EVERY DAY! It makes a difference. And be nice to missionaries cuz life is rough as a missionary. Say hi to us and give us food haha. Love you all :) Have a great week!

P.S. (I live in a freaking mansion! It is seriously super nice. I will have to take pictures and show all of you. It's legit. We live with another companionship. They are way nice. One is from Kenya. She is pretty quiet and doesn't talk much.)

Love,
Hna Daly

Reassignment - Mesa, Arizona!

Que Pasa everyone?!!

It's snowing right now, LOVE IT!!!! I.love.snow.

YAYY!! REASSIGNMENT! I have been reassigned to the Mesa, Arizona mission!!!!! SO STOKED! Hna Stark and I are both going together and I am super grateful that we will be with each other for like our whole mission haha SO AWESOME! The newest thing we've heard about Spain and their stupid Visas....It is pretty much a lottery. So, it doesn't matter when you put your Visa application in, which is good for me because I put mine in pretty late hahaThe Church says that we should be getting them starting at the end of November. I am guessing I will get there HOPEFULLY by Christmas time :) We leave Tuesday morning at 5 am and we will officially land in AZ at like 10:30am. HECK YEAH!! I am just beyond excited to get out of the MTC. I am definitely going to pass out a few times out of nervousness, but I'm ready haha oh, and my other Hna's...Haglund is going to Anaheim and Shaffer to Pocatello!

This week has been FANTASTIC as always!! Started off a little rough because we did our first "door contact" approach and it was pretty intense haha We had a sub teacher and he didn't really teach us much about how to do it. We then spent the next hour watching each other going ONE BY ONE. Pretty dang scary and it was just a teacher hahahaha yup, I'm so ready for the field...not. So, first up, Hna Shaffer. She gives a big smile and says some sweet things about what she wants to share with the guy about the Gospel and about 6 minutes later, he shuts the door on her face. Mind you, this is in flippin spanish. All of us are like, oh shoot, this is like legit practice...allllrighty then! A few more people from our district go and they all just keep getting rejected. Everytime the door opened, our teacher would play a different person. FINALLY, one of our Elders successfully got into the room and stayed in the room. We then realized, oh crap, we seriously have to keep doing this until we are let in. Kill me now. I still haven't gone yet and like half of the class has already been rejected. Hna Haglund and Stark were the next two to get in and finally, it's my turn. Bring it. I knock on that door with such confidence that it would've slapped him in the face. I smiled ever so sweetly and told him that one of his neighbors down the street told me that he might be interested in our message. He then twisted some things on me and said that he didn't believe in God when I asked him about it. I was like, great...now what. I then asked him if he had a set direction in life. Of course he said, no. I was like, yes, I finally got him where I want him. I told him very quickly that sometimes life can be hard but our Church as the gift of the Holy Ghost. This can help you when life gets confusing and hard and it can help you with hard decisions...bla bla bla, Spirit freaking rocks!! He was like, woah, yeah I want to learn more!! BOOOOOM! Owned it, nailed it, I'm ready for the field haha but not really. There ya go. Door contacting is super hard and I am so glad that we don't do that too often in the field because it's not super effective. PHEW! I'll only do it if the Spirit tells me to. Other than that, I'm stickin to using the members haha jk, I bet I will be told otherwise by my future companion and she will know way more than me. I hate door contacting. End of story.

New story. Our district was chosen to be a pilot district for this new way of practicing teaching investigators. We were told that our two teachers were going to be brand new investigators. They would tell us their situtation with where they were at with the lessons and what goal we needed to accomplish in two lessons: baptism date. We were so ready for it! We also were evaluated at the end of every lesson, which usually doesn't happen. So, we taught Mayra, a 15 year old, who was pretty dang easy to teach and we totally got her to agree to be baptized. CHA-CHING! Our evaluations were top notch and awesome. The second one was our teacher Hno. Doxey being Manuel. HOLY HECK! He was the most frustrating investigator. He was super religious and loved the Bible and loved Christ and all of that. He hates the Book of the Mormon, hates Joseph Smith, yet he is super nice to us, missionaries. He has been taught all of the lessons from other missionaries and it was our goal to pretty much soften his heart and get him to be baptized. Great. Are you kidding me? So first lesson, went ok, not too bad. We just tried to understand why he was so against the BOM and J.S. and all of that stuff. We didn't really accomplish too much. We didn't want to argue because that's stupid to argue, so we just bore testimony of the BOM and told him to read 2 Ne 29. I left that lesson thinking, if this were a legit investigator, I would've dropped him so fast. Probably not what I should be thinking but seriously, this guy was the worst. Second lesson, my comp OWNED IT! We prepared so hard. We had him read in Alma 32 about how he needs to exercise faith for like 10 minutes so we could tell him about how the BOM talks about Christ visiting the Americas in 3 Ne 11. He REFUSED to even try to have faith. Then, my freaking awesome companera just told him straight up: (in spanish) "Manuel, please, have this faith for like 5-10 minutes and listen to what we are about to teach about Christ. If you don't have faith, we cannot teach you this epic story about Christ on the earth." BOOM! Right in the FACE! He was so shocked and just sat there for like 2 minutes with dead silence. We just stared at him. Finally, he says quietly, "ok, what did you want to share with me." The Spirit was IMMEDIATELY felt in the lesson and we read 3 Ne 11 about Christ coming. So awesome. He loved it. We asked him to be baptized and he said no, but he really wanted to read more from the BOM. It was so awesome :) Hno Doxey then told us after the lesson, "you two are so ready for the field. I was blown away by that lesson. Manuel is a hard hearted man and he was not going to get baptized. But, you softened his heart. You're ready." :) :) :) SO AWESOME! It was all thanks to our major preparation and of course the lovely, Hna Stark :)

Sorry, I don't have super funny stories to tell this week and I am quickly running out of time. I will say that our four names were called on the intercom speaker thing while we were about to go to class and they told us to come down to the Travel Office and we just knew...those are our reassignments!!! I screamed sooooo loud and sprinted to travel office in a skirt hahaha. Greatest moment ever. I continued to bawl like a little baby that I am because I knew that I was not staying in Utah haha. What a great feeling.

Just want to quickly say that I know that my mission AND reassignment are going to change my life. I know that the Lord has prepared people for me to teach and I cannot wait to find them. My Spanish is no where near great and I didn't even know how to say, "It's snowing outside!!" in spanish...but hey, I don't need to know how to say that in AZ and Spain hahaha. I know the Lord will make up for my inadequacy and I will have the gift of tongues soon!! I learned in our last Devo with W. Craig Zwick-of 70- that I just need to THINK like Christ, ACT like Christ, and SPEAK like Christ and all will be well. I love you all so much!!

Scripture for the week: 2 Ne 9:51...Don't waste time. I will make sure I don't waste the Lord's time and that I serve with urgency. I love you all!!! I will send my AZ address soon and hopefully someone will update it on the blog and FB :) Take care everyone and serve the Lord!!!!

Love,

Hermanita Daly

Come to the edge and He will help you fly!

Que Pasa Familia?!

Once again, still no visas. I think I'll just forget that I got a call to Spain haha, jk jk. We have all been a little down since yesterday. Our entire District all got their travel plans and are headin out to Texas and N.Carolina and the Hermanas have heard nothing. We were so upset and took our pitch forks, rounded up the other Malaga boys from another District who received nothing and we marched to the travel office! After lighting the place on fire, we finally had a civilized chat and the lady snarkily said that we would get our reassignments next Friday or something. Soooo there ya go! If you want to start guessing where my second mission will be, knock yourself out haha. We are all just praying that we will NOT be stuck in the Referral Center at the MTC! Please no!! We have no idea what they'll do with us. I would personally love to go to Salt Lake...we'll see!!

Hope you all had an EPIC HALLOWEEN!!! The MTC threw a crazy dance party and we got to dance with the Elders. Only on Halloween though. Then, we got to dress up! I chose to be Catwoman. It was a sick costume. We then got to go trick-or-treat and hit up some Provo dance parties!! Best Halloween ever!!

Or this happened...we ate ourselves sick in everyone's candy that they received and taught lessons and felt the Spirit and read scriptures. IT WAS AWESOME! So be jealous, you didn't get to feel the Spirit so strongly that night. And I'm pretty sure I had more candy that everyone out there combined!! We had like 40 Elders share their candy with us :) BOOM!

I also still love Hna. Stark like crazy. She really enjoys scaring me at least 4 times a week. Most of you know that I am the EASIEST person to scare. So, on Halloween night she hid in my closet and sure enough, I managed to make a blood curdling scream as I saw her there creepily hiding behind my clothes. Thank you companera ;) She is the funniest person I know.

Our District all took turns this week teaching Pedro (our teaher Hno. Doxey) in the observation room. This means that our entire District got to sit in the tiny observation booth hidden behind a mirror glass thingy, like a criminal FBI room. It's pretty sweet. We all took turns teaching our normal lessons but this time 8 other people were observing us behind the mirror wall and it was TERRIFYING. Of course, Hna. Stark and I were chosen to go first. We freaking OWNED that lesson. It was the greatest lesson we have ever done. We just taught him about fast sundays and what things he could fast for. The Spirit was just felt to strongly and our Spanish was just lighting up the place. Yeah. We're pretty good. After our 20 minute lesson, Hno. Doxey had us all come together and talk for like 15 mins about how epic our lesson was. He just said it was an amazing lesson and we owned it. The rest of the District went for the next 2 ish hrs and Hno. Doxey never said anything about any of the other lessons like he did with us :) It was really nice.

K one more bragging thing haha, sorry this makes me feel so good! I just need to talk about so I feel better about my major inadequacy with teaching and Spanish. So during class we were asking random questions about the language grammar. I asked a question about the subjunctive stuff which is SUPER HARD! All you fluent Spanish speakers are probably laughing at me but whatevs. So I asked Hno. Doxey a question about subjunctive because I didn't understand any of it. All he said back to me was this, "Hna Daly...you are the best one in the class and probably the best missionary I've had with understanding subjunctive. You use it ALL the time in your lessons and I hear you say it in conversation with the other missionaries." ummmmm wow. Best compliment ever and then my District continued to chime in with Hno. Doxey saying that they hate me because they are jealous of my Spanish haha. But, let me just say this, I am DEFINITELY NOT GOOD at Spanish!! Either he felt super bad for me because I'm the worst at Spanish...unlikely ;)....or it is 50% true. Who knows haha

Ok ready for some spiritual stuff?!! YES!! K we watch millions of Elder Holland talks that he has given at the MTC in the past 100 years, so there are A LOT! They are all so so so great!! We watched one that was pretty much exactly like his General Conference talk about Peter and the quote, "Do you love me, then feed my sheep." and it was so awesome. My favorite part of it was when he got all choked up and said something like this, "Dont you ever turn your back on the Gospel. You will break my heart. You will break the Lord's heart. You will break God's heart."

Another quote from him you may have heard. This is when he is referring to the Lord speaking to His children (us) and telling us to come to the edge of the cliff.

"Come to the edge," He said "No, we'll fall."

"Come to the edge." ...."No. We'll fall"

"COME TO THE EDGE!" ....We went to the edge. He pushed us. And we flew.

I absolutely LOVE that story because we have to go to the edge even though it's scary. We have to do all that we can as missionaries and reach our potential. All of us have divine potential and it is our job to make sure we push ourselves enough to reach that potential. I definitely feel like I am afraid of the edge at time and won't go places that I am not familiar with. I strive to keep pushing myself more and more. I find that the more I push myself, the more I improve and become better because I have the Lord helping me to fly.

So your challenge this week, Push yourself. Come to the edge and He will help you fly. We have so much work to do with this world. Get on it :)

I love you all!! I am very aware of all the prayers and I am so grateful for them. Thank you for loving and supporting me and writing me and sending packages. I couldn't do any of this without my support team :) Thank you!!!

Love,

Hermana Daly :)