Week 2 en el Campo!!!!

Dear Fam Fam,

It sounds like things are kind of exploding into all sorts of different directions and stuff at home. I mean, Wow. Change in piano teachers, new cars, Snowbird, blisters, school, new farm art at Grandma´s house, cousins visiting form far far away, sounds to me like you guys are having more of an adventure than I am! ;) Just Kidding. We´re probably equal.

So, life as a full time missionary is a little bit difficult sometimes. Especially right now, because we don´t have a progressing investigator. Apparently I have been sent to the most difficult part of my mission for hermanas because people have a really hard time staying active in the Gospel or having any desire to change... However! I refuse to give up hope because I know that with the Lord I can to anything! Even change stubborn people´s hearts.

So, a couple more details about my life here in Mexico. We live in a little apartment in an area called Educacion. We have four little rooms, a kitchenette, a bathroom, a common room / office and our little bedroom. Every morning to take a hot shower I get the opportunity to light the burner and wait a little bit before turning up the gas. We have a baby portable stove that I cook my eggs and tortillas that I eat for breakfast. And every Monday after we wash our clothes we climb the staircase to the roof and hang our clothes insideout on it to dry. In order to email we go to the local internet cafe and write for an hour. If we want to buy anything we visit any of the hundreds of little tiendas lined at every street. It´s quite fun actually!

This week I got the opportunity to go to the Mexico City temple open house and it was nuts. Like absolutely crazy. You would not believe how many people were there! They had guides and separated our ward into groups probably three different times. You strolled through the temple, no stopping, and before they had people put silly little booties over your shoes. Regardless of the weirdness of the procession it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful! And!!! We managed to get the Ortegas (a family that is super inactive) to come! and they had a wonderful time!

I´ve been seeing so many miracles while I´ve been here! One of those has been my health. So I assume I ate something bad because yesterday was awful health wise. I ached and was woozy and had a hard time eating yesterday. So I got a blessing from my district leader. At first, it didn´t help much. But later I was at home and was praying fervently for health so that I could continue to work and be an instrument in the hands of the Lord and as soon as I finished praying the pain significantly diminished and I was able to sleep and I woke up today feeling much better! It was so awesome! And I know that it was a blessing from the Lord! The Gospel is true and the power is real!

Next time I´ll give you guys a rundown of what a typical day for us looks like but for now I´ve got to leave you with this! Thank you for the workouts, the updates and the prayers! I love you all so much!!!

Lots of Love!!!

Hermana Hyer  

Semana 1 en el Campo!!!

Dear Fam,

I´m in the field!!!!!!!! Oh my word, it is crazy!!! My area is called Education and it´s about 1 hour from the Federal District. I have to speak Spanish 100% of the time unless someone asks me to help them speak English or some little kids in the ward need help with their English homework from school or whatnot. Let´s just start by saying that speaking Spanish all the time is actually pretty hard because I can´t express myself the way that I would like to. I have never had my tongue bound for a lack of words but here it´s like that 50% of the time. I want to express myself but I can´t all of the time. It´s all good though. That will come with time.

My trainer´s name is Hermana Escoto and she is from Honduras. I am her first "Hija" which is what they call the noobs. So my training lasts 12 weeks. It´s a booklet and learning the white bible as well as all of the random extra spin off rules that come with living in another country. But thus far it has been pretty fun. Day 2. I showered with microwaved water in a bucket because we ran out of gas to heat the water. Pretty crazy but it was really fun.

So guess what? I have LOVED the food here!!! Every lunch a family of members feeds us and it has been beautiful. The food is so flavorful and there is salsa for literally every meal. And apparently I am the first guerra (white kid) to eat all of the food without complaining or rejecting some of it. I also am the first guerra to eat all of the salsa and actually enjoy it. Looks like I have had some wimpy people come before me if I am the first. That being said, I conquered both tomatoes and mushrooms this week. The mushrooms weren´t that bad but the tomatoes were the same as always.

So speaking of food, next comes exercise. Please email the Daily Dozen next week because I am at a loss as to what to do to work out every day!!! And I need it a ton because I eat too much. So please send me any ideas for a workout plan. Please Please Please!!!

I love you guys so much! The Gospel is true and the Lord truly knows and cares about each of us! Until next week!

Hermana Samantha Hyer

My whole zone!

Casa mates Hermana March and Hermana Kamalu

Our recent convert Fernada

Companera and me

I made it!!!

August 17

Hey Fam!!!

So this is my email telling you that I made it to my mission safe and sound! My first companion will be Hermana Escoto and I will meet her in about one hour. I'm so excited! Just know that everything is going well. I love you guys!

Love, Hermana Hyer

Email Numero Cinco!

Hey Fam fam!!!

Guess what? I got your letters this time, Mom! So that´s pretty awesome in and of itself. Also this week has been super interesting. We´ve had some major ups and downs but overall it has been awesome. It´s fun to here that you guys are still up to some fun even though I´ve been gone. It´s nice to know Julia got a new toy and Gretchie got an Instagram. How many followers do you have already? How fun to have taken Kevin and Julie and their crew out to paddleboard! I sometimes wish I could be on the water but then I remember that serving the Lord is awesome and it´s all good from there. Sounds like you guys got quite the load of peaches. Good luck eating them all! It’s also nice to know that I´m at church with you guys again! Thanks for choosing a good pic for my plaque! It´s crazy that Shawn is home already and different. I hope I come back different too, changed into a better disciple of Christ, that´s my goal. 

I loved getting letters and emails and everything! It was so nice. This week was just full of tender mercies of the Lord. For one, I got letters. For another, we´ve been waiting all six weeks here at the CCM to get baby hymn books in Spanish and they hadn´t come the whole time until yesterday. It was literally one of the best days for my whole district and they all got packages too and it was super exciting. Another is that our teachers have been so kind and sincere in how they care for us. We´ve just been so blessed!

So, remember how I said we had some downs this week, well I´d like to share one of them because it actually helped me realize more about who I am. So, Saturday while me and Hermana Zierenburg were off conducting our week Hermana interviews as part of our duties as Sister Training Leaders, our Elders got into a fight. A big ole verbal brawl and we have a lot of very opinionated elders in this district and so it was pretty nasty from what I heard. So me being me, I stepped in after the interviews to deal with the aftermath. Usually that is the District Leader´s job but he was part of it so something else had to be done. I sat the primary offending Elder down and we had a nice long chat in which I learned some new things about him and was able to help him and the other elder talk about their differences and move on. So in the end everything worked out but for me the most important part of it all was that I learned something about myself. I really enjoy listening to people´s problems and doing my best to fix them. It´s a talent I have come to develop and I am so grateful to my Father in Heaven for blessing me with this ability! I am so excited to use it in the field!!!

Another thing that the CCM has been really awesome for is helping me recognize how I feel the Spirit. I have never been very good at recognizing feeling the Spirit but my time here has taught me that I feel it mainly in these two ways, a burning or warm sensation in my chest and a thundering drum of my heartbeat. I know now that I have been feeling him all along and just not recognizing him when he is there. I have also learned how crucial it is to have him with me all the time and especially while I am here on my mission. The Holy Ghost is so powerful and I am so excited to develop a stronger relationship with my Father and Christ through him!

I also had some other cool insight this week. You know how the world uses the phrase to "hit rock bottom" when you go as low as you can go? Well i was thinking about it and how interesting it is for them to choose that phrase because of how true that is. We can only fall onto our Rock who is Christ our merciful Savior. We´re built on His rock and we cannot fall any further. How blessed are we to have that knowledge!

So, on another note, I got my green card and am now technically a Mexican Citizen for the next year until we have to renew it. I leave the CCM at 5AM on Monday. I get on a bus and drive out to my mission for however long it takes traffic to get there. And then I have no idea what´s next. I will finally be a real missionary and I will get to testify and teach and serve all the time. And even though I don´t feel ready, I know I can do this through Christ who strengthens me.

The CCM has been a unique experience and although every week was challenging at some point I know that I am supposed to be here. I know that this gospel is true and I know that constantly using the Atonement of our Lord to improve ourselves is the most important thing I need to use in my life to continue and improve. I know I am not perfect but Jesus Christ is and he can help me become the person I want to be. I am so excited to go out and serve all the people of México City and bring them closer to Christ!

Until next week,

Love,

Hermana Hyer

The floating missionaries of the CCM

Email Numero Cuatro!

Hey Fam Fam!!!

So, again, I love Love LOVE getting emails from you guys every week! It just makes me so happy to hear from each of you! I´m glad I was missed on the City trip because I would be so sad if i wasn´t. Cuz I miss you guys! And rock climbing is so awesome! The most extreme sport I get to do here is volleyball and although I really enjoy it I´d have to say that rock climbing takes the cake.

So the answer to Dad´s question of where my companion is from is that she is from Moorpark, California. Pretty cool right? California´s a cool place. Gretchie, i got your letter but I didn´t get Mom´s for some reason. Will you try again?

Do you know what else is a cool place? The México City Temple!!! We got to go and visit it today and it was gorgeous! Unfortunately, the temple is under renovation so we didn´t get to go in but the visitor´s center is pretty cool! They have a small statue like the one in Salt Lake and some pretty cool exhibits. They also have a tiny distribution center where I bought a Mayan Book of Mormon. I wonder if i could possibly learn to read it... That would be cool!!! They also had this other store and I bought a cool mexican blouse that I can wear all the time! I´m gonna be here a while so i may as well dress like the natives. Cuz their culture is so cool! The temple has some Aztec elements to it on the outside because México city is part of where they used to live. The Mayans lived further south in Guatemala and such.

A cute exhibit

A really cool picture in the visitor's center that I liked

So, here are some random things I did this week. I ate a bag of habiñero potato chips and afterwards I felt like I could literally breathe fire. It was soooo spicy!!! And i kind of love it. I hope i get to eat lots of spicy food in the field!

Also, we did something this week called TRC. I´m not entirely sure what it stands for but it´s pretty cool. It´s a time set off for every Saturday where we teach volunteers lessons of the gospel. Up until that point we have only been teaching our teachers who are taking on profiles of investigators they once had. So i hadn´t been all that nervous to teach my teachers but teaching real people is a whole different ball game. So we taught a member who turned out to be the ward mission leader in his ward and it was pretty cool! Two days and i get to teach somebody new again!!!

This past Sunday was fast Sunday but here they did fasting a little different. We started Saturday afternoon right after lunch and then fasted until the next day´s lunch. It was a little weird but it was a great fast! I was super blessed because I did not even get a little bit hangry the whole entire time. Usually I get hangry (hungry plus angry) within the first couple of hours or so but that was not the case and I am super blessed! Also, I got up during Sacrament Meeting and bore my testimony entirely in Spanish. It was soo great! And I was thinking of you, Gretchen, the entire time. I promise to keep bearing my testimony each Fast and Testimony meeting as well as every time i get the chance!

Missions are such spiritually uplifting times. I have such a great opportunity to feel the spirit and be constantly learning and gaining revelation. So tuesday there was a world wide MTC devotional and President Russell M. Nelson spoke to us. It was beautiful! (and totally answered my question of who was going to be the new President of the Quorum of the Twelve) He said that the revelation given to them to lower the age for missionaries was to give more of the youth a chance to go. Something he also stressed was something borne to us by Jeffery R Holland a couple of weeks back and that was to make sure we come home with one convert "and it better be you!!!" This has been my focus as of late and another devotional by David A Bednar taught me that the best way to do that is to lose myself in helping others. I love the Apostles and their words of strength to me! I am soooo blessed!

I can´t believe how fast this time in the CCM has gone by. It´s crazy to think that I´ll be in the mission field in a week and a half. Though i don´t feel ready (and i know i never will) I hope to make you all and my Father in Heaven proud.

With love and gratitude,

Hermana Hyer