Week 16: Granks!!

I had my second interview with my mission president this week! He said, “Sister Cardon, your spanish is excellent!” and I was so excited I almost jumped out of my chair and then, to my horror, I exclaimed, “GRANKS!!”

Now I know that I mixed Thanks and Gracias, but right when it happened all I knew was my own shock at the nonsense that had just escaped my lips. Now I kind of wish I had had the mind to say, “….And by that I mean my Spanglish is even better!”

Other than that, haha, it was a great week! One of our investigators got baptized which was awesome. When we first met him he was already looking for the truth, which made him pretty much what I would consider a “golden” investigator. It’s a little harder to facilitate understanding when people believe they already know everything. For him, he just needed to know where he could find answers and how he could know with a surety that they were correct. We just testified and taught him what to do! And, wow, he has changed so much! His entire countenance is different, so much more happy and confident. He was so happy after his baptism that he stood up in the service afterwards and said, “El Libro de Mormon es VERDAD!” which is not “The Book of Mormon is TRUE!” but rather, “The Book of Mormon is TRUTH!” It was awesome.

Really, as a missionary, I don’t know if there is a greater joy than bearing testimony. Hearing our investigator bear his made me want to share mine with even more people! What could be more satisfying than being the evidence that says, “This is what God wants us to do, this is what He has promised if we do it, and I decided to do it and He was true to His word!” When we testify that the scriptures are true, that the church is true, that is no small thing! The Book of Mormon is true and I can not deny it because every time I have applied what the prophets testify of in the Book of Mormon I have been blessed. Exactly the way they said I would be!

Week 15: Warmer and Warmer!

       I haven’t told you guys about the weather here! I came in the dead of winter…. It was in the 80s most days and oddly enough everyone acted like it was freezing. At first that was weird but I turned into a true Piuran…. It’s like when they were talking about how cold it was I started thinking I was cold too! So yeah, I wear a chompa (sweater) everyday, and at night I wear my coat…. I have nothing to say for myself. But it is getting warmer and warmer everyday! I don’t know what the temperature is but it’s a lot of sun. A lot of wind too!

       I heard a great story this week! It’s kind of mission folklore but supposedly there is a statuary (like a place that sells statues? Like statues of Mary and saints and stuff, for Catholics) and all of the statues have in their hands an Article of Faith card. None of the missionaries that have witnessed this site know where the lady who sells them got so many Articles of Faith cards or if she knows that on the back of the pictures of Jesus there are the 13 Articles of Faith, but needless to say I laughed really hard when I heard about it. But that kind of sums up the attitude of people here towards the church… Hey if it’s got a picture of Jesus on it, it’s all goood!

       I love teaching here in Piura; the people are a believing people, they want to do good and be good. I would say there is a lot of “religious excitement,” a lot of people looking for the truth. I love being able to tell them that we get to heaven by covenanting, and teaching them how the Atonement makes that possible. I love being the one to teach them how we make those covenants and how to keep them.

       Everyday’s a great day here in Piura! I love you guys so much!

       Hermana Cardon

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Week 14: I Have a Story!

Story Time!! Yesterday we had a family home evening planned with a really strong family, and we invited a part member family. Well, the part member family couldn’t come last minute and it was time for the FHE to start! Sister Gomez and I ran searching for ANYONE to invite and ended up knocking on the door of a recently activated member! He said he would come! When we were leaving his house these words popped out– “Tiene un amigo que podemos invitar?” (Do you have a friend we could invite?) and he said yes! So we went to find his friend and his friend accepted our invitation! The FHE went great, we dicussed the Doctrine of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, recieving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and perservering to the end) and the friend said, “Me siento una paz, algo que no puedo explicar. Pero yo se que estas cosas son verdaderas.” WOW! He said he felt a peace, something that he couldn’t explain, but he knew the things we were talking about were true! The spirit was so strong, and then we invited him to be baptized and he said yes! Within 20 minutes of us meeting him!  Everything happened just so perfectly, I can not stop smiling that I got to witness this miracle!

Things are going so great! I am growing and learning so much! Yesterday also we had an awesome Stake Conference! Elder Scott and Elder Bednar came, and a Sister from the new General Relief Society Presidency! Elder Scott speaks Castellano really well! They all spoke with great authority and were very direct, yet full of love somehow. That´s how I want to teach! I am doing everything I can to apply what they taught and how they taught it!

This church is true! That’s the simplest way I can express that I know that it really does teach the principles we need to live and provide the ordinances we need to recieve in order for us to receive salvation at the end of this life and, what’s more, the best possible life right now! I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of telling that to people who don’t know about it yet!

Thank you for your emails and thoughts and prayers!!

Hermana Cardon

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Week 7: Milagros!

       Thanks everyone for your faith and prayers in my behalf!! And your emails too!! Know that I am strengthened by them!!

       This week has been awesome. I love this work!!!! These first weeks  have to be the best because there is no better position to be in than The Vulnerable Gringa  That Can’t Speak That Great. I think it sets the tone right when people realize I need help too! It makes it easier to demonstrate that my companion and I are not as much their teachers but truly their sisters. There’s a unity I feel when they realize how much I need them. I am seeing hearts open because I am so not threatening. Haha.

       For example, one brother has, in the past, not wanted anything to do with the missionaries. His wife joined the Church but had to be taught outside her home. I don’t know what changed him, but he heard my companion and I singing in a home nearby (other plus to cardboard walls. Haha, just kidding, they were concrete) and he came over and asked us to visit him. We have been teaching him nearly every day since then and he is on fire!! I was scared of him at first from the stories I had heard, but now he is a dear friend. He has helped me so much with the language.

       Things have been pretty crazy in Piura because this weekend was their independence day, and so the whole city was a gigantic fiesta. My companion and I went with an investigator and about 25 people from the ward to a neighboring ward last night to watch a baptism. The Spirit was so strong in that meeting as we watched the ordinance, sang hymns, and listened to testimony.  Afterward, our investigator asked if she could change her baptismal date to this week!! It was so exciting, and when all of us from the ward were walking home there was such a feeling of unity. There was loud music coming from every direction and drunk people everywhere, but in our little band with the powerful Spirit we had just felt and the exciting news about our investigator, there was just such a feeling of love among us. We were all so content and safe.

       I love this work and I love our Savior, Jesus Christ. I know that He is at the head of all of this, it’s a knowledge that burns within me and drives me to seek His will. I am learning the truth of the words of M. Russell Ballard that as Jesus Christ is becoming more of a reality in my life, it isn’t that He is somehow making me do things I don’t want to do. It’s that I am finding myself wanting to do what He would do, wanting to respond as He would respond, in an effort to bring my life more in harmony with His. The interesting thing that is happening to me is that as I am trying to follow the footsteps of Jesus (in caring, loving, serving, and obeying as He did) I am finding that this path is leading me directly to where I want to be. The people I need to talk to, the words I need to say, the hands that I can lift. It is a milagro!! A miracle!

       I love you all! Thank you for the emails!

       Hermana Cardon

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Week 6: Piura!

       Wow. I have so much to say I don’t know where to begin!

       Chronologically, I got to Lima on Monday night around 11. The lady sitting next to me on the plane from Miami was so awesome, she didn’t speak any English so I got to practice Spanish with her a lot! Her husband died three years ago and has been suffering a lot since then. I taught her about the Plan of Salvation! It was awesome! She wants to learn more!

       Lima was so creepy at night, and smelled really bad! I thought our hotel was really scary too… Little did I know we were staying at the Ritz Lima. Haha. My traveling companion and I left for Piura at 7 a.m. and I got to say goodbye to Hermana T. one last time before she got on her flight for Cuzco. Me and 9 other missionaries arrived around 12 in Piura. It is AWESOME here! Haha but super different. It literally is its own little world.

       Piura is REALLY dusty. And there are dogs and cats everywhere! You can tell if they have an owner if they have a t-shirt on. The wind is always blowing and by the end of every day I feel like I took a dirt bath! Our apartment is really interesting. One of our walls is made out of cardboard (which is awesome because we share it with some people who are investigating the church so we could teach them from our bedroom if we didn’t want to get dressed haha) and one out of plywood and two out of cement. The ceiling is a bunch of bamboo(?) poles with a piece of sheet metal wired to them. This means that we can see the outside world through our roof and the cats can crawl in (when they are walking on the roof it´s so scary it sounds like thunder!)  But you can tell that my companion and I are well taken care of because our floor is made out of cement and not dirt! How grateful I am for the levelness of a cement floor! The shower head is literally 2 feet away from the toilet which means that if you drop the shampoo you better hope the lid is down! The bathroom is like a little hut within our hut! Hutception!!!

       My companion is learning to speak English but her accent is so thick that I don’t understand it, so we stick to Spanish and then during language study she practices English. She is awesome though! She is from Lima and is a convert to the church! Her dad was shot at work a little while after she joined the church, she says that the gospel has been her strength ever since!

       I had an exchange where I got to go to the ritzy part of Piura! There is grass over there, and more people have hard floors. One of the members showed me her washing machine and asked me if I had seen one before… I didn´t know how to respond so I was just like,”Yeah, I think so!”

       The members are so loving! They call me Hermana Barbie because I’m white and tall. Literally though, I am a giant here. I don’t know how the boys handle it, but I’m only 5’6″ and I am at least a head taller than everyone I have met here.

       The food and water here are straight poison! We are only allowed to eat what our pincionista cooks for us and what we buy at this grocery store called Tutto(?). It’s a lot like Walmart… like as in if it’s not owned by Walmart, then they straight up plagarized Walmart’s slogan.

       One thing that is funny here that drives me kind of nuts is the complete disregard for copyright law. I see advertisments with Tweety Bird and Dumbo and Shrek and all these characters MIXED… So ridiculous haha. I shouldn’t think that much about it, but it looks so weird to see Kuzco from Emperor’s New Groove riding Donkey from Shrek and stuff like that.

       As far as missionary work goes, it is awesome! I have to pinch myself that I am a missionary here! The members are angels and so excited about and devoted to the work. I’m not the greatest at speaking, but I’m conversational and can always say what I want even if it takes more words than necessary sometimes. (For an embarassing example, I just told my companion I have onion breath and I had to say my mouth is like an onion.) The kids love teaching me new words and stuff. On Friday I started teaching English classes at the chapel as a way to find new people to teach the gospel! The bishop also asked me to start offering piano lessons, but so far I don’t have any students for which I am grateful for because I’m much better at English than the piano.

       A lot of things have happened this week that are sad. Someone we know drank the water and died, and then one of our friends lost her baby. The beauty of the message of the Restoration, however, is not that our lives can be perfect and nothing sad will ever happen. The message of the Restoration is that there is hope and happiness ahead. God loves us, He has a plan for us, and all of our trials can be for our good. It’s not a matter of seeing things optimisticly or trying to convince people to do that, it is about seeing things as they really are! In the right perspective, with the enabling power of the Atonement, our lives can be happy! The people here don’t have very much (and by that I mean that when I am sitting in someone’s house I can usually see 80-100% of everything they own) but the members definitely get that. I am constantly inspired by the fire of their testimonies here.They are setting fire in others because they are on fire themselves!

       Thank you for your prayers and emails! I love you all!

       Hna. Cardon

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Week 5: T-minus 4 Days!

Hola!

       This week has been wild! A roller coaster of emotions! My district has been busy making guesses on where we are getting reassigned. There were a bunch of Peru missionaries that got reassigned to California last week and then a bunch who got sent to New York! I was hoping that my reassignment would be to one of those places too.

       On Monday a bunch of sister missionaries we don’t know but that are apparently going to Peru came to Dinner with their TRAVEL PLANS to Lima. We were all so jealous, we were like, “Oh, we’re waiting on our reassignments because we don’t have VISA’s yet.” and then Elder Toolson was looking at their travel plans and he was like, “Look, this is interesting Sister Cardon.” and I went over and looked at it and in on the top of the page in big bold letters it said, “YOU ARE TO MEET WITH YOUR TRAVEL LEADER, SISTER ALYSSA CARDON, BEFORE DEPARTURE. SHE WILL GIVE YOU FURTHER INFORMATION.”

       My heart was pounding so hard and fast! My whole district ran to the mail room, we were pretty sure I was leaving but didn’t know about anyone else. We quickly said a prayer together that all of us would have travel plans and then we opened our mailbox and there they were! All of us are on different flights pretty much except for Elder T. and Hermana T. are on all the same flights–they are going to LAX and then to Lima from there.

       Anyway, I am so full of emotions. Nervous, scared, sad, happy, suprised…. honestly, I am mostly just really sad to leave the MTC.

        But, anyway, that was exciting and it’s crazy to think that this time next week I will be in Peru! The other exciting thing I wanted to tell you about was that this morning I got to go work in the Provo Temple while it is being closed for renovations/cleaning. I was there with the sisters from my district for three hours, our job was to take apart a chandelier in one of the 12 sealing rooms and clean it. It was painstakingly slow, but really cool! The chandelier was gorgeous– and completely made out of gold and crystal! We were in all white clothes while we worked and the spirit was really strong, suprisingly because there were like jackhammers going on somwhere nearby and it was kind of dark in there. Taking apart the chandelier took like an hour and a half– I would guess that it was somwhere between 1-2 thousand little crystal pieces we had to take off, one by one! Once each crystal piece had been removed and all that was left was the gold frame, we cleaned the frame and changed the lightbulbs– there were probably 30 lightbulbs on it! Then we put on these little white cotton gloves and cleaned each little crystal piece with a micofiber cloth and vinegar solution. Then we got back on the scaffolding and started putting all the pieces back on the chandelier skeleton, one by one! we were probably 1/4 of the way done putting it back together when it was time for us to leave, but the part that was done was shining so bright! As missionaries, it was so good to have that time to just talk and work together. After we finished working, we went to the brides’ room– the missionaries had finished the chandlier and sconces in there yesterday! It was so beautiful! Hopefully our chandelier will look just as good as theirs did when ours gets finished!

       More and more I am just coming to learn that the Lord works that way with us. I could not but help feel that as I reached up and plucked a little crystal bead from the framework of the chandelier. One of the biggest rules we had to follow was “one piece at a time” because if you had two crystals in your hand they could scratch each other or you could drop one or both.

       I don’t have anymore time but Kayla, I might send you my blowdryer and straigtener to get rid of some weight! And, if you have time before Friday night, it would be really awesome if you could send me some lipstick! I need Revlon 080 Strawberry Shortcake– It sounds weird but that is my favorite color and one of the sister missionary rules is you must always have something on your lips and I am almost out of lipstick!!

       Thanks!! I love you all!

       Hermana Cardon

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Week 2: La Hechisera

Dear Family and Friends,

       Thank you for your prayers and support! I am so grateful for them! Thanks for the emails and DearElders too!

       I have a lot to tell you guys but I guess I’ll start with the funny stuff: My district calls me “hechisera” because we were working on our vocabulary one day and someone asked me what some other word meant and I guessed “sorcerer”… and so now I am “la hechisera” which, being interpreted, means “the sorceress.” (I actually prefer it to my old name which was “Hermana Nazi”—which, in Spanish, means “Sister Nazi.” I still don’t know why they think I’m the Nazi, I know they all want to be exactly obedient too!) It’s been really fun working together though, we all get along really well and laugh a lot. My companion and I laugh too much I think, actually.  I became aware of this when one of the missionaries in my district introduced my companion and I to some of the new missionaries in our zone and he said, “This is Hermana Cardon and Hermana T., and they are the funniest missionaries in the MTC.” I would much rather have been introduced as “the most diligent” or “the best Spanish-speakers,” but I guess it gives us something to work towards!

       My companion and I were introducing ourselves to some missionaries the other day and when they asked her where she was from she said, “The MTC.” I laughed so hard, but I feel that way too! It’s not that I don’t remember life before the MTC, but Hermana Cardon was definitely born and raised here. Not to mention I am constantly learning and relearning things I thought I knew here. I am constantly being humbled too… which makes me feel like a child. Not to mention that the past two weeks really have felt like a lifetime somehow. Anyway, it’s been fun to laugh about how she and I were born and bred in the MTC.

       I’m running out of time but I would like to close with a short story and my testimony! Before I came to the MTC I understood what it meant when people said, “Come unto Christ.” We come unto Christ by excercising our faith, repenting, making/renewing our covenants, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. (Boom, gold star for answering the Sunday School teacher’s question right.) I think I am coming to really understand these principles since being here and sensing my need for them, however. These are not arbitrary steps that, if taken, will take us to a place spiritually that happens to be near Jesus. I think I actually used to see the Gospel that way, to some extent. But here and now, as I have been confronted with my own weaknesses every day here (because I am actually not as patient or diligent or smart or as good at teaching as I led myself to believe or as I ought to be), I have come to recognize the two choices I have in response to life’s challenges: I can despair, worry, get frustrated, leave, etc. or I can come unto Him. And this is where my understanding has been enhanced. For the first time in my life I am excercising faith, repenting, thinking on and renewing my covenants, seeking the gift of the Holy Ghost, and doing my best to be true and faithful because of the great need I feel for Him. It’s a literal hunger, and for the first time I recognize how satisfying  His light and His help is, the light and help I gain access to by coming unto Him. I’ve always wanted to be good, and for the most part I have, but now I want to be better and do better not because I want more blessings or because I want my parents to be prouder or because I want people to see what a good girl I am  but because I want to be near Him. I need His light, I need His presence in my life, and I want to do everything I can to avoid what takes me away from Him and to do what draws me close to Him.

       I am totally out of time now but know I love you and yo se que Jesucristo es nuestro Salvador!!

       Adios,

       Hermana Cardon