El Verano en la Primavera

Hey Family!

I have to say, this week was a whole lot easier than the last one. In the MTC I felt like the first two weeks were the hardest but after that time just started to fly. My spanish is still pretty rough, but I am starting to understand more. There are times during lessons were I feel like I can understand and talk really week and than other times were I feel very much like an white American who has only been in the DR for two weeks. I was expecting to die of heat when I came here, and it definitely is toasty here in Primavera (my area), but it isn´t close to what I was expecting. We have had a few storms, but the nice thing about the DR is that it pours really hard for about twenty to thirty minutes and then is back to sunny. It is so beautiful here, I wish that the pictures I have could actually show what it really looks like. My area includes just to the base of the mountains here in La Vega so when we are walking around 7 o´clock we get really pretty views of the sunsets with mountains and the palm trees. I forgot to take pictures, but everywhere we go people have banana trees and other tropical fruits in their backyards. Right by our house is a huge avacado tree and we see mango trees everywhere. It is absolutely beautiful here.

My real favorite part of the DR has been the people. The members here are amazing and they are all really sassy and tease a lot. It is always fun to meet new people in the ward because my name here is Hermana Escriber (pronounced escreeber), and everyone always asks how in the world do I pronounce my name. They feed us every Sunday and I have loved all of the Dominican food I have tried, platanos fritos, mangu, la Bandera, and all of the good fruit here.

We are teaching a lot of new people because when I came here to La Vega there weren´t many people that were really interested in having the lessons. Hna. Lynch and I do a good combo of teaching and contacting every day. We teach anywhere from two to five lessons and contact for the rest of the day. There are a few people that have baptismal dates, but we´ll see if they change or no because they have to come to church a few times because they can be baptized and that is the hardest part of being a missionary here, getting people to come to church. There is a family of a mom and daughter who we are trying to convince to come to church, but we did have a lot of people come this week to church. There is a return missionary who just came home to this ward and he asked us to teach his family so we went this past week and taught them and... they all came to church. We also had a young girl, named Masiel, who came who really wants to be baptized and is ready but we need her family to be baptized with her and her parents aren´t married, that is another tough struggle here. The other investigator who came to church is Ana Silvia, who we met on Saturday. She and her husband were taught by the missionaries many years ago and were really interested but when the missionaries got transfered they lost contact with her family and she hasn´t been visited by the missionaries since, for about fourteen years. Her husband died a few years ago but she has three sons who live with her. Hma Lynch and I were walking past her house and we stopped to say hi and she invited us in and told us she had actually read the Book of Mormon and loved our church but hadn´t known how to go to church or find more about it. Meeting her was kind of a crazy miracle, but we asked her to come to church with us and she was so happy. I have learned a lot this past week and one of the most important things I have learned so far has been how much Heavenly Father loves and knows each one of us. 

Being a missionary is definitely hard, but wonderful. It sounds like it has been a good week for everyone, and I hope this next one is just as good. I love you all and hope you are doing well!

Hermana Schriever