May 2, 2013

Hola familia,

 

How's everyone doing?  Is dad doing any better?  I really appreciate all the dear elders to keep me up to date.  I'm sad that I might not be able to receive those come another few days, but I'm grateful for any updates! 

 

I got your package this week.  Thank you so much, that was very sweet of you!  I'm currently working on some letters home to all of you individually.  I really enjoyed getting to hear from you all in the package and via my phone call.

 

I should be receiving my new mission call today, with any luck!  My visa hasn't come, so I'll be reassigned.  My companion received her reassignment yesterday... she's going to Portland, Oregon!  I told her I was envious and that she's extremely lucky.  Two elders in my district got called to Boise, Idaho... I'm hoping that means that all of the reassignments for Idaho are already done and that I've dodged that bullet... I mean blessing.  I love Idaho.

 

This week has been kind of a weird one.  Other than the news from home, which made a few days a little bit rough, our schedule got completely switched around.  Our Preparation day was changed to Thursdays instead of Tuesdays, which is why I'm emailing today instead of two days ago.  Sorry for the scare!  It's made things interesting.  We also have had a lot of changes with our teachers.  My favorite teacher, Hermana Coleman, got a promotion, so for our last week in the MTC, we have a brand new teacher and new investigator.   The typical 6-week MTC missionary has 2-3 investigators they teach.  Our teachers have been gone so much or our schedule has been so weird that we've had probably 6-8 different investigators.  It's been crazy.  But I guess it's good practice regardless.

 

Despite the crazy schedule, my companion and I committed one of our investigators to baptism this week!  Our second one!  It was pretty exciting.  But that might be the last chance we had to teach him, soo.... that's kind of a bummer.  But it's all good.

 

At this point, I'm just ready to get out into the field, so I'll let you all know as soon as I get my reassignment!  My spanish is not perfect, but it's improving every day. I think it will be a whole new challenge when I'm actually speaking to native speakers. 

 

I love you all and hope you're doing well!  I send you my love and you're in my prayers!  I know my work is blessing the lives of other people and I can't wait to get out to the field.

 

With love,

 

Hermana Walton

May 9, 2013 - Transfer to LA - final week in MTC

Hola, familia y amigos!

This week has been good, although kind of really weird. My entire district (minus me and Hermana Reid, my current companion) left earlier this week for the reassigned missions. Our classroom feels so desolate without them. I had no idea how hard it would be to say goodbye to all of them. I really do love my district and I'm so glad I'll get to see all of them in Argentina.

Our experience this week as a two-person district has been weird. We're supposed to be combining with another district in our zone, but our teachers still wanted to teach us, so we've been having our own classes. It's been really nice to have such personal assistance and instruction with our language and our teaching skills. As sad as it is being in a nearly empty classroom, it's been nice that we get to set the pace. I've been trying to make the best of my time in the MTC, although it's been difficult, because I'm kind of antsy to go! But our devotional this Sunday was by Chad Lewis, some NFL football player that is LDS. It was surprisingly really good. He talked a lot overcoming hard things, which is relevant to everyone always, I think.

Now for the much anticipated news.... I got my reassignment! I'll be serving in the Louisiana Baton Rouge mission! I am leaving the MTC at 3 am on Tuesday. I can't believe I'm going to the deep South, but I am so stoked about it. I know there's lots of work for me to do down there.
Anyways, I think that's about it for this week. I love you all. Thank you for your continual support and prayers. 

Con amor,
Hermana Walton

LA Temple, Baton Rouge LA Mision Home 5/20/2013 Welcome by Sister Missionaries in Kenner, LA

Here are some pictures from this week:

1.  The zone leaders decorated our apartment door to welcome Hermana Rohm (the other visa waiter for Buenos Aires) and I to the mission!  This is us in the streamers.

2.  They wrote on the ground in sidewalk chalk, too.  Translation:  "Welcome, Hermanas Walton and Rohm!  Thanks for being in our zone!  Don't leave to Argentina!"

We have a great mission.

 

 

May 20, 2013 - Temporary Assignment until Visa arrives - Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission

May 20, 2013

Hola, familia y amigos!

Mom, I'm going to print off your email and reply to it by hand, because I don't have too much time for email right now, but thank you!  Also, there are tons of other experiences I want to share, but really just don't have the time for!  I'm sorry, but I love you and will try o include them in my handwritten letter!

Thanks to everyone who's written me and made effort to stay in contact!  I really do appreciate it!  I had a flood of emails today, so I'm sorry if I didn't get to respond to yours yet, but I'll email you next week, or I could possibly be writing you by hand instead!

So this week has been quite the experience.  My first week in the field!  I'm currently in Kenner, which is just right outside of New Orleans, in the suburbs.  It's surprisingly green here, but super hot.  My companion (Hermana Walker) and I are on bikes, so that makes it seem even hotter.  My mission president (President Wall) makes a concerted effort to have all of the sisters in cars, but since there are so many visa waiting missionaries here right now, things are a bit unusual.  I'm technically in a quadpanionship, bu we don't do any work together.  We share an apartment and have one car, so technically my companion and I are assigned to be on bikes all the time, but we occasionally get access to the car.  It's kind of unusual, but I guess all of the biking will stave off any potential weight gain. haha.

Our ward here is very small... I couldn't tell you how many people are in it, but when you look out in the congregation, it looks about 30-40% missionaries... there are 16 missionaries in my ward!  The ward covers a pretty large area, too.  It's a pretty unusual situation, but we're trying to make the best of it and still reach out to the members.  Most of the people in the ward are from Honduras, with a few people from Mexico, too.

We don't have dinner with the members too often (on account of the sheer number of missionaries, as well as the fact that many of them are not as financially stable), but yesterday we had dinner with the Paz family, which was wonderful.  They're from Honduras.  They made us a traditional dish called baleatas... so good!  I haven't had any southern cooking yet and probably won't from any of the members, but I'm sure the other missionaries and I will have some before I leave.

It's been a little weird because the two trainers in my quadpanionship were companions beforehand, so they have to divide the work up between the two companionships now.  That means we don't have a lot of people to work with right now, but we've been trying to find more people and to reach out to members and less active members as well.  It's been hard, but it's been good.

The other day we had a pretty cool experience.  We were biking home at about 8:30 and had about 6 miles to ride before we got home, and our appointment for the evening had fallen through.  It was a pretty slow day, but we biked past a bus stop and a woman saw us and waved us down, calling out "Mormonas!"  We turned around and talked to her.  It turns out she had read the entire Book of Mormon before, so we set up an appointment to visit with her the next day.  It was cool to see that we really are placed in certain locations at certain times to help people.  Hopefully we'll be able to visit with her soon.

Well things have been very busy here and we're working hard to further the work.  I love you all and hope you're well.  Thank you for your prayers and support.

Love,

Hermana Walton

P.S.  We might be moving soon, but here's my address for right now:

Hermana Lauren Walton

3350 Grand Lake Blvd. Apt. A204

Kenner, LA 70065

May 28, 2013 New Address in New Orleans, LA

May 28, 2013

Hello family and friends!

Things in Louisiana are hot and humid and despite that, excellent!

First of all, this week, we moved.  For those of you who would like to write me (I know that's all of you), here's my new address:

3550 Grandlake Blvd. G307

Kenner, LA 70065

I even bolded it for you.  Now don't you forget it.

This last week has been kind of an unusual one.  All four of us sisters were sick for the better part of three days with food poisoning.  One of the member's cooking didn't sit so well with us, but we're all better now!  That just threw us off a bit, as far as our plans went.  

Last week we met an incredible woman, Lorena, who was actually referred to us by one of our current investigators, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth had been teaching Lorena about the Church on her own and then invited us over to teach them both.  We talked to them about the Book of Mormon and I don't think I've ever seen someone consider so deeply a passage of scripture as she did when we shared Moroni's Promise (Moroni 10:4-5) with her.  Lorena is awesome and we're so excited to teach her more.  Elizabeth, as well, is absolutely incredible.  She's come a long way and is so receptive to learning new things.

Yesterday was Hermana Walker's birthday, so we went out to Olive Garden with one of the members here for dinner.  There were actually two members from Utah that happened to be there that night and came up and introduced themselves.  They ended up paying for our entire table!  It was too sweet of them.  My companions and I resolved to have the "pay it forward" mentality and look for more opportunities to serve others as well.

I'm coming to know the area better little by little, but I've still got a lot to learn.  I'm a little nervous, because the two sisters (Hermanas Walker and Blauer) that are training me and the other visa waiter (Hermana Rohm) are sister training leaders, so they're going on exchanges this week.  That means Hermana Rohm and I are on our own for the exchange, on bikes.  Since I'm the only one of the two of us that has done any biking, that means I'm in charge of getting us around.  I'm only slightly worried that I'm going to get us completely and utterly lost, but that's okay.  We only have a couple of appointments this afternoon once the exchange begins, and we have a map.

As far as the language goes, I feel slightly more confident each day.  The hardest part for me is understanding what other people are saying to me.  They all speak so fast and tend to be pretty soft spoken as well.  Especially the Hondurans and Ecuadorians.  That's going to be another challenge for me and Hermana Rohm this week- without our more experienced companions, we're going to be on our own as far as figuring out what people are telling us.  But it will be a great learning opportunity!

I think that's pretty much it for this week.  We're headed to District Meeting right now and then making boleatas for lunch (a traditional Honduran dish... I would highly recommend it!).  I hope everyone is well and I send you my love.  Thank you for your continual support.

Con amor,

Hermana Walton

April 16, 2013

Hola!

This has been a crazy week, but so good.   I've seen a lot of progress this week, and a lot of difficulties.  But opposition in everything, right?

We met with the Argentine consolate earlier this week to get some final stuff worked out for our visas.  We don't know how long it's going to take to get the visas processed, but with any luck they'll be done by early May.  If not then we'll be temporarily reassigned to a mission somewhere in the States.  I used think that would be really terrible, but now I think it could actually be pretty fun.  I hear that as a state-side Spanish speaking missionary, you kind of speak more of Spanglish than pure Spanish, so it could be a really nice transition.

Concerning the Argentine mailing system, I guess that the mailing system is pretty reliable, but a bit slower than the US.  And I hear most packages make it to their destination in tact.  The nice thing is that all of the mail goes through the capitol, Buenos Aires, and so that means mine is faster than most areas!  Yay!

This week has actually been pretty good.  I'm feeling better about my language with each lesson and understanding more.  I really like doing TRC, which is where we go share a message with a member rather than a fake investigator.  We had two TRCs yesterday.  Both of the people we taught were native speakers.  It's great practice with the language and also just great to meet new people!

We tried our first door approach this week.  It was a bit rocky, but the person was pretty kind and receptive and probably nothing like a real door approach, but great.

The week was a bit rough for my companion.  She was feeling a bit discouraged about the language, so I've been trying to focus more on what I can do to help her.  It's hard to find the balance between helping her develop her language skills and continuing to develop my own, but I know that if I don't focus on myself, it'll come easier.

I got a haircut today.  I'll try to send pictures.  It's pretty short. Mom, you gave me an excellent haircut, but short hair is much more manageable, so hopefully this will make my 20 minutes to get ready in the morning a little simpler.

Anyways, that's basically been my week.  The MTC is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster sometimes, but I'm learning so much and getting pushed and stretched in unforseeable ways.

I love you all and thank you for your continual support.

Sincerely,

Hermana Walton

April 9, 2013

What a week!

 

This weekend, especially, was great. Conference was really wonderful and insightful.  Elder Holland and President Eyring were definitely my two favorite talks.  I would encourage everyone to read/re-watch those talks. 

Then later in the evening, for the Sunday night devotional, BYU's all-male acapella group, Vocal Point, came and performed.  They were phenomenal.  It was so fun.

 

Other than that, honestly, this week was pretty similar to last week.  Lots of language practice, lots of studying, lots of teaching.  Everything is slowly but surely progressing.

 

I'm pretty pressed for email time right now, but I'll try to write more next week!

 

Con sinceridad,

 

Hermana Walton

 

P.S.  The attached pictures:

 

 

 1.  Springfield Stake MTC Missionaries!

 

2. Me writing letters... missionaries love letters!  Write me!