I've Grown A Foot Or Two!

Hola!

Thanks so much for the pictures!! I loved them. That’s awesome that you guys caught fish! Sooo cool! Me and Danyon never had that luck fishing! When I get back we will for sure have to go fishing and Eben and Kerragyn will have to teach me all there trick.

Okay, so Florida, haha. Well it is defiantly hot and humid 24/7. The plane ride to Florida was hard. There was a lot of turbulence and I got sick so that wasn’t pleasant but when we got off the plan and met our mission president and his wife all feelings of being sick were gone! They are sooo awesome! And I am so sad that they will be leaving in a month :( Sister Anderson welcomed all the girls with a huge hug! She reminds me a lot of Grandma Heacock, just by her personality. After we got our luggage we went outside and that was the last time I would be dry for 18 months haha! When we stepped outside the humidity hit us like a brick wall! It was sooo hot and humid and you felt like you were stuck in a sauna that you couldn’t get out of. I felt like I was melting but you get used to it quick. We then went to the president’s house and had a home cooked American meal! Yes, finally. It was pot roast with potatoes and carrots and salad and all the works, it was sooo good. I had two plate fulls, haha! After that we had an orientation and then went to our hotel. There we got all our packages! I opened my greenie package right when I got into my room, haha, I loved it so much! Eating that caramel apple sucker was the best! And I loved the peacock! So awesome! Thanks so much for the pillow and bed sheets as well! They are perfect. I slept so well that night and woke up to go to transfer meeting! There we met our companions. I love my companion. She is from Cuba and was part of the first group who got baptized in Cuba. She speaks good English so that was a relief. She is so awesome and strong and diligent. We get along great! She is so nice and has been really helping me and is patient as I try to learn the language. I thought I knew Spanish prreetttyy good but coming here it is totally different! Cubans talk sooo fast! Anyways, we live in a nice furnished house with two other sisters. It’s nice although we do find cockroaches here and there but now it’s a normal thing and doesn’t bother me, haha! I love being able to buy and cook food for myself makes me feel grown up. I have had some trouble trying to remember some simple meals to make but I am getting the hang of it :)

After transfer meeting we went right to work! We dropped my stuff off at the house and went out to teach. I love all our investigators! I serve in Hialeah East. It covers Hialeah and part of Miami. Hialeah isn’t a rich area. It is pretty ghetto and pretty much everyone speaks Spanish. Which is great because it is helping me learn. I just love the people so much! They are so humble and so many cool stories about how they were in prison in Cuba and what they went through to get to freedom. It’s truly incredible. The food they feed us is crazy! Its sooo much and they expect you to eat it all. It’s a lot of meat and grease and oil but its sooo good! The Cubans are nice but can be pretty stubborn as well. But they are so kind. I don’t know if it’s because I am blond and white or if because they really like me, haha, I am like a super star here. If you are blond and white they think you are amazing and tell you that you are pretty all the time its crazy. I am already getting tan lines. When you skype I will be black, jk, haha I will send pics too! Oh, so Sunday! I love our ward so much! Its small only like 110 but they are awesome and take care of their missionaries. Also we had a baptism! Yes, Sunday one of our investigators got baptized and next week we will have two baptisms and this Saturday We get to go to a sealing at the temple! I am sooo excited!! I am so glad that I was called to serve here. We do this thing called harvesting where we go and knock on doors and say a prayer with them and bless their home then right after the prayer ask them to be baptized. At first I thought it was weird but I love it and it really works! People really say yes right after the prayer. It’s amazing!

One experience we had this week that was a big learning experience was when we went to go teach one of our investigators and when we got there he and his friend were drunk and had been drinking. Right when we got there we both felt like we needed to get out of there but we were prideful and stayed and taught and it was the worst lesson ever the spirit wasn’t there and we felt so uncomfortable and it was bad. When we left we talked about it and just cried because we felt so bad that we didn’t listen to the spirit and we put ourselves in that situation. We learned that we need to communicate with each other better and if one of feels like we need to leave then we leave.

I love this work so much and it’s crazy to think that I have already been out for almost 2 months! It’s going by fast! Thanks so much for all your love and support! Can you find out what Melissa’s email is so I can write her! I miss her too! I was so glad I got to talk you guys at the airport and see Ryan, Raelene and the boys. It was a blessing and I really loved being able to see them, it made me sooo happy!! I love you guys so much!! Tell Eben that I am so proud of him!! He is doing sooo good! He is going to rock high school!! Tell Kerrgayn that she is doing awesome too! And tell Danyon to be safe in his travels and to take lots of pics!!

Love Hermana Heacock!

Briaunna opening her Greenie package from home on her first night in Florida

Greenie package selfie

Cuban Food

This is Jose. He is on the right and is the one that got baptized on Sunday.
He was imprisoned in Cuba for 8 years and that is his nephew on the left

Baptism!!

Funny story, so, the people here drive sooo crazy and fast and u-turns are illegal here. Anyways, I drive the car because my companion hasn't gotten permission to drive in the US yet. So, first day I was assigned to drive well, this is the first full day and I was making a u-turn and judged it wrong and hit a telephone pole. Yay! Right?! No it was so scary. It's hard because cars just zip past you and anyways I was just stressed and yeah, hit a pole, but it's all good now. Driving stresses me out here anyways.