Hola My family!! :)

Gosh, first off, those pictures of the cheesecakes are amazing and I want one so bad. They look sooo good :)) I am so happy I got to talk to you guys too! It was seriously the best day ever! I wish you could have seen me but, being able to see you was such a blessing! Saying goodbye was so hard! I am so thankful for you guys. I am so blessed that this whole time I haven’t been homesick. Some people here have been really homesick and it has made it really hard for them.  Every time I think of home I get a comforting feeling knowing that you guys are alright and that families are eternal and I will be with you guys again :) I loved hearing all your stories and how things are going at home. It gave me such peace just hearing about the regular everyday things you guys have been doing. I am so sad to hear that you guys are sick :(( I pray that you guys will feel better soon.

 On the bright side I have been hardly sick this week. I am pretty sure it was the milk which makes me sad. But, oh well haha! Thanks so much for telling me about your lesson! I really miss your lessons. You do such an amazing job mom! I really loved President Uchtdorf’s talk on Easter. That missionary he talked about was amazing and so humble and a big example to me. I also love, love that quote from President Spencer W. Kimble. It kind of ties into what we talked about in relief society about the desires of our hearts. In Moroni 7:13 it says that which is of god inviteth and enticeth to do good. In Moroni 7:17 it says the devil persuadeth no man to do good. The devil doesn’t give up, he will try and bring us down because we are trying to build up something he wants to destroy. We signed up for this we are going to have hard times. We should always seek for joy and happiness. In D&C 11:13 it says we need to shut off the devil and listen to the spirit who will lift us up and let us know that we are important. We need to strengthen our thoughts. In D&C 6:36 it says look unto me in every thought, doubt not, fear not. Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith :) We need to try and turn off our negative thought and count our blessings. In Philippians 4:13 it says we can do all things through Christ. Feel hopeful because the lord will be with us on our right and on our left. With his help we are capable, we can do what he has asked of us :) Sorry that was a lot of scriptures, but it was such a great lesson. I love Sundays here they are most defiantly my favorite. 

Later that evening we had a devotional by Richard G Scott and it was about prayer. I learned that communication with our Heavenly Father is a sacred privilege. He put us on the earth to succeed not to fail. We can talk to our heavenly father anytime, anywhere. He is our wise loving Heavenly Father and we are his children. There is nothing about us that he does not know. He loves us all perfectly and wants to help. We need to share our deepest feelings with him. We can take all the time we need. We don’t need an appointment. In D&C 8:1-2 and 10-11 it talks about how he is conscious of our needs and can give us all the answers. Answers come through peace, you can sense that upsetting feeling, and when you feel no response. When he answers no it is to help you not make any mistakes. Always trust him. He is our perfect father, he knows what is best for us. Answers may not always come right away but they come. The stronger your faith the greater your character. When you have no desire to pray that’s when you need to pray most. Pray with gratitude and thanksgiving. What God has done in your life is for your eternal good. He will always answer in a way that is best for you. Sometimes our answers are delayed because he wants us to stretch and grow. I just love prayer sooo much! I love being able to talk to my Heavenly Father. He is one of my best friends :) 

      
We have been teaching our investigators this is week and the lessons have been going great! In one of our lessons with our investigator we were teaching him about the Book of Mormon and the importance of it. After reading a part of the introduction of the Book of Mormon, he asked “what does praying with a sincere heart mean?” It was definitely a challenge to explain it to him in Spanish and he sort of understood, haha. So I will have to work on that but, it was still a really good lesson. Every Wednesday we have what is called TRC, it’s kinda like tracting, We teach a bunch of volunteers one after the other the first lesson and our fist investigator that we met with just couldn’t understand me. I knew I was saying the right words and in the right order but every time I talked she would say “No say”. Which means she didn’t know what I was saying but she could understand my companion just fine. I got so frustrated and mad at myself because there was all these things I wanted to say but couldn’t.  I was so close to crying, so I said a little prayer in my heart and right when I finished, my companion turned to me and so I just started to bear my testimony. When I finished she said she could understand me perfectly. I was so grateful for the power of prayer and for the help Heavenly Father gave me in my time of need. 

  Today we got to go to the temple!! Well, the visitor center anyway, haha!  It was soo amazing and cool and I wish you guys could have been there with me! Mexico is super scary though. They drive like crazy people!! They don’t really have lanes, and people just merge when they feel like it and people just walk right out into the middle of the street! There is no speed limits so they drive however fast they want. It’s just crazy and it smells so bad too. But it is also very humbling because these people have hardly anything.  People in some parts of Mexico City live in shacks that are so rundown. We saw a McDonalds on the way there and man I have never wanted fast food so badly! Haha! Right when we land in Texas I am looking for a fast food place in the airport. Haha. 

Speaking of Texas, is Aunt Raelene and Uncle Ryan coming to see me? Oh, and you should tell Danyon and Eben to individually email me! Oh, it’s so cool too that all of Mexico is dirty and gross but right when you see the temple it’s clean and beautiful. It looks so out of place but the temple is sooo pretty here and I want to come back after my mission and go through it. :) A quote I heard this week that I love is "baptism is the gate, the temple is the goal, the members are the key, the doctrine of Christ is the path, and the atonement is the only way" :) So, also when I leave I get to call you guys. It will probably be either when I land in Texas or when I get to the mission home so just be ready! I love you all sooo much!! Thanks so much for all your support and help!! :)) Until next week,

Love Hermana Heacock :) 

Hola Familia!

Gosh, hearing about those cheesecakes makes me miss home! They sound so good! Wish I could eat one. I tell my district all the time how you make the best cheesecakes in the whole world. I am so proud of Eben and Kerragyn both! They are so talented! Tell Eben I command him to do the mile! Tell him that I know he will be awesome at it, it wasn’t my first choice either to begin with but I am so happy I did it! He will be surprised how easy it can and will become if he starts now! Wish I could see them run and play! Oh Danyon I miss him so much! When I show pictures of him to my district they say he looks just like me and is my twin. I miss his funny sense of humor, especially when times get hard, he always knew how to make me laugh. Tell him to keep working hard in school and in sports as well as his job. It is hard to juggle of that but I know he is strong enough to do it!  I wish I could be there to watch some of his games! He is such a basketball stud. Oh American Eagle! Love that place! Tell Danyon to tell everyone HI for me!! 

The investigators I have been talking about, some are actual investigators and some are just role playing so it’s really cool! I can give almost a full lesson in Spanish, I still have some more to learn but I am getting there.  So, this week let’s see where to begin, haha uummm, we got two new investigators so now we have three. It’s hard but I love it and the spirit they have. We have one who is ready for baptism and we will probably set a date this week. 

My first fast Sunday here went great. I thought testimony meeting would be awkward because our branch is small but the spirit was so strong and even though it was all in Spanish and you couldn’t understand what they were saying sometimes, it was probably one of the best testimony meeting I have been to in my whole entire life. It’s weird to think that my first Sunday out in the field will be a fast Sunday. After this week I only have 2 more weeks and two days left! It’s crazy. In Relief Society we learned about testimonies. It was such a good lesson. I learned that a testimony doesn’t come from others, it comes from the Holy Ghost. In Mathew 16:15-17 is one of the shortest but most powerful testimonies. I learned in Moroni 10:4 that to obtain a testimony you must ask if these things are true. In John 7:16-17 you need to pray, read the scriptures every day to obtain and maintain that relationship with Christ. After we obtain that testimony we are on our way to be being converted. What it means to be converted is you offer your whole soul (Omni 1:26) you don´t fight against God (Alma 23:6-8) you serve him with all your heart mind and strength (D&C 4:2). I love talks like that. Then later that night we had a devotional from Jeffery R Holland who is my most favorite ever!! 

Anyways, he gave a great talk about missionary work. The previous dispensations and prophets of old were able to go through failure, torment, and torture because they knew they were laying the ground work for us, that they would be a part of the success we would have because this dispensation that we are in will not fail. If the ancient prophets stood here today they would say that we need to be better than them which is scary because these are our heroes, people we have looked up to since primary! But they are right, we have more missions and we are going to more lands so we need to be the very best missionaries we can be! We need to invest ourselves in this work for our investigators sake, for our sake and for our dispensations sake. We aren’t commanded to leave our mission with 100 converts but we are commanded to come home with one and that one better be ourselves. In order to be the best missionary we can be we need to be converted. If you think about it we are God’s investigators. He wants us to repent just like we want out investigators to repent, he wants us to accept the gospel just like we want our investigators to accept the gospel and so on. After we convert ourselves we need to go out there and astonish people! (Mosiah 27:11-19) the root word for astonish is tondra which means thunder. We need to go out there and be bold and shake people so that when we leave they will be like “who were those amazing missionaries and where did they come from?” Another thing I learned from his devotional is why missionary work is so hard. It’s hard because it was never easy for the savior. Every step was hard for him! The atonement was hard for him. A disciple of Christ walks the way he walks, says what he says and weeps the way he wept. We aren’t going to bleed from every pore or have to carry our own cross but we are going to have to feel some of that pain and hardship when we get rejected or told that our investigators don’t want to continue with the lessons. We need to understand that we are going to struggle because there has never been an easy mission. Salvation is not a cheap experience, a price must be paid and that price is sacrificing everything. We are the future, the saviors on mount Zion :) Sorry, that was so long but I just had to share that with you because I just loved it. Anyways, want to hear something cute? The other day at gym I was standing outside watching a game of Frisbee and over on the tennis courts were two little Latino boys about 5yrs old. They were playing soccer and what not, well after 15 minutes of being outside one of them ran up to me and asked me if I would play with them. So I did and I have to say it was so much fun! It made me miss all my little cousins and sunbeams. They were so good too! I was able to communicate with them pretty well also. I hope I teach a lot of families because I just love kids so much and there sweet spirits:)

   My companion and I have been getting a long great!  I couldn’t have asked for a better one! As for food I still cannot eat the meat and have to use the bathroom every ten minutes but I am hoping that changes once I get back into the states. Thanks for pictures and the Skype account I will send you guys a friend request or add you as a friend today. So I will Skype you guys at 3:30 my time for you it’s like 1.30 your time :) I cannot wait to see all your beautiful faces! I love you all so much! I love being here on a mission and know it is where I need to be! This work is so amazing and so many blessings have come from it! :) See you all in 3 days!! 

Love Hermana Heacock <3 

Hola Mi Familia!

This week has been a bit harder just because i have been sick :(  I think the food is finally catching up to me, haha. I feel like Kevin, I have been on a salad and fruit diet. The meat doesn’t settle with my stomach very well at all. Oh well, other than that, this week has been great!! We did see President Uchtdorf’s talk! It was really inspiring! I loved it so much! We have devotionals on every Sunday and Tuesday and I just love them. The spirit is so strong all the time. Being on a mission is awesome because you’re on a spiritual high all the time and always so happy!

That makes me happy you had the sister missionaries over for dinner and dad would talk the whole time ;) haha. It has been pouring over here too. This week we have had one storm everyday but they are just like Florida’s storms. They only last like 15 minutes then it’s gone, but they are so cool. There is always thunder and lightning but it’s a warm rain so you don’t get cooled off.  It’s fun because they said that when it rains the sisters can take off their shoes and walk in our bare feet, so we go puddle jumping a lot.

Aww, Kavir! I miss him and American Eagle! I am so glad that he reads my blog.  AE sweatshirts are the best just saying ;) I love the pictures of Danyon and Kassidy! They are so cute and Danyon is a stud as always! I hope he had fun!

Yes I can wait for my skirts :) We don’t accept packages anyway. Only ones from mydearmissionary.com. It’s okay. I am doing good with my clothes. Everything is working out perfectly.  Thank you so much for helping me prepare!! Yeah, I bought a laundry bag and yeah, I can buy candy at the store, but it gets old after a while.  I do have to say, they have some awesome cookies and chocolate bars stuffed with Nutella. I really want yogurt. That’s what I have been craving this week. Haha. But the food here is good and they have fresh fruit every day, fresh mangoes which is awesome.

That’s funny that Kerragyn said that. By the time I get back they (Kerragyn and Danyon) will be best friends! Tell Eben that I wish I could be there to watch him run track!! Tell him not to get discouraged and keep trying new events till he finds what fits for him. It took me pretty much my whole first season to find out where I fit and what worked best for me. It just takes time and soon he will be a champ! If he runs like me tell him to do distance! Is he still doing hurdles? He has a natural born talent he just needs to find what he likes best.

Sam said he loved the temple and I just cannot wait to go and see it and tell very one about it!! We get to go to the Mexico temple next week, but it’s closed so we will just be going to the visitor center which people have said is amazing, I am excited. Some missionaries here they said they have to travel a couple days to get to their temple and it just makes me so grateful that we have a temple so close and we can go anytime we want!

This week also has been a good learning experience for me as well. I learned what it means to really love your companion and the blessings that can come from it. The first few days were great but after being with the same person 24/7 for two weeks it can get really hard and soon things start to annoy you. I got frustrated one day with my companion and was kind of holding a grudge. But, the thought “love your companion” kept coming into my mind so, I said a prayer and I am really glad I just let it go. If I didn’t we wouldn’t have been able to have the spiritual experience we had that night. We were planning a lesson for our new investigator (we have two new ones now) and we made some bullet points on what we wanted to teach him. Then as we were doing our personal study, I kept having the thought that we needed to teach the atonement so I was like “okay” and studied that. Well, when we came together to share what we had studied and to work on our lesson more. I told her what I had felt and what revelation I had received and she said she received the same revelation. If we hadn’t forgiven each other we wouldn't have received that revelation and wouldn’t have known what our investigator needed to hear.

The Spanish is coming a long so good! My goal with our new investigators is to not use any notes, which was kind of hard to give up, but I had the coolest experience. A couple days ago when we were teaching and all these words kept coming out of my mouth and I remember sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I am speaking Spanish and it makes sense! Ha-ha. It’s still a little broken but I have learned that as you study and exercise faith that Heavenly Father will bless you and bring all what you studied to your remembrance.

            Last Sunday was our first actual Sunday. The zone that we are in is our branch and we just meet in a seminary class room and have Sacrament. The scary part is that you don’t know who is giving the talk until they announce it. So you have to have one prepared every week just in case they call on you. In Relief Society we learned about disciples and who they are and what they stand for. A disciple means someone who lives according to the teachings of Christ. Jesus called us to be his disciples. Disciples are not people who just follow Christ because everyone else is doing it or because it looks fun they follow Christ because they want to follow with all their heart. In John 6:60-69 it talks about how some of his disciples left him because it was too hard but in verse 63 its says when things get hard the only that will help is the words of the spirit. I have learned that when things get hard we need to stay on target and remember what we are here to do. We need to be a disease, an annoying disease that will not go away.  Fight until the work is done. I have also learned that started are many but enders are few. What you told me mom about how I can always do one more day as stuck with me and has gotten me through the days I felt like giving up, "It is our work and our glory to bring to pass the eternal life of man" I took out the immortal part in that scripture because Christ has already taken care of that part.  It’s my job to work on the eternal part. Elder Christofferson said in a devotional on Tuesday that its better to be trusted then loved and I love that because it’s true. You can love the people you are teaching and they can love you but if they don’t trust you won’t get anywhere.

            I love and miss you guys so much!! Did you get the pictures I sent last week? Miss you! Hope you guys have a good week!! :)) Love Hermana Heacock