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.

This is Berna Ves, he just got confirmed on Sunday and is so awesome and has lots of great stories.

Some days we just go and share a message with him and then he will just tell us stories all day. 

This is Isabelle.  Her family just moved her from Spain and are members.

They are really poor and live in a 2 room house.  The wife is pregnant.

They are so awesome and diligent and always want to feed us.

 Isabelle and I are best friends she is sooo cute! 

Briaunna got to see the Weeks during her lay-over in Dallas!

Raelene wrote:
"She looks great and is excited to get to Florida.  We were able to visit for about 20 minutes or so and she called Carleen on our phone.  I think she needed to see family.  She didn't want to break our hug but I think she is excited too.  It was good for the boys to see her too and know she's going on a mission.  We asked about Mexico and she said it's crazy with police with machine guns and shooting sounds all night.  The boy's eyes got wide."

Brother and Sister Jones sent us a message form the MTC!

"My husband and I are Senior Missionaries at the Mexico City MTC.  During the last six weeks I have grown to love your sweet daughter.  She will be a wonderful missionary!  I miss her already!"

HI!!

            I love you guys sooo much! I cannot believe that it has already been 6 weeks! It goes by so fast! And I know once I get to Florida it will go by even faster! I am so excited to see the Weeks and I really hope I get to call you once I get into Florida.

            Not much has happened this week at all just packing and saying goodbye. We said goodbye to 3 of our Elders yesterday, which was sad. Who knew that in 6 weeks you could get so close to a group of people? It’s crazy. Oh, we got a new district in our zone and one of the Elders is really into archery. So we had a nerd conversation about archery it was great. He says he shoots a prime bow. I have never heard of those but he said they are amazing so maybe dad can look up some info on that.

            Let’s see oh I have to finish packing too, haha ugh, packing! But I am so excited to go to Florida and teach people and meet my new companion. My mission president sent me a letter and I will stay in the mission home that night and start my work on Wednesday!

            I spoke yesterday in church and gave the whole thing in Spanish except for a story from the Ensign. It was 10 min. Haha, you know me, 5 min talks just never were my thing. I miss you guys and cannot wait to tell you all about my adventures next Monday! I just am so happy and excited!! AHH and nervous and all those other feelings of being a missionary! I love you guys so much and I am so thankful for your prayers. I can feel them. They really help me!! I will send you pictures in a sec!

Love you all bunches!! Thanks for everything, miss you guys. Hermana Heacock 

We sent Briaunna a Greenie package to meet her when she arrived in Florida!

Hola Family! 

            I cannot believe that in just four days I will be leaving! Aahhh, soo crazy time has been flying so fast. They said that we will be able to call once we got to the mission home so if I don’t get the chance to call you at the airport I will call you once I land in Florida but, if everything works out I might just get to call you twice. I also get to email you Monday before I leave. I am really sad to be leaving my district, we have gotten so close it’s crazy. I am so excited to teach and get immersed in the culture! It just makes me so happy and excited!!

            So tell Raelene that will meet them at baggage claim and that I cannot wait to see them! :)    

            So cool that you guys went fishing! Haha, that reminds me of when you would take me and Danyon fishing we wouldn’t catch anything either, story of our lives right? But it was still so much fun! Wish I could have been there. And as for you Danyon, I am so proud of you and the choice you made to get your patriarchal blessing. It is an amazing event and I hope you write and share some of the stuff that was said. It’s such a spiritual moment that you will remember for forever. Oooo, fifth grade camp haha yes! So much fun. I hope he takes pictures so I can see there outfits and fun stuff! That was such a good idea with the hats! Too cute! He will have so much fun! 

            Now this part is for Karley, maybe you can forward this part to Aunt Janae for me. 

   "Karley, I am sooo sorry to hear about your legs, I know how devastating and hard it is to be told you cannot play volleyball. For me, I was crushed when I couldn’t run. It’s hard watching others succeed and move on to better things when you’re stuck with crutches but one thing that got me through was staying positive and always smiling. Instead of feeling like woe is me, I decided to try and finds ways to help my team and to still be involved. It helped me so much, it was like doing service. It made me happy to help those I loved succeed. You are a strong girl and I know getting back to normal will be long and hard it defiantly won’t be easy but endure to the end stay positive and don’t give up. You got this. I will be praying for you. And hey, crutches come in handy when brothers are being annoying ;) I believe in you! I love you lots Karley!!"

            Tell Eben and Kerragyn that I am so proud of them for their accomplishments in their sports!! They are doing sooo good!!

             Let’s see, this week has gone by really fast. I finally got bit. The other day I woke up with 4 bites on my face, four on my back and two on my arms. Yup, living the life haha! This week three people in our district had birthdays so our branch president brought us pepi! Yeah, I was so happy. Tasted yummy. In gym today I took out a chunk of my finger bled like crazy nice good raw skin. Haha, what can I say, I am a bit accident prone.

            One of our investigators committed to baptism this week which was awesome! Cannot wait to teach all real investigators! 

             This week I learned of the importance of reading the scriptures. We must read and study them so we can gain personal revelation and testify to our investigators of the power they have and that they too can receive personal revelation. The more we learn about the gospel the more power we gain to fight off the fiery darts of the adversary.  We really need to feast upon the words of Christ (2 Nephi 32:3-5) A quote that I like is "when we want to speak to God we pray, when we want him to speak to us we read the scriptures" His words are spoken through the prophets. He will teach us and our investigators as we listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. The scriptures can give us comfort and uplift us and inspire us. The scriptures aren’t always what you think they are. As we really study them they can become more to us or there meaning can change, “By his words and his example Christ has shown us how to draw closer to him" - Henry B Eyring. Our relationship can grow with our Father in Heaven as we read them. These are his words and teachings meant for us in our day. If the savior were among us today he would teach us from the scriptures as he taught when he walked upon the earth. Robert D Hales said "Search the scriptures for they are they which testify of me. A testimony borne by the Holy Ghost, for by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things" Now how do we study the scriptures? There is no one correct way to study the scriptures. Study is an act of faith on our part believing that we will, and can receive answers and personal revelation. I love this thought, Let it rain from heaven in revelation on what you should study. We need to spend time in the scriptures every day, many answers to difficult questions are found by reading the scriptures. I love this quote “if you want to give light to others you have to glow yourself" - Thomas S. Monson. We also had a district meeting Sunday and one of the questions asked was “why could only Christ preform atonement?” Why, if someone lived their life perfectly, why couldn’t they perform the atonement? And the answer is this, because Christ was called and prepared in the pre earth life to come and atone for our sins. Christ came to earth, he knew his purpose and what he had to do so he lived his life as such to accomplish his purpose. We have gone through the vale and don’t really know our potential and sometimes our purpose but Heavenly Father does, he knows what we can become. If we let him help us. I love all the meetings we have here. The point of this gospel is to make bad men good, good men better and to change human nature. How blessed we are to have the grace of our Heavenly Father. His grace is what gives us strength in our lives it’s what kept our pioneer ancestors going and it is what keeps us going on the right path so that we can return to live with our Father in Heaven again :) Hopefully I can pack as good as mom and get everything to weigh the right amount because now I have books. I love you guys sooo much! Oh how is work going for mom? Thanks for the quotes dad! I love quotes they are my favorite. I love and miss you all sooo much! I will have pictures on Monday!! :)) 

Miss you guys!

Love, Hermana Heacock

One of my Latino friends! His name is Jama! Pretty cool right?! He is awesome!:)