Dear Family!!

 Hola!! I know my goodness five months have gone by pretty fast and pretty soon I will reach my 6 month mark and have a year left! It is going by way to fast!!  

That missionary story was awesome!! I am so proud of you and Eben!! Eben way to be a missionary!!! I am sure Donavan was so happy that you decided to come and that you shared some of your testimony and just became his friend. I am sure that the sister missionaries really appreciated it!!  It’s so hard to find good members sometimes to help with investigators and find members who are willing to help too so it makes me so happy that you guys went and helped and became friends with them!!! I am sure the dad was so happy as well.

You guys may not know this, but we as missionaries, every time we find a new investigator we pray about what member would work best with the investigator and so I know they prayed and I know that Heavenly Father told them that you two would be the best members for them. That was such an awesome idea for an activity dad!!!! It sounded like so much fun!! That is awesome that Donavan and his dad came and he brought a friend! You will have to keep me updated on them!! Keep helping them and sharing your testimony and most important being there friends! That’s what investigators really need is friends. Sometimes we forget how scary or don't know how scary coming to church the first time can be and how weird and out of place they might feel. But I am so happy and proud of you and Eben!!! Thanks for being missionaries!!! :)))))

         So this week we got a new mission leader!!! Yay!! He and his wife are awesome! They are recently married and are the best! He really tries to help us and has such a love for missionary work and his wife is so sweet!!! She loves coming out with us!! We are so excited for this change and the new energy that we have now in our ward!

This week we met with Elizabeth and followed up to see if she had talked with her boyfriend about the law of chastity and she said that she did and that he agreed with her and said he would support her which is amazing!! So we talked a little bit about the law of chastity and how it will really bless her life. We then asked her how she felt about baptism and she said that she wants to be baptized and that she is ready!! She set herself with a date!! She will be getting baptized on the 21!! We were so happy! She even said her boyfriend wants to come and be at the baptism! :) So the next day to celebrate, she invited us over to her house for a Nicaraguan breakfast which was amazing! I will send pics of that. Then we cleaned her house for her. She wasn't happy because she invited us over to eat and not clean but we did it anyways because we really wanted to serve her. It was so much fun! We love her to death!! We are so excited for her and what Heavenly Father has in store for her. :)

The next cool experience that happened this week was while we were harvesting. We found this lady named Ricea. She is married and has a four year old. She immediately invited us in and we said a prayer with her and her husband. Her husband left afterward but she was started crying and said she felt the spirit so strong!! She also wanted to know about the church. The next day we came back and taught the restoration and it was the most powerful restoration lesson ever!! We watched the restoration video with her and the spirit was pretty strong. We then showed her and gave her a Book of Mormon. She was a little bit hesitant about it and we could feel the spirit slipping as we tried our best to explain that we believe in the Book of Mormon and the bible. It was hard because we had a hard time understanding each other’s Spanish. As I felt like this lesson wasn't going to end well, I felt the prompting that I needed to bear my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I kind of ignored it because my companion was in the middle of talking but it became really strong to where I got butterflies. So I spoke up and asked if I could share my testimony with her on the Book of Mormon. My tired companion looked at me, relieved that I was going to talk now. I said maybe two words and I started crying. The spirit overwhelmed me as I told her how much love I had for the Book of Mormon and how I knew it was true and how she is a child of God. By the end she was crying too. She said that she couldn't really understand me but she felt my testimony really strong that whatever I was saying must be true. She then told us that she knew we were angles sent there to help her. She said her and her husband have been having a lot of problems lately but ever since we came, her and her husband aren't fighting anymore and that she feels peace in her house. She then said that she would read the Book of Mormon for sure. We walked out of that lesson on air. And then it gets better. On Sunday she came to church! She said she liked it! It was great! We are excited to teach her more this week!! Ricea is such a blessing!

So some funny stuff that happened this week. When we were harvesting, I was asking in Spanish to this lady that we just prayed with if we could come back and share a short message with her. Well the word in Spanish for short or small is chaquita (not sure how to spell it but that's close) and the Spanish people apparently thought it would be funny to make the word for fat which is gortita. Sounds the same as small so as I was asking this lady if we could come back and share a small message with her about Jesus Christ I accidently said, could we come back and share a fat message with you about Jesus Christ. My comp dies laughing and the lady was confused. It took me a second to realize what I said. It was embarrassing. So now me and my comp joke around about that all the time. "Hi I am Sister Heacock. Can I share a fat message with you about Jesus Christ?" Super good right? haha

Well I hope you guys have an amazing week. Remember to smile!!

            Love,

Hermana Heacock!!  

Dear Family!! :))

This week was a great week! It had its ups and downs but I was able to learn a lot. Elizabeth had her interview for baptism on Wednesday and confessed to a Law of Chasity problem, so we are helping her with that and hopefully soon she will be able to get this fixed and be baptized. We really love her and are so excited for her! Other than that we haven't gotten a new investigators this week which was the downside, but we know that there are people out there that Heavenly Father is preparing for us right now to find this week :)

This week i really learned about enduring to the end. In 1 Cor. 9:24-27 it talks about a race and how life is a race. This reminded me of an EFY councilor who told us we need to sprint to the finish line. If we have a goal in mind we are unstoppable and can make it to the end. We need to constantly train ourselves so we can finish our strongest. We are all qualified for this work but sometimes we let ourselves get in the way.

I read a story about this swimmer. She was really famous and has swam 20-40 miles before. She was training for the English Channel race, which was 21 miles. Easy, she has swam that many miles lots of times. As she was racing, the it became foggy and she couldn't see in front of her. After some time, she called it quits only to find out she was 4 miles from the finish line she was angry and decided to try again the next year. She did but she called it quits early again only to find out she was only 2 miles away from the finish line. Many people asked her what happened. She had swam 20 miles before. What was different? She said when she trained she is used to having her dad right beside her cheering her on and telling her how many miles she had left to but when she was racing she didn't have that so she had a hard time enduring to the end.

            I can totally relate to this because when I first came out here, it was so hard because I was so used to having you guys cheering me on, telling me where to go what I needed to do and how far I was from the finish line, but being out here on my own it was foggy and sometimes calling it quits didn't seem like a bad idea. Then I would remember our missionary purpose which is to help others endure to the end. I never realized how important those four words were. Enduring to the end.  Enduring helps you obtain hope and feel closer to your Heavenly Father. You allow yourself to grow and to change. It’s amazing. Enduring to the end isn't easy but it makes our blessing that we receive after a long trial worth it :)

I wish I had crazy stories to tell you, but nothing to crazy has happened lately. The only one i can think of is the other night while I was sleeping, I heard this rattle noise like something was in our window. I woke up and just laid in my bed frozen. I kept hearing something move around in our window which is just above our beds. I laid awake for an hour and finally when the alarm went off I hurried and switched on the light and right next to my bed was a HUGE cockroach!!! It was so gross I screamed and threw my pillow at my companion and woke her up. She wasn't too happy until I showed her the cockroach. She screamed and got the poison and we squirted him with it until he was dead. After that we were wide awake and ready for the day. It was crazy. But that's it really. My Spanish is getting a lot better! It’s such a nice feeling now that I can understand people :) Not much is happening in Florida. It’s still hot and rainy and tropical! Thanks so much for all your prayers!!

I hope you guys have an amazing week!!! i love and miss you guys so much!! 

Herman Heacock 

Me and Sister Walker. Blue and green!! haha you can tell what are favorite colors are

Mi Familia!!

  Sister Walker is from Idaho and we were both born in Rexburg a couple months a part. Her parents also went to Ricks. She is so sweet and loves serving other and is really positive. Our first night together we stayed up until midnight just talking and laughing. We clicked so fast it’s like she is my older sister. :) She is the middle of five and has a cute sister Danyon might like hahah jk, but anyways she is awesome and I hope I get to stay with her longer then a transfer. :) 

My 4"11 companion, Sister Walker

            This last week was crazy. We had to bike the last four days of the month and don't tell mom, buuuttt I got burnt pretty bad this time. I forgot to put sunscreen on my back and so my back got scorched. I got a 2nd degree burn and it blistered bad, but luckily my comp had lavender oil and put that on my back as well as apple cider vinegar to take out the heat. So it’s healed, just still hurts. I couldn't sleep for a long time but now my neck is black. It’s pretty cool but don't worry I will remember next time about the sunscreen lol.

My back after getting scorched....... you can kinda see the blisters :(

My watch Tan Line

           

This week we have continued to teach Elizabeth. I don't know if I told you guys about her but she is from Nicaragua and lived with sister missionaries for a year and has had all the lessons and has tons of friends who are Mormon. She is basically Mormon but is afraid of committing to baptism so we have been re-teaching her  the lessons and she told us the other day that she wants to be baptized. So this week we have her already for baptism! It’s amazing. I love her so much. She has such a strong testimony and light up every time she talks about it :)) That was a big blessing this week as we are still struggling for investigators

As I have been studying about hope I learned that having a positive attitude plays a big role in gaining hope. Research shows that people who are hopeful preserver when barriers arise, are successful in finding benefits from adversity. Hope is more than an attitude, it is an orientation of the spirit toward God. M Russell Ballard said regardless of how desperate things seem or how desperate they may yet become, you can always hope, always. A way to cultivate that hope is to trust in God. Trusting in God is to have assurance that Gods furious winds can and will always blow us towards the Promised Land. Rather than ask why we are faced with trials, we generally experience better outcomes when we concentrate our efforts to study God’s plan for our happiness. Align our lives with His will and repent as necessary and follow his footsteps.

In D&C 121:45 it says let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly. One way we can garnish our thoughts is by counting our blessings and accentuating the positive. As we do this our confidence will wax strong in the presence of God. A quote I found that I like is "Hope is a precious principle by which to live. Hope grows out of faith and meaning and purpose to all that we do. It can even give us peaceful assurance we need to live happily in a world that is ripe with iniquity, calamity and in justices. The Savior, towards the end of his ministry, offered this reassuring hope to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

  I love hope more and more as I learn and study about it. I have learned in this time to be humble to trust in the lord and his own timetable and just to talk to everyone. God does have a plan for his children and for me. I have a strong testimony about just trusting in him and taking that leap of faith. I have seen the blessings of a strong unity in our companionship and I am happy. When you trust in Heavenly Father this huge burden is lifted from you!! It’s such a great feeling. :)

            Sorry I didn't email on Monday, since it was Labor Day they made it a working Monday.  Thanks so much for the stories about my great grandparents!! Their stories are so amazing!! I love that I have a grandpa named Alma Helamen! So awesome. Anyways I hope you guys have an amazing week!! I love and miss you all so much!!! Thanks for all your prayer and support!!!

            I love you all!!!!

Cuban Food!

Herman Heacock

​Qe went out for Sister Walker's bday with the other sisters that live with us to a Cuban breakfast buffet so much fun and sooo good!! :)