22 January 2014

Dear Family,

This last week has been pretty crazy with zone meetings and everything and this week so far has been crazy too with transfers and Elder Cook (the apostle) is in El Salvador right now and will be speaking to all the missionaries there tomorrow. AWESOME!! We get to enjoy it by satellite but it will still be great! I will tell you what happens next week. :)

So Sister Pocock and I did not have transfers but the other sister in the house, Sister Condie, ended her mission yesterday. It has been hard to see her go because she was one of the first sisters in the field that I met and we were both somewhat new and figuring things out together. We also have gotten to live together for 4.5 months now which has been awesome. She is like the role model missionary and always makes me want to be better. Now she is done and we will all miss her very much. It also leaves me as the oldest sister in the house; the other three are 19 and 20. I also am "supposedly" the most experienced in the mission as well. I still feel like a clueless greenie though. Because of Sister Condie leaving, we worked super hard this week to reach the goal of 150 people in church for her last week. Everyone worked so hard that 160 people ended up coming to church. It was a MIRACLE!!!! In the last six months the attendance of sacrament meeting has increased by 100 people. And almost all of it is because we are working so hard with all the less active members. There are 600 people baptized here in Orange Walk so we still have a lot more lost sheep to go find and bring back to the fold. Right now Sister Pocock and I are working with some families that stopped going to church over 20 years ago. They always let us in and listen to us so we know that there is hope. These people just need to feel a little love and remember their testimony. It has been truly incredible to see Orange Walk grow. There has never ever, in the history of the church, been 160 people at church. That is more than how many we had in my ward in El Salvador and this is a branch! The church is growing and only going up. The Lord has been blessing us with so many tender mercies. And there is so much more work to do. I love the members! There is a recent convert named Carlos that when we got here he never went to church because he was always passed out drunk. Now he has the priesthood, a calling, never drinks, and was reading preach my gospel the other day, preparing to work with us that evening. I love see the growth and changes of these people. I love the investigators that we have right now. The all have challenges but they are progressing and learning more each day. This work is truly amazing! 

I love you all and hope that you are all praying for missionary experiences. They are awesome!!

Sista Heap

PS: to explain the pictures: one is of the homemade face mask that Sister Pocock made the other day (it is made with yogurt); the other is of Sister Price and I with our matching clothes and helmets. We are also the only ones that ever get asked if we are Mennonites. We had fun taking twiners Mennonite pics so I thought I would share one :)