12 November 2013

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD (yesterday)!!!!!! I hope it was a good one! I was telling the senior missionaries about your birthday. Elder Galvez assured me that you are still young and have many years ahead of you. (He is 70) haha!!

This has been a kind of tough week. My companion got a horrible head flu that just wiped her out. She couldn't hardly speak for days without coughing up a lung. On top of that it has rained cats and dogs this week. I know I say that every week but this week it was even more. I couldn't take Sister Rodriguez out it the rain but none of the members wanted to do divisions with me because of the rain. We were able to work a few days but my companion could not talk so I got to teach all of the lessons and make all of the decisions. I have felt pretty alone all week. It is not Sister R's fault either, it is just bad luck. Or maybe my Heavenly Father is trying to teach me to have more confidence in myself. I am back to the "Fake it til you make it" mentality. But thankfully my companion is back to normal, just in time to do divisions with the sister leaders this week. Once the divisions are over I am going to be so happy to just be able to work normally again!

But this week on Sunday it rained literally all day! I thought that no one was going to go to church but we still had 70. One of our investigators, Gina, who we have not been able to get to go to church, finally went, in the rain and all! That was a tender mercy. She is super positive and wants to be baptized. She is 18 years old and the only member of her family that is not a member. Everyone was baptized a long time ago but went inactive. We found her mom and brought her back to teach. Meanwhile we have been teaching Gina. I just love to bring people back to church and see the light that comes back into their lives! And this helps so much with the missionary work because they now have a renewed testimony of the gospel that they can share with others. The sister in Sensunapan that we brought back to church and baptized her husband, Ana Magana, emails me every week. She sent me pictures this week of the baptism of her neighbor that she invited to church. AWESOME!!! Things like that make it all worth it! I love this gospel and I know it is true. I want others to feel this love and have all the wonderful blessing that come from living the gospel. I want others to taste incredible flavor of the Book of Mormon and that I do. So for all of you who read my silly email each week: Don't waste of take for granted what you have in your hands. Use it. Experience it. Love it. and Share it!

I love you all so much and hope all is well in the real world!

Hermana Heap

5 November 2013

Dear Family,

Well, I honestly feel like I just wrote yesterday and that there really isn't much to say. We have worked like normal this week. We are really struggling right now to find new people to teach, especially families and priesthood. We want to help Orange Walk to grow so we need more priesthood. It is a real challenge though because even so many of the men who are members still have a challenge with drinking alcohol. Alcohol is honestly EVERYWHERE here. You see kids in the street drinking. Weed is smoked on the school play grounds. It is just sad. The men have more of a problem with. It is one of the biggest things holding back the church from growing here. It is crazy for me to think that before my mission I had never seen a drunk person.....now I have seen WAY too many. I thought that El Salvador was bad but Belize is just sad! But we are going to keep fighting against it!

 So teaching the songs in primary is going okay. We have started to sing some fun songs to get the wiggles out. But I think I am getting too old to sing Do As I'm Doing jumping up and down. It just about kills me every time. ha! We have now started working on Christmas songs. It just all feels so wrong to be because everything is still green, hot, and humid. How can it be getting close to Christmas? I love how green it is here but I miss the seasons. We are supposedly getting to the end of the rainy season and it is supposedly cooling off. Everything just feels hot and humid always.

 

This was one of the roads in my area this week. Each day that is rained it just got worse and worse! And we have to use this street every day!

Well sorry that this email is so short and lame. Hopefully something exciting happens this next week. I love hearing from all of you. I hope your week goes well. I love you all!!

Hermana Heap

 

30 October 2013

Well dear family, I wish that I could send you some of this rain because we are DROWNING! It has rained everyday this passed week. And when I say rained, I mean poured! It has made the work pretty challenging because no one wants to walk to church in the rain or even let anyone inside there house when there is rain. Many of the streets in my area are dirt or filled with pot holes. This mean a TON OF MUD!! I should have taken a picture so that you could picture it better but I forgot. Luckily we have bikes and the bikes have finders to help us stay out of the mud a little bit. But riding in the mud takes every muscle in my body and every ounce of energy that I have. Needless to say, I have been pretty tired and muddy this week.

President and Sister Hintze came to Orange Walk this week to do a branch activity and they brought my birthday package!!!! It was a wonderful late birthday. Thank you to the Eagar folk for sending it. Mom and Dad, the vacuum packed brownies made it intact and delicious! I was pretty impressed and delighted to taste a little something from home. I have been enjoying all the candy that Cort and Sammy picked out for me and the delicious home made jerky from Holly and her family. Thanks so much! I also loved the letters. There is just nothing like getting a package and letters from home. haha. and speaking of birthdays....HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKE SMITH! I know it already passed but I hope it was a great one!

The transfers were this week and I for once did not have any changes in area or companion. I was quite happy because I love Orange Walk! Yesterday I was studying the plan of salvation to teach it to one of our investigators. I felt the spirit so strongly as I studied about our purpose here on the earth and about the atonement. I know that God has make such a wonderful plan for us. I know that Jesus Christ is the essential part of this plan. Without him, everything would be hopeless and impossible. Each and everyone of us needs our Savior so much. I just wish that I could help these people understand that better. There is so much more to this life than our job, school, the next movie coming out, our next vacation, and what we are going to eat for dinner. But these are the good things that fill out minds to the point that we don't have room for the better and best things in life, like picking up the Book of Mormon to read for a few minutes, taking the time to kneel down and say a truly heart-filled prayer, or setting a simple goal to say something nice to someone today. They are small things but they are the important things that are going to impact our happiness here and for the eternity. I love this gospel! I know with all my heart that it is true!

I love you all and hope all is well. Have a great week!

Hermana Heap

22 October 2013

Happy Birthday Claire! I am not sure if she will read this but I hope she has a great day!

Manuel is the one with white hair.

Another week has flown by. This one was a good week. We were able to work with very few interruptions. I love weeks like that. We had our first Orange Walk 3 baptism on Saturday. A little old man named Manuel Aguierre was baptized. That was super exciting. He was one of those people who was just prepared to make changes in his life. He had been drinking coffee and when we taught him the word of wisdom he accepted it instantly. We asked if he would stop drinking coffee and he said sure and that is would be easy. From that day, he hasn't had any more coffee. Super Prepared! What a blessing!!

On Wednesday we were working with the relief society president, visiting some people. We started teaching this man that we had contacted the week before named William Floors. We didn't get very far into the lesson when I started to have to really strain to understand what William was saying. I would understand about 3 words in 10. I didn't know if it was just a super hard accent to understand or if he was speaking in Creol. I looked at my companion, hoping to find help, but she was even more lost than I was. There was a point in the lesson that I told the relief society president that I didn't understand. She translated a little bit for us into spanish. That was honestly one of the longest, most uncomfortable lessons that I have ever been in! Afterwards the sister with us told us that he had been speaking in almost pure Creol. Con razon no entendi casi nada! Thank goodness we had someone that could understand. I don't know what we would have done if she hadn't had have been there.

Yesterday I was waiting for my companion to finish getting ready and was thinking about what I wanted to eat for lunch. As I tried to think of something that sounded good I realized that I haven't eaten anything here in Belize that I really want to eat another time. I just don't enjoy the food here. For the first time in my mission I had the desire to cook. I went to the store and bought all the stuff for hamburger pie. It is something simple but I can't really remember all of the food that I love from home. And I don't have any recipes. But I just miss really and healthy food!

 In September when we got to Orange Walk the attendance was at about 70 each week. The Elder that got here about a month before us said that it had recently been at about 50. This week the Orange Walk attendance was 107 people!! It has almost doubled in the last three months!!! How very exciting! It is so exciting to see the less actives that we visit come back to church on their own. I honestly think that that is one of the thing that I have loved most in my mission, working with the "lost sheep". We as members really have so much power to help these people feel God's love.

 I love you all!! I hope all is well!

 Hermana Heap

Oh and I forgot to mention, my new address for LETTER ONLY is: PO Box 1123 Belize City, Belize. I have heard that the customs here are crazy expensive so it is still recommende​d to send the packages to El Salvador

 

15 October 2013

Dear Family,


My beloved bike!

Once again, thank you for the birthday love. Now I am twenty three and feel old. haha. My companion is 21 and one of the other sisters that we live with is 19. Yikes! Thankfully the other sister with us is 24 so I am not quite the oldest. haha. Well It was all going to work out perfectly because President and Sister Hintze came to Belize this week for a multizone conference and they always bring the mail with them. I was just sure that I was going to get your package Mom. Even when I greeting Sister Hintze she whispered in my ear that I had mail. I was pumped. I sat through the whole conference wondering what was in the package with a big smile on my face. Then I received my mail: one letter and one dearelder. I love mail but I had gotten my hopes up. It turns out that El Salvador's post office has been on strike for the last two weeks. I am sure that my package has arrived and is just waiting for my in a post office in El Salvador collecting dust. what a bummer! Oh well. The Hintzes will be coming back in two weeks so maybe I will end up celebrating on Jake Smith's birthday this year. haha. My birthday was quite a normal day. My companion made me a card and gave me some awesome earrings. (How does she know me so well already?!) and Sister Condie and Sister Price made me a pancake and egg breakfast. Elder and Sister Galvez (the senior couple here in Orange Walk) made me a birthday dinner of pork chops, mexican rice, beans, tortillas, and a strawberry cake. It was great! I still missed Mom's food and the brownies that I was craving but I got the next best thing. :) I hope the sister missionaries enjoyed my birthday dinner. :D

Ruins at Corozal

 

Yesterday we went to Corozal, a town nearly on the Mexican border, to see this random ruin Mayan temple in the middle of the the town. It was small but cool. We also got to see the Ocean.

 

 I would say the beach but there is no sand here, just pavement and then water. I feel like I have been all over Belize this week. We went to Belmopan and Cayo for the conferences and I stayed the night and worked a little bit in a villiage on the Guatemala border called Succotz. Southern Belize has a lot more trees and hills. It is definitely pretty but I was very happy to get back to good old Orange Walk. I love my area. Sometimes I wish that I could stay there until I end my mission. haha. We will see.

Well I will try to send a few photos. I love you all!!

Hermana Heap

8 October 2013

Wasn't General Conference just wonderful?! I loved it so much! And it was great to get to hear it in English. haha. This weekend was crazy because we were trying like crazy to bring people to the different sessions of conference. I felt like I rode my bike to Pinetop again. :) My legs were wet noodles at the end of the day. haha. But the conference was great. I think my favorite talk was by the Sister from the young woman's presidency about true conversion. It is always a question that I am asking myself. Am I truly converted? Will something come along in life to knock me off the path? I sure hope not but it is hard to be sure. But she taught a lot of great stuff about how to become converted and what are the signs of conversion. They also talked a lot about missionary work and the members....hint hint. haha. It was not a very subtle message at all. We all have to step up to the plate. We brought investigators to the Sunday morning session. We walked in a little late just in time to hear the firm rebuke of Elder Oaks about the law of chastity.....our investigator is a mother with three teenagers that is not married. gulp. I just prayed that the spirit was there confirming the importance of the doctrine. Later that day we visited this sister and her three sons and the thirteen year old asked us right out if what his parents are doing is a sin......umm Yesssss! haha Oh the fun situations that a missionary finds herself in! Oh, many people have asked so I should probably clarify. My p day is still on Monday but we write home on Tuesday or Wednesday. We have to be together with our zone to write so each week when we travel to Belize City for zone meetings we write home right afterward. We as missionaries are a lot more spread out here in Belize than we were in El Salvador. It makes for a lot more time and money spent on buses. Tomorrow we have zone conferences in San Ignacio. We have to catch a bus at 4am in order to get there in time. yikes! I will probably be studying the back of my eyelids during zone conference. ha! Well I better go. I love you all. Thank you for all the birthday cheer that I have already received. Take care! Hermana Heap

 

 

2 October 2013

Wow where did September go?! It feels like it just started last week but when I think about it.....a lot has happen in September. haha! Time is crazy. Well this week we got our bikes and I have decided that all of my skirts are not the right kind of skirts to ride bikes in. Or maybe no kind of skirt is good to ride bikes in. haha! I do my best to keep myself covered but it is honestly a lost cause sometimes. It has been a little drier this week. We only got one day of rain but just that brought out even more mosquitos than there already are. YIKES! I honestly am just waiting for the day that I get dengue because I feel like it is just inevitable. But for now I am healthy, no worries.

I am slowly but surely getting to know Orange Walk and the members better. It is starting to feel more like home. I am starting to understand the english better too. Even though they "speak english" it is super hard to understand because of their accent and bad grammer. haha. Sister Price and I taught the primary I Feel My Savior's Love on Sunday. That was interesting. Some kids pay attention, others are just too young, and others just refuse. Oh the joys of the primary. The really liked head shoulders knees and toes though. :) We were able to bring six investigators to church this week. That is a record for me! Four of them are youth that are siblings but one of them invited his friend to go with him. These kids are pretty cool and really liked to church. We are hoping to help them accept a baptismal date and to get the permission of their dad. Their family is weird....the oldest child is 19 and the dad's girlfriend is 21 and they already have two kids together. Yuck! Sister Rodriguez and I were left a little dumb founded when we found out. ha! Oh the crazy things that you see in the mission.

Well, Mel asked for a few details. The food here consists of a lot of rice and beans and beans and rice. Those two things are actually different. They eat a lot of stewed chicken, fried chicken, shredded chicken, and more chicken. They eat tacos for breakfast. And fruits and vegetables are SUPER expensive so almost no one eats them. There are a ton of authentic chinese food around because there are a lot of Chinese people here. They own almost all the little stores and every corner and almost all the restuarants in town. My favorite part about the food here is the tortillas. They have real and delicious flour tortillas. I never have to eat super heavy and thick corn tortillas....HURRAY!!!! haha. But I am dying from the lack of fruits and veggies. If any one is feeling charitable, I would love any type of dried or preserved fruit or vegetable that I could get. :)

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! to Bonnie and Clif. Thank you for all the pictures and telling me all about it. I have been thinking about Madison all week, wondering which day she was born. I am so happy to hear that everything went well and to see my new niece.

Well I have to go. Thank you for all the emails. I love hearing from you guys. And General Conference is this weekend!!!! I am SO excited!!! I hope you will all watch it because it is SO important. I know that Thomas S Monson is a true prophet and we are so very blessed to have a prophet to lead and guide us today!

I love you all!

Sista Heap

Cleaning the church with Hermana Rodriguiz