Hi Everyone,
Okay these past couple weeks have been crazy!!! we finally have a full P-day today because we aren´t going to the temple today, we only go every other week because they have to bus us out!!
so something cool is our branch (branch 12) we have three districts 12a, 12b, and 12c! so we have a lot of people in our district but his is the last week for 12a and 12b leaves the week after so we will be the old ones in only two weeks!!! crazy!!
I am learning so much, the spanish is really starting to come, the natives speak so fast it is kinda hard to understand but i can pick out words and get the gist of what they are telling us to do or talking about.
so freaken cool thing, our first investigator became our night time teacher!!! his name is Hermano Tapia and he speaks little to no english which is awesome cause we have started just having class in spanish which at times is frustrating when we dont know what the heck he is saying but is good cause it makes us study harder and learn everything quicker. This week we have two new investigators which are profiles played by our morning teacher and our night time teacher. Yesterday was our first time teaching "Ulesies" which is our morning miestro, Hermano Casiano. The lesson we learned was how to begin teaching we got his profile and alot about his life and then we started teaching him in spanish, of course, but we actually did pretty good. and the cool thing that mi miestro did was he brought the oldest district in (12a) who we absolutely LOVE and had them teach us and we teach them. He paired us up with certain missionaries and he asked us to figure out why..... two seconds into the lesson we figured out why. THEY WERE US!!!!! holy cow i was blown away!! seriously they taught exactly like us and had the same characteristics. We were with an elder Fausold and Elder Sigeard. Elder Fausold was me, he was the one really talking asking questions didnt use a paper and would just go crazy and talk. the Elder Sigeard was Hermana Allen, he had his paper of questions was quite and had many good scriptures. THAT IS EXACTLY HOW WE TEACH!!!! it was seriously so cool. so then me and Hermana Allen talked and prayed and decided we needed to help eachother out. So I was going to work with her on making sentences and really getting a conversation going and she was going to work with me on scriptures and alot of vocab that i dont know. haha it is so funny during out lessons I wont know a word and turn to hermana Allen who knows the word and then I will say it and keep going on with my thought then need to the word again and I already forgot it. I will do that the whole lesson until the fin, then finally after the lesson I will remember the word or phrase haha one day i was having trouble with Yo se que which means I know, kinda hard to bare you testimony when you forget how to say that, so funny me and hermana allen were dying cause we were laughing so hard!!
This sunday was the most amazing sunday ever, I wish sundays could have been this way at home. I mean every sunday is kinda stressfull cause we have to write a talk every sunday but this sunday was easy cause it was on the holy ghost and the talks are only 5 minutes long. In english that is not enough time but in spanish it is soooooo hard, it actually terns mostly into spanglish which is nice so the rest of us can understand what they are saying, even the older missionarios tiene hard time and use spaniglish. WELL this sunday me and my companiera had to teach district meeting and our topic was"how to teach about the three kingdoms" and just like spanish I did all the talking and basically taught the lesson. It was cool cause there is a scripture... cant remember the reference (which is sad cause we say it like everyday) that says "first seek yea to obtain my word, then seek yea to share my word" so first we taught them about it. and then asked them why an investigator might need to hear this message and what comfort this would bring them. We got alot of participation cause our district is AWESOME! then I told them a story and told them to pretend I was an investigator learning about this topic, without going into much detail at all i told them about Dale my uncle, who served a mission and all and then commit a large sin that basically landed him in prison. its amazing how the spirit can work because the answer I wanted to hear from them. after I told them the story i ask them what god had in store for him after this life and the Elders went right where I wanted them to. We do not judge them, we dont know the circumstance and God will be the one to truly judge them for there works and were there state of mind was and everything. it was an amazing lesson it went perfectly.
We ended that lesson a little early and we were just going to have study time. Well then our district leader (who is really cute and takes his calling very seriously but it kinda a creeper cause he only stares at my and my companera basically the whole time he is teaching but we love him anyway) stood up and told us we would have a testimony meeting. Well his companero stood up and said well we really dont know much about eachother so lets share and tell why we are here and a little about ourselves this is Elder Cory who i freaken love because we both are really good at volleyball so we can say jokes and laugh and no one else knows why:) mean but its funny.
Anyways so Elder Cory stands up and tells us that the week he turned in his papers his dad told him he was leaving.
Another elder the one that reminds me of travis stood up and told us that his parents did the same thing but he has 4 way young siblings who he didnt want to leave behind, he wanted to stay and help them cause I guess it was a way nasty divorce. (this kid when all of us would be chatting and stuff would study and study hard all the time never really jokes around with us or anything) and he said "forgive me for not goofing around and playing because I left my family when it was so hard and I need to work hard so they can recive the blessings they need right now. Which totally made us all see the reason he studied so much and now if we are too loud or off topic he will ask us to stop and we have no problem with it at all.
everyone ended up baring there testimonies. We found out that Elder Copling (one of my other favorites) was not going to serve a mission, he was going to play college football instead and then his senior year he made a wrong table and then next thing he knew he woke up in an ambulance and was paralyzed form the neck down. for 3 months he was paralized and then was able to regain EVERYTHING BACK but he couldnt play football, he testified that that was god telling him he needed to go on a mission. He loves football but he has a greater mission at this time then that.
That was the strongest I have ever felt the spirit, We had people share why they served there missions late, about there lives families and it brought us so much closer as a district. Seriously I love these people and it is going to be so very hard to leave them in 4 weeks. Good thing that my companiera is coming to Texas with me:) same exact mission baby, we may never been companieras again but we will still see eachother.
Yesterday was a pretty cool day too. so we have two investigators but we only teach one once a day. so mi companera y yo taught with two other missionary pairs in the morning and then at night while the others were teaching "Carlos" our other investigator we had another teacher (who was still learning english) help us and answer our questions and it ended up with him baring is testimony about how lucky we are to here at the CCM. Everyone here is learning or speaks spanish, where at the provo mtc you have all different languages so we can speak spanish to everyone all the time which helps us learn better. it was way cool to hear that from him and he said we will learn the right kind of spanish, he has been to the provo mtc and the teachers there dont teach them the correct pronunciation. haha which we thought was funny so we just worked on that for a while.
Okay guys I just have to say my companiera esta muy muy muy bien. Yo amor ella mucho. She is seriously the greatest, even though she wakes up a half hour early then everyone else and still makes us late to class in the morning (she is a perfectionist and takes forever to get ready) I still love her and we made a goal to be early to every class. Whether she has to wake up early or shower at night whatever she has to do she will do it. We do very good at critiquing eachother after lessons to work on stuff to be better and not taking it personally. We still have the problem of her not understanding me sometimes but we are getting better at it for sure and she will just tap me when she wants me to stop so she can comment which is great cause I would love her to talk more and stuff. But she is great.
I think I already told you this but seriously nuteale and frosted flakes.... they are seriously the best!! mi compenara y yo do a very good job of eating that then running the next day or working out or something so we dont get fat. I actually havent really noticed if I have lost or gained weight so I think I am either maintaining or losing.
Our district is awesome we stick together all the time. During meals we arent allowed to sit with elders at the same table but we always sit at the table next to them, our district LOVES to play volleyball so every gym time we play volleyball together as a district and actually the people that dont really play are getting alot better. And most of all we LOVE TO SING. I have not sang so much since i did plays when I was what 12 or 13. I think we sing more now. We sing hymns in spanish, do cool arrangments and 3 part harmony the whole works we have a very talented group of missionaries and I think we are singing in a devotional soon. Elder Copling had his birthday sunday and he always asked the Hermanas to sing for him so we arranged a piece just for him (spanish hymn of course) and sand it for him for his birthday. and his favorite food is McDonalds (EEWWWW) so we drew a bigMac, Happymeal box, a drink, and papas fritas, y made him a toy(al drawn on paper) and on the back wrote him a little note telling him we loved him and then told him that on his birthday we wanted to get him his favorite meal and gave it to him. he wrote us all notes later telling us that that meant more to him then we know. it was awesome. Seriously these Elders are incredible and I love them. The Hermanas too and the cool thing is almost all of them are from Utah so we can totally have a reunion. Seriously I love them.
the food is getting so weird... they put beans on EVERYTHING, and they try and make american stuff, like spaghetti with meat sauce. well that turned into like sloppy joe meat on spaghetti. STAY AWAY FROM THE JELLO!!!! oh my gosh we have this game we play called what are the odds which i will explain in a minute but I lost and had to eat a whole thing of jello..... I was dry heaving for like an hour.... so gross, I also had to eat this juice which was super super sweat with fruitloops and eat the whole thing, but I am proud to say I finished both of them!!!
Okay so this is "What are the Odds".
So you basically dare someone to something and ask them okay what are the odds and then they choose a scale 1-10 the max if 1-15.
for example me and elder Copling were playing this game and I said
"what are the odds that you wear your left shoe on your right hand for the rest of the night?" (we had like an hour of study and then an hour of tall in the computer lab... and he is right handed)
and he said "1-10" so we each pick a number and on a count of three we both say our numbers and if the number is the same he has to do the odd. So i have never won before, but I totally won and it was so funny. haha Hermana Fisi´iahi lost at "what are the odds" and had to do her tall login on the computer with her nose!! seriously so much fun!!
me and my district have way to much fun sometimes but we all help eachother out when we need it. Seriously love them.
I love you so much!!
We talked about stress this week in a class we call stress management, cause honestly being out here is so stressfull sometimes but we actually do really really well with our stress. And we found the stress to be so good, it is motivation to do better learn more and really plan out our day, if we dont plan we are in big trouble, that is the biggest thing I have learned so far is planning is key to success. Planning your day, planning lessons, planning what to study and when is so vital!
Another thing we learned this week is to be ready for anything, you may plan a great lesson but if the spirit tells you to go somewhere else be prepared to go there! We learned that with our new investigator and the lord will bless you to know where to go. Even if you dont know what to teach with your investigator and you plan and prepare and pray anyways the lord will bless you to teach what you need to teach, it is truely incredible.
So in class we do examples of teaching so our miestro will choose one of us to be the investigator and we get a profile of there life and then have to act out everything the way we would if we were that person. I got this profile and it was of this mom that had 4 children and two had downsindrom. It is amazing how much the spirit can touch you even though I am not her you can really take to on there emotions and there feelings and before I knew it the lesson he was teaching me made me bawl like a baby as if I were here and I couldnt help but ask him to know more. Our investigators right now might not be "real" but they are and the spirit is real and really moves them to were they cant help but accept you invitation to baptism or to hear more. It really was a cool experience to be in that situation and feel that.
I am loving every minute of being here and I want to learn more and grow more everyday the stress yeah it sucks it is nothing like the stress i have ever felt before but like I said it is good stress amazing stress and it is spiritual stress. I have so much more to learn and I feel like 4 more weeks isnt enough time so we are all working as hard as we can personally as compananionships and as a district to learn as much as we can.
I love this gospel it has shown me many miracles already, even though we cant speak the spanish language we can speak the universal language of love, through the spirit. our relief society meeting was all about that Elder Uckdorf gave a talk about it and we related it to speaking the language and speaking through the spirit. Literally we must sound like cavemen to our investigators but I can speak clearly through the feelings of the spirit. This work is so true and so important. We cant wait to get out there and share but we have much to learn before we can get out there.
Learning to bare your testimony at anytime about anything is so important. We do it all the time in lessons, while we are preparing lessons, while we are learning ALL THE TIME!! baring your testimony to an investigator is the best way to invite the spirit (other then prayer) If you let them feel the spirit they will want to meet with you again cause they want what you have, they want that peace and that calmness that you cant receive anywhere else.
I love the feeling of the spirit and the comfort it brings, I am still praying like crazy!!! I love it and I have completely felt the lords hand in my life. I love this gospel, Yo se que la iglesia es verdad, Yo se que nosotros tienemos a profeta verdad en la tierra, yo se que el libro de mormon es la palabras de Dios. Yo se que mi Padre Celestial amor me.
okay so back to the nity gritty.
DAD: I would love for you to email me your conversion story, and how you got on your mission and how it has effect your life.
Mom: basically the same thing, why did you serve a mission and the whole story and how it has effect your life.
and if you can, I want Grandpa Heckels conversion story!!
I know a little bit about both but I really would love it written down in your words from you point of view. Also share any cool stories of miracles, prayers being answered and more. these stories work really well for our investigators and they love to hear them and also they help with our lessons we teach to our districts.
BOYS!!! I love and miss you guys so much, being with these elders here has shown me that EVERYONE OF YOU can serve a mission and be successful while doing it. all the brothers have characteristics that remind me of all of you. its crazy how different we all are but one thing unites us and that is the gospel and our testimony of it. build your testimony now!! One thing that all of the brothers have in common was they went through a time when they were not as strong as they wanted to be in the church and they went through things that brought them to there lowest and they knew they were supposed to serve..... Don´t give satan that oportunidad to bring you to your lowest, build you testimony now!!! Read your scriptures and pray and pray often. These 18 year old boys mixed with the spirit and testimony of this gospel become Men. They have changed before my very eyes and it is incredible. We had a talk yesterday about the things we used to watch, listen to, GAMES THEY USED TO PLAY, and how it would really really take them away from the spirit. a couple of guys were some real gamers and they said they waisted so much time doing that and they wished they would have dont other things. on you mission you dont have anything like that and the first week they had a hard time not having that stuff and reading and studying. I promise you guys that if you learn to love the gospel you will want to learn more about it, because we seek after things we love. I want you guys to really thing about what it means to be IN THE WORLD, but not OF THE WORLD. While I have been at the MTC i have not once thought about the latest song, movie, tv show, politics nothing. Because I know through the gospel of jesus christ I can be truly happy and whole and protected. I love you guys and I am not saying that you shouldnt play games just be attention to what you are feeling while you play the games or listen to the songs. I love you and I gotta run.
I might be on later tonight:) love you!!
Love, Hermana Heckel
so I have the best comp ever and our cameras share the same cord!! so here comes some pictures:) ohhhhh yeah!!!
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