Las Palmeras

Here I am in my new ward!  It was very strange to change areas for the first time but what I can tell, I think I will enjoy it here.  I am in a city called Santa Tecla which is right next to San Salvador and we work in a ward called Las Palmeras.  My new companion is Hermana Schmidt who is a real nurse.  The schedule of the nurse is a little different.  On Mondays we have to go to the mission office and work their most of the day.  Every other day she is ¨on call¨ till 9:30 in the morning and so we start studying at 9:30 until after lunch and so we leave the house at 1 every day.  This week we really haven´t done much because on Tuesday we went to the office to welcome in the new people to the mission and the new sisters went to work with us and slept at our house.  We got two new sisters and they are both from the other mission in El Salvador.  They were not very friendly and one of them would never smile.  Then on Wednesday we went to the new people meeting where the new people meet their trainers.  Thursday we had multizona and then on Friday we had our weekly planning session.  And today is pday.  I feel like I haven´t done anything all week! But I need to remember that this is my new calling to learn how to be in charge of health because in 3 months I am going to be in charge!  It really scares me and I have heard so many health stories of what has happened in the last 6 months in the mission.  I came to the conclusion that I need to study twice as hard so that I can have faith enough that no one will get hurt.  I think it is a good plan.  And then if anyone gets sick, I can just read them a scripture and they will magically be healed.

So the new ward is great (at least what I know about).  The attendance is usually around 180 each sunday!  That is 100 more people than the wards in Chalchuapa.  We share a house with 2 other sisters that work in the same ward.  The other sisters are both latinas and they are both really cute and little.  I have met some people in the ward and they all seem really nice.  And the weirdest thing off all is that people have musical talent here.  The ward actually has a little orchestra that practices together and they also have a ward member teach english classes every day.  And they have ward missionaries.  I couldn´t believe that I am in a functioning ward.  I am really excited to be here and to work with people that I can relate to more.  And after this week we won´t have to go to meetings so that we can work a lot more.

I don´t feel like I have too much more to say because I just wrote on Monday.  We are going to work hard because Hermana Schmidt only has 2 cambios left and we want her to leave with a bang.  Oh, one thing about her is that her Spanish is terrible and so sometimes she has been talking and the people don´t understand her and so she has to ask me to explain.  It makes me laugh and it is good because she doesn´t really care if her spanish is bad.  But so many people have told me that my spanish is excellent.  I know it isn´t but it is nice of them to say so.  I think that I am going to enjoy my time here but it is going to take time to get used to the nursing schedule and to accept it because I feel antsy to get out and start teaching.

Just want to say that I love you all and I am excited to be in my new area and to learn a lot about missionary health.

Love,

Hermana Bush

Cambios

To my beloved family and friends,

The news is in.  I am going to go to San Salvador today to train as the new nurse or not nurse.  I will probably have two cambios with the nurse and then I will be left alone and have to be in charge.  It scares me.  This is the last thing that I thought would ever happen to and it makes me scared.  At least that means that President trusts me and likes me, right?  So I leave Chalchuapa this afternoon and I get to train to be in charge of the health of the mission.  I am excited because I will learn a lot of great vocabulary that will for sure help me with my future career and the nurse told me that they look at a lot of laboratory results and so I will learn how to read results.  Cool huh. But still I had to tell everyone that if they wanted to live, don´t get sick.  So, I got to say all my goodbyes here in Chalchuapa.  All my bags are packed and I´m ready to go.... It is hard to change though because you realize you much you love the people that you´ve met and how much you feel like a part of the ward.  But I know that my new area will be great too and I am looking forward to serving in only one ward!  I am not sure what my new area is called though so sorry about that.

This week has been a little strange because we were a trio of sisters that last 3 days because one of the sisters went to Belize and they leave early for transfers.  So that was fun and then we spent all of Saturday touring the elders around the area so that they can have a little idea of where people live.

So, people say the funniest things in English. Most of the time the men say ¨Hey Baby¨  or ¨My love¨ but the other day we were walking past these young teenagers and one said ¨Where did you go on vacation?¨  I kind of gave him a strange look but he repeated in about 7 more times until we were out of hearing distance.  But I really don´t know how people know that I speak English because I feel like I just fit right in:)  I don´t realize how strange I look till I see pictures that we have taken and I am twice the size of some people.

This week we have been working with our investigator who has a problem with pornography.  He told us that he has some DVDs and so we said, bring them here and we will destroy them.  So finally he brought us his five DVDs and he did the honors of breaking the first one with one hand and then we got to join in on the festivities.  It was fun and I hope that he enjoyed it too.  He has been really good and hasn´t had a problem this week and so hopefully he will continue on his ¨process of purification.¨  He is one of my favorite people in the world and it was sad to say good bye.  We shook hands and then he started to go in for a hug and I had to say that I couldn´t give him a hug.

This has been such a busy week but yet I can´t think of much that has happened.  Life is great.  My new companion is named Hermana Schmidt and we have met.  She is a really big girl and she is really fun. I am sure that I will enjoy these next two transfers with her and I am looking forward to learning a lot.

I love you all and the church is true!

Hermana Bush

Sonpopos

Hello family and friends!

This week has been filled with transfer gossip.  There is one more week of the transfer and that is all people talk about. Even the members get into it.  So, I will share with you all the gossip I know.  Right now the areas that I am in are Chalchuapa and Casa Blanca but next transfer President is moving the Zone leaders to work here because the Stake President lives in Casa Blanca and he is moving all the zone leaders in the mission to the area of the Stake President.  So, pretty much I won´t be here next week.  I am not sure where I would go.  There is a possibility that I will go to San Salvador and be trained as the new fake nurse.  I call it fake nurse because the real nurses are ending their missions in August and so someone needs to be in charge of the health of the mission.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.That is the gossip around here.

So, it is the middle of May and I when I went downstairs and found a surprise!  There were a whole bunch of bugs outside.  Actually my companion said that they are called the sonpopos de mayo and as a translation, it means the gigantic flying ants of May!  It was a terrible surprise.  Luckily there were only a few in the house but I killed at least 10 that were outside and I didn´t even make a dent in the effort to exterminate them all!  So, again, if you don´t know, I really hate all bugs and I do not feel any pain in killing them.  The other day I was reading in Preach My Gospel and there is a little quote by a prophet and he said that after his baptism he felt so clean and pure that he didn´t want to hurt a single fly.  When I read that I felt a little bad because I want to hurt every fly but then I justified myself because the mission gave us a can of RAID and so they must want me to kill the bugs, right?  My companion said that she has always heard of the sonpopos de mayo but has never seen them so big and they only last during this month.  She said that she has never really seen them this big in El Salvador or in Honduras.  Well, aren´t I lucky.

Barrio Casa Blanca (ward Casa Blanca) had an activity this week for the young men and women and we had a meeting with the bishop, so we got to join in on the festivities for a little bit and we ate ¨pinchos¨ or shishkabobs (I don´t know how to spell that). But it was fun to learn the word in spanish and I was surprised it was like a normal word because the English word is so funny.  People like to ask how to say things in English and the members had a good time saying shishkabob.

We really have only two positive investigators right now.  One has a baptism date for the first of June but she has enough church attendances that she can be baptized this week and since my companion and I are both leaving the area, we are going to try to push the date up for this week.  We´ll see how that goes.  Our other positive investigator has gone to church 5 times and we have taught and taught but it was the iceberg.  He said he was never getting an answer to his prayers and we know that he really wants to know if the church is true.  But yesterday we found out the bottom of the iceberg.  He has an addiction to pornography.  It was really depressing to find out but I know that he´ll get baptized some day but he just has to overcome this addiction and I think he is willing to do it.

I am trying to send pictures but the computer downloads them really slow.  So, you will just get one picture.
This picture is me with Hermana María and Hermano Julio.  I didn´t really realize how big I am and how tiny they are till I looked at this picture.  I talked about them last week in my letter.  They were the ones that gave us the reference.

I took pictures of the house so eventually you will get them when I send home the memory card.

I love you all.  Thanks for all your support!

Hermana Bush

pday mornings

So, it was fun to talk to you all on Saturday night.  I don´t feel like I have much to write about last week but a lot of things happened yesterday and this morning.  We got a reference from some crazy members and so they went with us Sudnay after church to visit their friend.  The members are named María and Julio, I know crazy names huh.  But they live on the outskirts of the city toward a river called Trapiche.  So, they said, oh our friend just lives a bit down the road.  So we go walking.... and walking.... and walking for like minutes and we pass all these fields with cows grazing and lakes and streams.  It was really beautiful even though we had no idea where we were.  Finally we reach this random house and Julio marches in and starts talking really loud to this little lady who is hunched over.  And he kept talking about crazy things.  He would raise his arms up and say ¨we have the holy ghost, if you have faith you will be healed. You need Christ¨ and he he went on and on and on.  And the lady just looked at him.  Finally we were able to butt into whole intervention and give a quick lesson on the plan of salvation but she is a little mentally not with it.  She told us that sometimes her mind leaves her.  I think that she has just lived alone and far away from civilization so long that she just gets lost in her own mind.  I don´t know, it was the weirdest thing every.

So, I don´t know if everyone knows but I love to sleep and I prize every minute of sleep I get.  So, at 5 this morning the zone leaders called and said, ¨No one told you, but we are having a zone activity this morning and meeting at the stake center toplay sports. And we are meeting at 6.¨  First off, I wasn´t prepared for that.  I was mentally prepared to sleep another hour and a half.  So that was dissappointing.  But we went and it was kind of lame because all the elders wanted to play soccer but we can´t play soccer with the elders so we passed a ball on the side.  But there was a rooster running around the grounds of the church.  A little old lady walked up to the back gate of the church which was locked and asked if we would catch her rooster for her so the Elders caught the rooster but then they could get it to her because the back gate was locked and we don´t have keys to the lock.  But the lady told the elders to climb up the gate and throw the rooster over the gate.  So, that´s what they did.  But I have never seen a rooster more scatter brained.  He threw the rooster over and the rooster landed on its back and ran away to its home.  That was a hard story to explain.  There are four sisters in the zone.  There is another gringa, Hermana Beckett.  Right before we left she did something with the soccer ball and twisted or fractured her ankle and she can walk on it but it hurts a lot so we spent the morning playing and then trying to find someone to be able to drive her to the house and then buy medicine.  It was a bit stressful but as the family saying goes: it could be worse...could be me.  The nurse said that she has to stay in the house for days and if it still hurts she has to get an xray.

Finally some news for Eli.  I asked the sisters in Panamericano if they knew someone named Calderon who was baptized within the last 5 years.  And, they said ¨Yes, he´s the bishop.¨  So, Eli´s convert is now the bishop.  I hope that makes him happy.

Well, this week was kind of slow.  We had our interviews with President this week and that was nice.  President is really nice even though he can be strict sometimes.

I hope that everyone is still doing good.  The church is true.  I really know that this is the true church and that this is the Lord´s work .  There is no other church on the earth that has the authority of God that was restored to the earth.

I love you all.

Have a great week

Crystal

Just so you know, this letter was hard to write because the exclamation mark and parenthesis don´t work on this computer.

Time flies

Hello!

Another week has just flown by here in El Salvador.  It feels like I just emailed you yesterday.  I can´t believe that it is already May.  Even though this week flew by, not much really happened.

I am really sorry for Mom and Dad in Maryland with 90 degree weather and muggy.  It must be really hard to find sanctuary in an air conditioned car and an air conditioned house:)  Actually the weather here hasn´t been as bad this week because it has rained a couple of days. When it rains, it is not nearly as hot.  One night I went to bed and I thought to myself, ¨Self, the temperature is really comfortable.  How strange.¨ Well, maybe I didn´t say it exactly like that.  But again, today is really hot.

We had a miracle this week!  At the multizone conference last week, an Elder gave us a reference and so we went to go contact this lady.  We found her and had a lesson with her.  One of the first things she said was ¨It´s not true what everyone says about the church.  You don´t worship Joseph Smith.  He was a prophet that was called of God to restore the truths of the gospel.¨ My jaw dropped.  You're right!  She has a testimony and everything.  The only problem is that she has deformative arthritis so it is hard for her to get to church and she lives far away.  She said that she was going to go to church but then didn´t go so we are going to have to work with her a lot more to get a way for her to go to church.  Another thing is that she is really poor.  But the location of her house is beautiful.  She live in a Colonia called El Tesoro (The Treasure) and it is right near the River Pampe.  There are tons of banana trees and other trees and you can hear the river below.  It is really pretty.

About a month ago, Hermana Cash and I found a list of the recent converts of 2008 for Chalchuapa.  There were about 30 names and I know 3 of the people on the list.  We showed the list to bishopric member and he only knew the same 3 names.  The other 27 are not active!  How terrible.  So this week we wanted to meet one more person.  We went looking for a man named Noé Aguirre.  After a long search we found his mom´s house and she told us to return Sunday.  When we came back, she took us to the house of Noé and he was happy to receive us into his home.  He said that his life has been really hard since his baptism.  The Elders married him and his companion but soon after his baptism, his wife and him had a fight and she left him and robbed all of his stuff.  As he told us this story, he started crying and I felt so bad for him.  But this experience has helped me realize that I have a heart and I really want to help the people here.  He is also really poor and his house is held up by bamboo sticks, covered by tin and the walls are a tarp that he wrapped around the bamboo. (Well, I guess it is not bamboo but sugar cane or something).  One thing that I was worried about going on a mission was if I would be able to love people that I don´t know but I am finding out that with time, you really learn to love the people and have a desire to help them.

One last thing that I forgot to tell you that mom would love to hear.  A long time ago Hermana Cash and I were contacting and we contacted a house and they let us in and it was obvious that the man that lives there makes marimbas!  At the end of the lesson (which was not positive at all because the wife thinks she has the priesthood and can heal) they gave us a little concert and the grandpa and two of his grandsons played a marimba together.  The song that they played was so happy and we couldn´t stop smiling for the rest of the night!

Well, thanks for all your prayers and everything.  I love you so much.  The work goes on here and we are working hard!

I love you all.

Hermana Bush