Transfers again

We are now ending a new transfer. And I have big news! I am not getting transferred! Okay that wasn´t really big news but it is so funny how much the missionaries gossip about transfers and so everything is big news. But it is big news because we are now going to be a trio. We are going to train a new missionary. I am excited but training takes so much patience and that is something that will be hard with Hermana Izaguirre. So we´ll get to meet our new companion tomorrow morning. And this transfer President is going to make Casa Blanca and Chalchuapa two separate areas again. For what I have to say, it´s about time. This week so much has happened. Today we are changing houses. We are still going to live in the same area but a different house. We are going to rent a house that Hermana Ena has but for cheaper. So we are busy packing everything up and not looking forward to the afternoon when we have to move. This week we had the baptism of Kenia. She is an almost 12 year old girl (her birthday is in February) and her brother is an active member. Kenia is really cute and so innocent and she was so excited for her baptism. We taught her everything in a week and a half and she studied to be able to remember everything. She had already been going to church before but we didn´t know she wasn´t a member. It is hard teaching kids because normally you have to take them to church and drop them off and then when you don´t go around to pick them up Sunday morning the become inactive members. But this is the great thing about Kenia is that she goes to church with her brother because she wants to go. She really is someone special and told us that she wants to serve a mission in Mexico. Now she only has to wait 10 years. I am sending pictures of the baptism. I want you to see how beautiful our baptismal font is. There is an inlayed mirror above the font. On Saturday when we went to fill up the font, we discovered that they didn´t give us the keys to open the door to the font so I (being the bigger companion) had to jump over the glass of the font to be able to start filling it up. We will

never make that mistake again. But it was necessary to fill the font. Hermana Lopez (President´s wife) told the mission that she was going to start doing cleaning checks. Every Friday morning she is going to go to a zone and look at 2 or 3 houses. She started last week and we cleaned like crazy Thursday night but then she didn´t come. So this week I wasn´t very anxious to make the house look spotless and then Friday morning the Elders called and said ¨She´s coming!¨ So we started cleaning like crazy, still not knowing which houses she was going to go to. Turns out that she took a trip to see our house and said it was really beautiful and then gave us a Snickers bar as a prize. Needless to say, we were really happy. Well, we are having a great time in Tazumal. We are excited for all the experiences we are going to have this new transfer and we know that Holy Ghost has guided us in this work. I am so grateful to be here. Oh, other news. Hermana Karl wanted to go home in June and emailed President to ask when she had to go home. He said that it is already

scheduled for April and she has to go home. I think it is because he goes home in June and it will be easier for him to get people home in April. So, looks like I am going home in April no matter what! So, now I only have two transfers left and that seems surreal. How strange. Still, there is no news about the temple dedication so we are still in limbo.

I love you!

Hermana Bush

No more trips to the city!

This week has been a great week. It has been a very busy week too. This week, we went to San Salvador three times and it is always a miserable 6 trips in bus. But don´t worry, I survived! On Thursday we had a special conference with Elder Jensen of the Presidency of the 70. It was really fun because the whole mission went (even Belice got to be there through Skype). I was really excited to see Hermana Salazar and the first thing she told me is that they had a baptism! She said Roxana got baptized. I don´t think that I told you about her because we had just found her when I left Miramonte. But when I was in Miramonte, we were desperately looking for people and I decided that there had to be someone in the area book that was ready to hear our message again. So one morning I was looking in the area book at all the old investigators for the past 2 years and on of the papers fell on the floor. And it was the paper of Roxana. I took that as a sign because I had looked in the area book how many times and never read about Roxana. So Hermana Salazar and I went looking for the house. And it took us a week to find the house. Over all I think we searched for the house for 6 hours just contacting on the street and asking people. And finally we found it. When we knocked on the door, her dad answered and we introduced ourselves and he said that Roxana was sleeping. He aked if she was expecting us which she wasn´t and he said ¨Oh well, I´ll wake he up.¨ Now that was strange in the first place because almost nobody wakes others up. They think it is disrespectful. She is about 30 years old and we taught her and she understood everything. She couldn´t go to church the week the last Sunday I was in Miramonte, but Hermana Salazar gave me the good news that she got baptized. I felt so happy. It really was a blessing to me to know that the Lord always provides a way and though I wasn´t there to be able to enjoy the baptism of Roxana, I know that she accepted our message and had the desire to be baptized and that God answered my prayers in Miramonte even when I didn´t know it till this week.

The conference with Elder Jensen was very good and I was ¨given¨ the opportunity to give the opening prayer. I am always chosen to say the prayer in front of the General Authority because I also had to do it when Elder Martino from the seventy (who is in the area presidency of Central America). But we learned a lot and we were inspired. We are happy to be in our area. The new church building is a real blessing for the ward and for us:) the missionaries. Yesterday at church we had 9 investigators! We are having a baptism on Saturday and we really have a ton of work to do. The are is huge and half of the area gets neglected because we can only do so much as two people.

So this week I asked President Lopez if he had any plans for Barrio Tazumal and he said, ¨Like what?¨ Hermana Izaguirre and I had been talking about the situation and that the ward would really benefit from another set of missionaries. So, we told him that and he said that it sounded like a really good idea and he was going to think about it more. We find out about transfers next Monday and transfers are on Wednesday. We are excited to see what will happen. Next week there might be 4 missionaries in Tazumal or maybe just 2 still. We both want to stay here in the ward so I hope that we can.

We have so many positive investigators right now and they are all eager to learn. We are excited to see where they will go and who else we will find this week.

I love ou all very much!

Hermana Bush

Baptism!

Hi family!

We are really happy because we had a baptism on Saturday and we got to have it in the new chapel. Hermana Ena got baptized and she is so great. I can imagine her being Relief Society President or something. I had such a sweet experience with her. And I mean sweet as in special and not meaning cool. Right after she was baptized, I took her her towel. I asked her how she felt and she looked at me and said, ¨I feel like crying¨ and then started sobbing. She said that she felt pure joy. It was such a tender moment. The whole baptism was just a special experience (beside the fact that the man who was going to baptize her showed up 45 minutes late). But the members said that it was extra special also and not just for being in the chapel but because of the person that got baptized. It was really beautiful.

At the baptism we met a young woman who said that she went to church last week with her older brother who is member and wants to baptized. That was a miracle. She went to church yesterday too. She is small but knows what she wants and talks like an adult. Every day we are counting our blessings from being here in this ward especially with the opening of the church building.

On sunday we had our the meeting in the new chapel. Normally our attendance is 120 but yesterday we had 210 people in sacrament. But most were from the stake. The chapel is really pretty and it is not just because I had been in El Salvador for a year. Although I can say how cool it is to have a pulpit that moves up and down. But all the members are in love with the chapel. And since all the stake was there, it was like having a family reunion for me because I saw all my old friends from Chalchuapa.

This week we have been really stretched for time. There is so much to do and too little time to do it. We had a meeting last week in Santa Tecla and this week we have two. Today, my companion had an appointment to go to the doctor and so we went to San Salvador (an hour and a half in bus) got there, found out at the office we had to take two buses to get there, went there and then they said that they couldn´t do the exam without a doctor´s referral. First of all, I have never heard of a doctor´s referral in El Salvador. To buy drugs you don´t even need a prescription. So, we got back on the bus to come home. We were both annoyed because it was our whole pday wasted away. But I am over it. Right now we are going to a recent convert´s house to eat pupusas so all our problems will be forgotten soon. But while we were in San Salvador we took the opportunity to take pictures of the temple. Nobody knows when the temple will be dedicated. Recently people are saying June. I´ll keep you posted on the latest temple gossip.

I love you all very much and I am so happy to be here.

Hermana Bush

Volcan El Chingo

This week has been really great! I don´t have much time so I will write fast. This week we put a baptism date with our investigator named Ena for the 15th (next Saturday). She is really great and she is really prepared and we are really excited because we haven´t been able to use the new church yet but the Bishop got permission and we can have the baptism there this saturday. It is the small things in life that make me happy. Also this week we had a fun experience making pupusas. The idea of making pupusas is really easy and preparing the ingredients is really easy but I just don´t understand how they put the cheese and beans in between the tortilla dough and make them so fast. I tried and after making 3 I got a little better. But it took me 5 minutes to make each one. Maybe in another life I will be able to gain that skill.

I forgot to tell you what we did for New Years: absolutely nothing! Well, the zone leaders called us and told us we had to go to Casa Blanca to eat dinner with an Hermana. So we went and it was fun. The Hermana that invited us washed our clothes back in the day and so she invited us over. But that was all that we did. And we were woken up at midnight to the sounds of fireworks making big booms. But one thing that hasn´t changed in the mission is that I love to sleep and so naturally I fell right back to sleep.

One great experience we had was last Sunday. It was 7 o´clock in the morning and we had just finished a lesson and we were going to go contact. We passed a little street and I felt like we should contact there so I asked my companion if she had contacted there and she said no. So we went. The first house that we knocked on wasn´t too great but then we knocked on the second door. And they opened it and this woman and her 19 year old son answered the door and the son says ¨We are members¨ but they had moved a year ago from a ward in the stake and he was preparing for the mission. But they stopped going to church because they didn´t know where the house was that the meeting were in. They were busy but we left an appointment to return. The next day we told Bishop about them and he said that he knew about the family but didn´t know where they lived and he had gone to the neighborhood before asking people on the street if they knew this family. It was just another testimony knowing that Heavenly Father knows everything, and with the Spirit we can be guided.

Today for pday we went to el Volcán El Chingo. It is on the border of El Salvador and Guatemala. That is why I am writing so late. We had such an adventure. We left here with 2 police men to accompany us and we were almost there when an elder said ¨We forgot the guide!¨ But we were all in agreement that that wasn´t too necessary because really, how can you get lost hiking a volcano. But as things go, we got lost. We spent 2 hours hiking up the volcano in thick bushes and dust instead of taking the path. But we finally made it to the top and took the path down. But it wasn´t a very beautiful volcano because it is covered in brush so you can´t even see the crater. But it was an experience.

I love you all! I have to go now but I just want to say Happy Birthday to Mandy!

Love you!

Hermana Bush

Prospero Año y Felicidad

Happy New Year!

I have been thinking of the year of 2010 and it is the only year that I will have been on my mission for the whole year. And it has been a good year. I am so grateful to be a missionary and I am so grateful for all the blessing and opportunities I have been given and all the miracles I have seen. It is strange that it is now January. It has been a really good week. On Tuesday we got to travel to Santa Tecla and visit Las Palmeras to see the baptism of Natali. She is a young women and all her family are members and she was not. We taught her a lot and she started reading her scriptures and she started praying. And when I was there she said that she received her answer and knew that she had to get baptized but just didn´t know when. Turns out she

wanted to get baptized on a specific date and she chose the day that her dad got baptized a year ago on the 28th of December. So it was a great experience. Natali and I had a special bond and I felt so special because they were trying to get permission for 3 other missionaries to go to the baptism but President only gave me permission. But the baptism was special in other ways. Natali told me that if I hadn´t come she wouldn´t have gotten baptized. As a mission the goal this year was to have 2000 baptisms and Natali was 

number 2000! As a mission, we ended the year with 2001 baptisms. We just barely made it! 


Other great things that happened: We were able to have the ward Christmas party in the new chapel even though it hasn´t been dedicated yet. So the first thing that Hermana Izaguirre and I did was go to the baptismal font. And it was so beautiful. This isn´t just the missionary talking in me. I have never seen (here or in the states) a font as beautiful as the one in this chapel. When we go in the building again I will be sure to take a photo. When we were in the new chapel there was this really big guy and I had never seen him before. So I asked if he was a member. He said ¨Yes, I got baptized about 3 years ago. Elder Stevens baptized me.¨ Now that I am back in Zona Chalchuapa I am meeting people again that know Eli. Well, his name is Hans Peter. He is the biggest Salvadoranian I have ever seen. But he was nice. And he played Santa for the ward Christmas party. So, we continued having church in the house until the dedication of the church which might take place on sunday. As a culture, the Salvadoranians like to listen to really loud music so that the whole neighborhood can feel the base beating. When we were at church and they were passing the sacrament, a car drove up with the music ¨I Walk by Faith¨ from the young women playing at full blast. It was hard not to laugh. Apparently it doesn´t matter what kind fo music it is, as long as it is full blast.

I am enjoying being in my first zone because I get to see my old converts. When we went to district meeting, they were also having a primary activity for Chalchuapa and I saw Gabriel. He was a boy that He was a boy that we baptized and we were nervous if he would be active because his mom was inactive. But his mom now has a calling in the primary and they go to church every week. It was such a great experience. I am so grateful to be here. I have really loved all my areas but I am glad to not be in the city still. The people here are more humble and I feel really lucky to be where they are going to dedicate the chapel because I know that we are going to see so many blessings.

Hermana Bush

The pictures are of me and my companion at a lookout sight, me and Natali, and Santa (baptized by my very own cousin).