The last email

This is the last email of my mission!  How weird how time has flown by.  I feel so strange because the mission has been my life for so long and now everything is going to go back to normal.  This last week has been a good week.  We had a multizone conference on Tuesday.  As part of the multizona, the missionaries that are going home have to share their testimony.  I have been surprised that I haven´t had the desire to cry because normally I am a baby. But I successfully bore testimony without crying:)  On thursday we had a yucca festival as a stake activity.  It was almost all day long.  It was suppose to start at 2 but as we are talking about an LDS activity in Latin America, the activity started at 4.  It was a fun activity because it was a missionary activity by the stake and we didn´t have to do anything besides greet people at the door.  The had special dance acts to start and that was fun because Claudia Viana (my convert from Casa Blanca about a year ago) danced with her ward and we talked and told me how happy she is.  Then after all the acts, we ate yucca!  Every ward brought a different style of yucca.  For those of you who don´t know, yucca here is like a potato but just a tad different.  But it is a root just like a potato.  Apparently Chalchuapa is famous for its yucca.

This week is the Semana Santa or Holy Week.  But I don´t really understand Latin holidays because it seems like every latin holiday is a good excuse to drink and dance.  Hermana Izaguirre doesn´t believe me that I don´t like to dance or go to discotecas and I can´t believe that she likes to do that.  But we must accept our differences:)

They announced in sunday that I was ending my mission and they asked me to share my testimony and the whole ward was telling me how much they´ll miss me and how much I´ve changed their lives and how I am the best missionary they´ve met.... well, maybe they didn´t say all of that:)  But the ward was really nice to me and they made me feel like I made a difference here.  And people have been inviting us to eat and everything but we can´t just hang out all of the time.  We have to work a little bit too.  Hermanas Enas were both crying at church. Hermana Ena (2) had invited us to make tamales and so we learned how to make tamales.  Hermana Ena (1) invited us over and surprised me with a fish dinner which was delicious.  After the dinner we went to visit a couple that we have been working with for a long time (the husband isn´t a member and the wife really wants him to be) and they had bought me a little cake that we shared and that tasted really
good.

The familia Hernandez Amaya (the family that the dad is excommunicated) invited us over to eat toreja wich is a special bread dipped in milk and then egg and then fried with a sugar sauce.  It tasted really good and then later I realized it was almost exactly french toast.  Needless to say, we have been eating a lot of good
stuff lately:)  And I think being invited over a lot of places makes my companion happy that I am going home because she love to eat. Hermana Izaguirre is scared for the next transfer we have been together for more than 4 months and this transfer she is going to train.  So, she is really nervous and she doesn´t want things to
change.  But as I have learned in the mission, life is about changes. I am really going to miss the mission as it has been my life.  I have learned so much and the hardest part about leaving the mission isn´t
leaving the lifestyle of a missionary or fear of another change but the hardest part is definitely leaving the people I have learned to love.  But I know that when I go home, I am going to be with people I love even more.  I feel like I have been diligent in my service and now I can say that Heavenly Father is pleased with my work.  Now we just have to wrap up the next four days and I will be ¨home¨ again.

Well, I am sure that I am going to love Maryland. Really, I thought that by ending the mission I would cry everyday but that is not the case.  It sad to leave the mission but I know that I can´t be on the mission my whole life and I have to move on with my life. I know without a doubt that this is the Lord´s work.  I know that this is the church of Jesus Christ and that the church has been restored by a prophet of God.  God is our loving Heavenly Father and Christ lives. How great it is to end the mission after celebrating the most
spiritual event of all mankind.

I love you so much.
Hermana Bush