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).

Feliz Navidad

¡Feliz Navidad!

The big news this week is that I got tranferred.  I have escaped the city and am now in the roots of my youth.... in Chalchuapa!  I am happy to be back.  I am actually not in Chalchuapa but in the same zone.  I am in a an area called Ciudad Real and the ward is called Barrio Tazumal.  It is in between Chalchuapa and Santa Ana. My companion is Hermana Izaguirre.  She is my ¨hermana¨ in the mission because Hermana Cash also trained her.  But we get along really well. She is also from Honduras like all but one of my latina companions.  I tried to attach a photo but the computer USB connection isn´t working. Sorry, maybe next time.

We had a big mission activity this week where everyone (but Belize) was there.  Every zone made a video so pretty much the whole activity we spent watching movies... some were better than others.  Christmas here is a lot different and so it didn´t feel like Christmas at all.  To me Christmas is staying at home with family and having dinner and doing something special together. But here it is just a party and a good excuse for people to get drunk. We went and visited a lot of members and ate dinner with a member´s house and there were a ton of people there.  We heard that in other missions they get the day off or have to go home early but not for us, we worked the whole day and we even contacted in the night.  But here, they don´t celebrate Christmas day but only on Christmas eve and they call the 24th Christmas.  Apostacy.  Everyone knows that Christ was born in April but we have to celebrate the 25th of December and not the 24th. Then on the 25th, everyone has the day off and everyone sleeps all day and visits their family.  We had a hard time finding people in their houses. So I got to go to church in my new ward yesterday.  Being here in this ward is something really special because they just finished building the chapel and are going to dedicate it probably in January.  I think President is blessing me for the 5 transfers that I had in the city:)  I feel so happy to be back in the campo and I am really looking forward to being with my new companion.  I know that we are going to be blessed.  It is strange to be back to the area because I see people that I know.  After church Carlos from Chalchuapa drove passed us (he was the guy that got baptized after I left the area but I got to go back for his baptism). I feel blessed because I can see my converts again and it just brings back good memories.  I am enjoying my time.  Thanks for all your prayers.  It was great to talk to you guys on Christmas morning.  I feel so blessed to be here and have learned a lot recently from the scriptures and thinking about Christ during this Christmas season.  I am so grateful that I don't cry anymore when I talk on the phone.  It is wierd to think that I might not call home again.  The next time that I talk to you might be face to face.

I love you!

Hermana Bush

Almost Christmas

Hola!

I can´t believe that it is almost Christmas time.  There is only one week left. It has been a pretty uneventful week. We are still struggling to get Clara to go to church.  She is so positive and wants to get baptized but she always has something happen on Sunday mornings.  It is kind of frustrating but I really love teaching her.  She understands everything.  The other problem that she has is that she is not married.  We can only put pressure but she is the one that has to talk to her partner which she does but doesn´t want to make him mad so she backs off.  We really want her to get baptized this week but I don´t know how much more we can do but be patient.

We are also teaching a man named Joaquin who is positive but he is going out of town for a week.  But he is about 55 years old and is taking care of his nieces children.  So he lives with two kids and it is so great to see how much he loves them and how much he cares for them. He has a son that lives somewhere else and is member of the church so he is interested in what we have to say, AND he is currently not going to any church.  That is the hardest part of this area is that every one is active in the Catholic church or an evangelical
church.  I have learned a lot about the evangelical churches here in El Salvador.   These are the churches that scream and speak in ¨ tongues ¨ and touch peoples foreheads and they fall to the ground.  In the 80s there was a civil war here and before there was only the Catholic church but with the war, the evanglical churches started springing up and they appealed to poor because they promised blessings of safety and riches and so they appealed to the needs of the people unlike the Catholic church which just did the normal service of Mass and didn´t appeal to the needs of the poor only the rich.  So that is why the evangelical churches have had so much success in El Salvador. Claudia was telling us that she attended a baptist church here which is part of the category of evangelical and she went to the states and went to the baptist church and it was totally different and things were calm and people didn´t scream  but just listened.  It is funny that the same church can be so different in other parts of the world.

This week we had a daughter of a less active member go to church.  She had been to church a lot years ago.  We asked her why she didn´t get baptized years back.  She is catholic but just goes to our church to
support her mom.  She said that are so many beautiful things about our church but she has just grown up with so many different beliefs.  For instance she believes in the Virgin Mary.  That is a big problem for us down here in an area that is mainly Catholic.  Everyone believes and worships the Virgin Mary.  We can try to explain worshipping idols but people have been catholic all their lives and don´t feel the need to change because they are happy.  Where we lived before, we lived right next to a big Catholic church that was called ¨La Trinidad de la Tierra¨ or ¨The earthly trinity¨ and then it lists Joseph, Mary and Jesus.  These are just a few of the examples of things that we see on a daily basis.  In fact Hermana Salazar from Honduras says that it is different here.  Where she is from almost nobody goes to church and now she is in a country that practically everyone goes to church or at least says they do.  But I think that it is great that it is so religious. There are so many more opportunities for members to share their testimonies because everyone talks about religion and everyone knows what church you go to. Sometimes when we contact people on the street we will ask them for a reference and then they start listing off the religions of every single house on the block.

So, I have a couple more Spanish Christmas songs for you:  Campanas de Belén, Burrito Sabanero and Ven a mi Casa Esta Navidad.  I hope that you can utilize one of those for the family band.  Hermana Salazar started singing Campanas de Belén and I barely know any of it and yet it is always stuck in my head!  So like I said last week, we have transfers this coming week before Christmas.  I don´t think anything will change with us but we never know.   We have had some great experiences together and I really do love my companion.

Thanks for everything.  We are enjoying our time and working our hardest.

Hermana Bush

The days before Christmas

¡Hola Familia!

I hope that everything is going well for everyone.  We surely have had a festive week.  I cannot believe that it is almost halfway through with December!  How time flies by.  I was just thinking that it is crazy how it is already the 7th of December and I looked at my agenda and today is the 10th!  I really can´t believe it. So, we have had something to do every day this week.  On Sunday we got to watch the Christmas devotional. We watched it with Claudia.  I don´t know if Claudia is going to progress more than she has.  She wants to be a part of the church but has so many problems with the doctrine.  It is so frustrating to see some one so close but will not accept everything.  And her friends have been telling her a lot of rumors about the church.  We haven´t dropped her but we have been thinking about it.  But it is sad leaving people that you have a good relationship with and they truely are people that you love.

On Monday we had an activity with all the sisters in the mission.  We got to play soccer together which was really fun and then we went to the house of President to eat lunch and then we got to decorate their house with the Christmas decorations.  I was priviledged enough to put the star on the tree since I am the tallest.  It was a lot of fun and then Presidente and Hermana Lopez gave us hair straighteners for a Christmas present.  Sometimes it is annoying to be a sister in the mission but other times it all pays off when the mission president gives you presents.  Then on tuesday we had a multizone conference.  Then with district meeting on Wednesday.  And then on Thursday we went to the house of President Lopez again as a district.  The zone leaders wouldn´t tell us why we had to go so we went scared that something bad was going to happen but then when we got there we ate a big lunch with sausage, steak, potatoes, avocados, and other stuff.  I hadn´t eaten so well for more then a year and then the 6 of us filled 200 ziploc bags with candy in preparation for Mission Christmas party.  It was fun and something different.  And then today is pday again!  We are having a little problems in the area because people leave town and then almost all of our investigators are sick.

Mom keeps asking me to look for native Christmas songs but there aren´t really any here.  I asked my companion if she knew any from Honduras and she didn´t either.  But the other day we were sitting on the bus and some older men got on the bus to play a song.  And they played this really cute Christmas song.  Unfortunately I don´t know what they said or what the song is called but they repeated the words ¨El arblolito lindo de Navidad¨  a lot.  Maybe you can find that song.  Other than that, the Christmas preparation is pretty much the same that it is in the states.  

We are working on trying to find new people to teach but this can be a very difficult task when you have to talk through an intercom or contact people by yelling through their ¨garage door¨.  We contacted an inactive lady who hasn´t gone to church for 15 years and we found out that she has now been baptized in 5 other churches and she is now receiving Bible study by the Jehovah´s witnesses.  If you get baptized in every church I guess you will be sure to have gotten a true baptism at one time or another.

In case anybody is worrying about my foot, it feels a lot better.  On saturday it really bad and when I looked at it, it was just a giant blister on the bottom of my foot.  But it felt good enough on Monday to play soccer:)

We are doing just fine.  Please pray for us.  We want to have baptisms this month and little by little time is just flying by.  We are working hard.  We have transfers in a week and a half right before Christmas, but I am pretty sure that we are both going to pass Christmas together in this area.

I love you so much.

Crystal

I want to give a special thanks to Sister Lewis who sent me a nice package.  It was very nice and we enjoyed opening it.

Diciembre

Well this has been a very interesting week. I never told you guys but about a month ago something appeared on the bottom of my foot.  For a long time I was looking for a rock in my shoe and never found one. Then I found it on the bottom of my foot.  So I asked Hermana Clark when we were together and she said that she thought it was a planters wart.  So I told the nurse and then things got busy but I was finally able to go to the doctor today.  And he said that it wasn´t a wart but it was just dead skin underneath my skin that was just a ball and so it feels like a little rock.  He said that he could cut it out and so he did but then he said that it would just grow back and so he froze it too.  And now I am free of my little rock but now I have a whole in my foot and it hurts!  But he said that it shouldn´t hurt too much after the week end.  And I can still walk fine with a little limp. But I will adjust. Hermana Salazar said that I finally went to the ¨patologo¨ (for those of you who remember my story the other week). So that is what we did this morning.  It was a very thrilling morning out and about.  But it was enjoyable.

Our cook is named Jenny and she is also a recent convert from August decided that she wanted to go out with us and so she got a taxi and we went to my appointment and then we ate lunch at Burger King. Mom asked me about the Christmas decorations here.  Some people do decorate and it is really pretty but not nearly as elaborate as in the states.  But every time we walk past a house with Christmas lights or a tree, Hermana Salazar and I look at it longingly. So, today we also went to a store that is the same idea of a dollar store or really a place that sells cheap junk and we bought a little Christmas tree and some cheap lights that might break before we get home.  But now we can have a little bit of Christmas in our house.  Weather wise, it is still hot. I am surprised it is still hot too.  People had always said that December and January are cold months but I don´t know what they were talking about.  Sometimes it feels slightly brisk but normally it is just hot.

We have had some really great experiences this week.  I think I have told you about Clara.  She is an investigator that we have been teaching for a while that still hasn´t been able to go to church.  On Saturday we taught her and she accepted a baptismal date in December. She told us that she was talking to her mom about the church and invited her to go.  She said that she wanted to tell her mom that her church wasn´t true but didn´t have the heart to do it. Clara has only one problem....she isn´t married to her companion.  We told her that she has to get married first but she has really put her mind of getting baptized the 18th of December and I know that she can do it. And she was going to go to church on Sunday but then she had a fight with her boyfriend so she was going to leave him but then came back the next day.

So, things are coming right along.  We had a second meeting for the new missionaries and then we had a multizone conference and so I feel like we have been in meetings all week long but it is not true. We are excited for the holiday season.  Now we can decorate our little house.  Oh, that´s the other thing that happened this week is we changed houses.  We finally found a little apartment and we went to see it with the zone leaders and they signed for it.  So we are now in a cute little apartment that is a lot nicer.  We still don´t have a big mirror but we are surviving with little make up mirrors.  Well, I love you all so much!

¡Feliz Diciembre!

Hermana Bush