Vista Alegre #21 “Hermanas are a Fam”

Impetigo Update: It was completely gone by yesterday but already today she can feel a new outbreak on her eye and lip. She's still hanging in there though!

The Hermanas in my Zone!

Our super cute Hermana Activity today! Eating tacos, and flying kites, and tiedye shirts!

  altogether waiting for church keys

Taco time!

Jessop and I failing with our kites haha

  -  Kite fam

Let´s be real we are wayyy too cute   

our fam photo from the 90´s

Our little tiedye pyramid

80´s fam photo

A lovely lil photo in casco viejo

In honor of her baptism this Tuesday, Hna Alejandra made us a treat! - 

Christin and Mariela! Hna Mariela is our dueña (landlord)

Super windy foto with our super golden familia Sanchez! -  We are super serious haha

We didn’t have anymore toilet paper, so we robbed the church's hahaha

Hola Family!

This week was quite wild. It was one of the best in the mission for sure! And I actually have 0 time left because my computer shut off, so just one thing,,, the Sanchez Family are getting baptized on Tuesday!!! Whoohoo!

To start off, the family will be getting baptized this Tuesday. They wanted to do a fast and break their fast with their baptism, and I think that is just so special, so we are doing it with them! They are absolutely the most golden and most amazing investigators I have ever had. I cannot believe how much the Lord has blessed us and helped us to find them! Their story starts that we were struggling really bad with our progressing investigators and so we were praying to have success if we would be super obedient. We both felt we should visit an old investigator who isn´t really positive, and let her go. We asked her for references but this investigator loves us a lot, so she told us to come back and she would invite her neighbors. Her neighbors were the answer to our prayers! They now have been to church twice and love it and they are getting baptized this week! I know there is a lot of power in 1. Prayer 2. Obedience and 3. Asking for references. When I try really hard to do my best in the work, I have seen how much the Lord puts His hand in. What a privilege it is to be an instrument in His hands!

Hna Canedo and I are doing great! I love her and her strong, but fun personality! She is also teaching me a tooon of Spanish. I feel really comfortable with speaking and understanding now, which is just so nice!

Love you all!

Hermana Hallsted

Vista Alegre #20

Haley's impetigo got much worse (went inside her mouth and other parts of her body) but is hopefully gone by now. Thanks so much for your prayers!

We had a FHE with the Family Perez, and they really wanted me to do their makeup, haha!

Christin wearing my sunglasses telling me if I tried to take them of, she would fight me hahaha

Our first Noche de Grupo en this barrio

Us in front of our now-gray house (I miss the yellow)

Hola Familia!

This week we had a lot of success again! It seems like last change we were working really hard to find the people who were ready, but now we are finally progressing with these people. It takes a loooot of patience to be a missionary, but what's amazing is how eventually we can look forth see the fruits of our success (Alma 26:31) and we get the opportunity of learning some patience! What a great deal!

Also this week we started a new schedule. We now do personal study for 30 minutes at whatever time we want before 10 am. And we have to leave the house by 10 too. Then we work until 9, and we have to be in the house at 9. Super weird, right? We do our other studies while we're working! I actually super love the new schedule! So much more time to be able to work!

Speaking of work, we set 8 baptism dates this week! I'm not exactly sure all of them will be ready by their dates, but our investigators are progressing a lot! I am sooo happy to finally be having success! Our ward also started doing a Noche de Grupo every week and we had a ton of investigators come! Our ward is new, and so they suck at helping the missionaries, but little by little we are working with them.

Hna Canedo and I are seeing so much improvement in our teaching skills! She is becoming one heck of a missionary.

Funny stories! We had an investigator who we challenged to read the BOM and when we came back she told us she didn't have that much time to read it. We thought she didnt read anything, but she pulls it out and says "I'm only on chapter 17". We just died laughing!! Yeah, hardly any time at all!

We were heading back to the house one night and I thought we should stop by to say hi to Family Sanchez (our most positive investigators). I was about to say "we wanted to pass by real quick to say hi" But I only got to "pass" and they yell "oh pasen!", which is like come in! And I am now realizing it's really only funny in Spanish, so never mind.

We were visiting this lady who told us we were in her daughter's house. Then some lady comes in and starts freaking out, so we all ran out. Turns out she lied to us and we were just in some random persons house haha, oh well.

We put out a sticky trap to catch rats and we did indeed catch two of them on that bad bay, but also a lizard (and of course like a million cockaroaches) and we felt so bad so we covered him in aceite and pulled him off haha.

I love you all!

Hna Hallsted

Vista Alegre #19

When I had to wear an eye patch this week and Christin was all jealous because she wanted to be a pirate too, so we stuck a bandaid on her hahaha!

Cutest baby ever Andres

Amanda's super cute watercolor!!

Me in Casco Viejo

Hola Familia!

We had a great week this week, minus the part when my eye was swollen shut for a few days and I had to wear an eye patch. But other than that, we did have a great week! I think the eye patch must have helped because we placed 5 fechas this week, and all were from really awesome investigators!

Something I learned this week is how the keeping commitments and Book of Mormon really play a role in conversion. We had been teaching Family Gomez forever, and while they always seemed positive in lessons, they never would come to church. We knew that they needed to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon, so we read with them the introduction and invited them to read chapter 1 together. Our next appointment with them, they all were super excited. They told us not only did they read chapter 1, but chapter 2 as well! Their 22 yr old daughter, Kimberly, told us she is wants to be a missionary like we are. They also had invited other family to come meet us in this lesson and asked if we could teach them about the Book of Mormon. We started teaching about the Restoration, but the family kept inturupting to share their testimonies about prophets and the priesthood power and especially about the book of mormon. In the end, we hardly said anything and they taught the entire lesson, including how Joseph Smith "vio una columna de luz mas brillante que el sol" :)

Somehow reading the Book of Mormon helped them realize that Thomas S Monson is a true prophet and that through all of that, this is the true Church of Jesus Christ. I know that the Spirit helped them to grow that faith when they kept their commitment and read the Book of Mormon. I know that the Book of Mormon is a testament of Jesus Christ and when we read it, we can know exactly what God's plan for us is.

Training Hermana Canedo is so fun! I have learned so much from her! We are still working on talking so much (I don't understand it, but once she starts talking about food, she will talk forever), but over all teaching together is really great. Overall I am really glad to be a missionary. I love the work so much!

Love you allll soooo muchuchuch!

Love,

Hermana Hallsted

Vista Alegre #18 So Much Marraige

we went to immigrations this week at 3 in the morning and got to eat mcdonalds!

Hola Familia!

First of all, Phoebe died. I am so sad! I loved that dog :(

Second of all, Brynn is all married and stuff so that is cool. She is gonna make some cute babies!

This week was awesome! We are finally done with the holidays and finally starting to have some success! Only problem, they moved our church hour to 8:00 am and we are in Panama where they don't wake up till noon, so church that early is a joke. But I know we will see blessings from it!

The mama of the Familia Gomez finally came to church and loved it! She is setting a great example for the rest of her family.

Also our awesome recent converts of the ward Familia Perez (the cunitas who always take pictures of me and send them to you) brought us three new investigators. Their long lost aunt (who ran away from San Blas when she was 16 cuz she didn't want to be forced to do all the wierd Cuna culture) returned home! And her two sons! It's been 14 years since anyone has heard of of seen her, but she came to church on Sunday and told us she will be there every week! We are pretty excited. It is so awesome to see the evidences of how the Lord does all the work. He really is the one who brings people right to us!

Fun and horrible story: so our house is absolutely infested with Cockaroaches (mom you can spell that right for me haha). We finally got to the offices and brought home with us a ton of Prometherin. We went to work today, moving all our dressers and clothes and food and stuff, spraying down the entire house with the stuff! And let me just tell you, Hna Canedo is a freaking cockaroach slayer. I actually started calling her asesina de cucarachas. She is so darn good at it, so I had the job of spraying the corners or furniture or whatever and jump out of the way so she could kill all the roaches trying to escape. I think she killed something like a million cockaroaches. But it was actually pretty fun and hopefully now we can shower in peace!

Working with Hna Canedo is awesome! She is literally the best comp I could've asked for. She is a freaking amazing Spanish teacher and also has so many new ideas that normally I would never try. I am so lucky to be here with her!

Welp love you all soooo much!

Love, Hna Hallsted

Vista Alegre #17 "Isn't she a bridal beauty?" -Deb from Bride Wars

we had quite the week of animals... Iguanas all over the place and crabs and turtles too. Cool for School.

Hola Fam!

First off BRYNN'S GETTING MARRIED WOOHOO!!!! So proud of you!

Second! I can't really remember too much of what happened this week, but training in awesome! I love it! Training Hermana Canedo is so fun! She is so bright and loves to work hard! We are still working on not talking so much during lessons, or really just talking less about food and more about the gospel, but other than that, we are doing great! She also is an amazing teacher of Spanish. She has been really patient with my Spanish and has been teaching me a ton! I think I just might be fluent after our time together, haha.

We are struggling really bad with working with members, but I don't feel bad about it because I honestly feel like we are doing everything we can. They just don't show up  or answer for us, which is hard, but we have made some better plans this week and hopefully can improve with that. As for the work, we are doing great! I am so glad we are done with the holidays so everyone can come back to their houses and we can have more success!

Oh and last thing found out this week I reported my numbers wrong this entire week and I feel like garbage about it. Nothing worse than messing up in the work. Ugh.

Welp, that is about all! Love you all soooooo muchuchuch!

Hermana Hallsted