Only a few pictures from the MTC because my camera got cancer and died, but no worries I have a new camera now and there are more photos to come.
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Cousin: Sister Roslyn Kirwin  |
I'm in New Jersey. I'm here! I'm here! I'm here! And I LOVE it. I (like every other missionary) am serving in the greatest mission on earth. Except, for real though, mine is the greatest. My mission president is this super down to earth man who laughs and sings and bears his testimony in everything he does! I love learning from him. I love my companion. With all my heart I love her. She's one of those people who when I met her it felt like I've known her my whole life, and we're friends as if we've known each other our whole lives and it's wonderful and I love it. She's also a bit of a fireball. All that time I spent learning to be calm and quiet in the MTC, yeah, it's completely out the window. Pretty much every 2-3 sentences she crescendos into a yell at the end. Which means I'm straight back to yelling...we're working on it. She's full of passion, and loves the work...so we work hard. Really hard. But we're teaching Latin people, who all love Christ, so we end up getting to teach a lot, even if people aren't actually interested in what we have to say. There are a lot of Dominicans and Peruvians and Hondurans and Mexicans and Guatemalans actually just a lot of everyone...basically I just have to relearn Spanish every time someone new opens their mouth because they all have different accents and speak at different speeds and have different understandings of how grammar should be used. It's great. It's like I'm serving in the whole Latin world all at once. Oh, and my area kisses New York City. Pretty much I have a better view then people who are actually there.
On Saturday we got to do clean up at Liberty State park. It reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would make us work in the yard. That will probably only carry proper significance with my siblings, so allow me to explain. It was kind of like we had been asked to destroy the park. They handed us a bunch of tools, some shabby and dull others had just been picked up at Wal-Mart. And off we went. We kind of went to war with all the trees and vines and weeds and mulchy areas around the trees...but in the end things looked nice...so that was good. Oh and I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. It's kind of weird when you're not expecting to see the Statue of Liberty, and you've never actually seen the Statue of Liberty, and there you are at a service project, and there SHE is. She's just there, holding her torch and looking all elegant and I was just a little caught off guard, but it was great. And one of the recent converts came. His name is Luigi, and he loves the church. He got baptized 3 weeks ago and he loves to serve. He wants to go on a mission, and he wants to do temple work for his family, and he just wants to do everything he can, and he reads his scriptures all the time, and his favorite hymn is I Stand All Amazed, and he LOVES the gospel. BECAUSE IT CHANGED HIS LIFE! Because that's what the gospel does. It changes lives. It makes us better. It fills us with love. And it's all possible because of our Savior Jesus Christ, and knowing that sparks something in people, it sparks something in me. I want to keep the commandments, I want to be a good missionary, I want to know everything I can learn in the scriptures, because I want to become the woman I am capable of being thanks to the purifying power of the atonement. I love it. Oh, and miracles happen all the time. Like earlier this week. We were driving along and my companion pointed at a random house that looked like all the lights were out. "Someone's in there we NEED to knock on that door!" I hate knocking doors...it's the one things that makes me really nervous and I completely freeze up. But we did it. And this 20-something man (named Luis) answered...come to find out that his girlfriend is a member of the church and moments before we knocked he had been talking to her about religion and thinking about what it was that God would have him do. As were were teaching his grandpa and cousin came in and joined the lesson. They prayed with us, his cousin asked if she could have her own Book of Mormon so she could read too. Then Luis came to church on Sunday and thanked us for inviting him and invited us back to teach more. He's great. I wish I could tell that story in its entirety, but there's not time. Just know that this family is awesome, they love God, they love the Book of Mormon, and they love learning more about the truth. And I get to be the one to help teach it to them. Why did I get to be so lucky? Why? That's what I keep thinking with every lesson I teach, with every time I get to do service I'm confused about WHY Heavenly Father decided that I'm good enough to get to serve His children. I love it. I love love love being and missionary. I love the people in New Jersey. I love my companion. I love the gospel. I am immensely grateful for the love of my Savior and that I get to watch as people apply the atonement he made. I love it. I love it. Do you understand how much I love this? It's a lot. And it keeps growing every day. For real. I'll probably explode at some point, but until then this is just great.
Be good. Make good choices. Allow your faith to lead you to action. Say your prayers, and follow good thoughts that come.
All my love,
Hermana Santos
Oh and my new address is:
Mission Home:
5 Cold Hill RD So
STE 10
Mendham, NJ 07945
But I live at:
496 Pavonia Ave
Jersey City, NJ 07302
You can send mail to the mission office (the cold hill address), it will just take about a month to get to me...and that's no good. BUT if you ever want to send packages DO send them to the mission office, because they'll probably get stolen if they hang out on my doorstep all day. I may or may not live in the ghetto.
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