Sister Heather Crofts

September 25, 2017

QUE TALL Y'ALL

Que tal y'all? Made it to the good ole South Carolina..

USA USA USA! I walked off the plane in Atlanta...... I get off the plane and there is a big black lady that says in a huge southern accent "heyyyyyyyyy welcome back to America" coming straight out of the CCM, I said "Gracias Hermana" she looked at me like 1.You're white 2. I don't think I'm your Hermana. I got so used to the "Hola Elders, hola Hermanas, gracias" so now my English sucks, and so does my Spanish. I sound ridiculous is what I'm trying to say. Hahah

Well....it was so weird saying goodbye to everyone in our district. 5 of them left on Monday at like 2 am. Sooooo all 3 of the Hermanas left. I woke up and walked them to their bus and just waved them goodbye. That was the pits. I had really kept myself together and been so good! I was surprising myself like OH yeah... goodbyes aren't even that bad. Well then the next day hit. HAH. The next day was like the weirdest day ever 7 of us didn’t leave until Tuesday so we just had class all day. Thankfully there was still a lot of our district to hang out with and help me.

ANYWAY I didn't really know what I expected from the field.... but it has been different than I thought.

The first night we slept at the mission home with all the newbies and had transfers the next morning and I met my comps. So kinda ironic... Hermana Edwards and I always joked about how it'd be so hard to be in a trio and how we think it'd be the WORST. Well folks...God is making me eat my words. I'm in a trio. Hahaha. It's been good though. Makes it so I have more people to talk to. Well my trio is very funny. Not funny in that like OH they're hilarious. It's funny because it is a weird match up. There's Hermana Raymond and this is her last transfer and Hermana Bowers who has been out for 9 months who is very much in your face and like giggly and yeah. They could not be more different. They really just like to do their own thing. They don't run with me.....so that means I have to jump rope and do other stuff in the apartment. But they've been awesome to me.

We are in North Charleston! It is way green, and wayyyyyy humid. Just a little but about this area.... We have 6 Spanish speaking missionaries here, 3 Elders & 3 Hermana’s. There is a lot of work that needs to be done here. There are so many Latinos and that is solely who we teach. We do most of our teaching in small trailer parks and have a lot of investigators. A lot of these people don't have papers and are really humble. They seem to accept the gospel, but from what I've seen a lot of them go inactive pretty quickly. So in the church, there is a ward, a branch, and a group. We have a cute little group in this area that is attached onto a ward here. Ahhh lots to be done.

Well a couple of my favorite things from this week.

The first day I was backing my companion out and this car pulls up to me and says "Hey hey what religion are you" so I told them we were the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormons. She got so so excited looks at her husband and says "BABY I told you they weren't the Amish."

President Innes is awesome and I'm really grateful for him. I had that one night with him and had my interview which was so so good. Other than that I've been working and studying. We have so much studying. I thought leaving the CCM I would just be out teaching al day. Nah. We have 1 hour personal study, 1 hour language study, 30 min exercise, 30 min companionship study, 30 min training study, 30 min daily planning... Not to mention that the mornings we have like an hour to get ready and lunch is 30 min and dinner 1 hour. We cook all of our meals: breakfast lunch and dinner. I've eaten like a gazillion eggs hahaha. Anyway. That's been frustrating for me and I've learned a lot of patience with the schedule. Also, a lot of patience with the people. Sometimes perfect investigators just suddenly fall through the radar. We have a lot of investigators and we are so busy with stuff that we only get to visit them once a week. Twice if we are real lucky. They don't progress like that though! But our area is so spread out and we drive everywhere that it's never just a hey we were in the area love ya hope all is well. Also I'm frustrated cause it's like PEOPLE. JESUS IS SO GOOD TO YOU. JUST LOVE HIM. No extra charge for that hah.

Saturday night we were knocking a couple doors because our lesson fell through, we got stopped by this big black guy that just started talking to us about Jesus. Everyone loves Jesus am I right? So he's chatting with us and telling us how our body is the church and our heart is the temple. And everyone knows that. He stops these two ladies who were walking and asks them to confirm with him. They just kinda got all Grimm faced and said "well...we're Jehovah witnesses" my mouth just dropped. I was thinking please no. Not now. Not today. Thankfully they walked away....but we talked to that guy for what felt like forever. We are in the Bible belt folks.

Other than those two encounters everything has been Spanish. Sometimes that is really hard because I am still learning and I try so hard... I will look at the English speaking missionaries and be thinking ugh....that would be the best.... but then last night we had two lessons and both of them I just opened my mouth. And horrible Spanish came out... but the spirit was really strong and it gets better every day. But the people we teach just love that we learned their language to teach them. We teach Spanish speakers from all over the world! Hahhhhh... We are also teaching a Brazilian couple. It's still hard to understand a lot of the people in Spanish... Portuguese puts me even further on the struggle bus. They're a golden family though so we are really hoping for something great with them.

Anyway this is a really long email and a lot of me just rambling so I am really sorry about that!!

The south is a weird place, but I am sending all my love.

CON MUCHO AMOR
HERMANA CROFTS