A Close Call Letter 5-30-16

11 Months in the Mission 5-24-16

P-Day Treat

Dementor Scorpion

Temple Day with My Hermanas

A Close Call In The Gryffindor Common Room

YAY!!! I´m so happy because a) I received a package this morning full of AMERICAN CEREAL!!!!!!!! I teared up slightly holding the Cinnamon Life and Waffle Crisp:) and b) Hna Balboa and I are going to stick out another transfer together!!! 

This week was just downright fabulous because on Wednesday we went to the temple! Perfect to do it at the end of a transfer because the temple just sort of gives you a spiritual boost. It´s also so wonderful because it is air-conditioned and clean in all parts of the temple!

Though I will have you know that I ALMOST DIED THIS WEEK... okay, that may be sliiigghhtly over-exaggerated. What happened was while I was washing some clothes one night in our bathroom, I felt something tickling my foot. Thinking it was a cockroach, I kicked it away. But then I looked down to see a scorpion with it stinger fully extended to suck my soul right out of me (pardon me as I tell the colorful version of this story where scorpions are part dementor). Luckily I have my patronus about me at all times so this scorpion-dementor did not take my soul and I survived, but it was terrifyingly close. Afterwards, Hna Balboa and I saved our investigator Sirius Black from the scorpion-dementors of Azcaban too with the timepiece that President Dumbledore gave us.

If you don´t understand that paragraph, don´t be to concerned about it.

The investigators are doing pretty well here. We´re still working with Daniel towards his baptismal date, but we haven´t been able to find or get ahold of Rocio for about a week. We have a new investigator, Reina, who is very interested in the message of the Restoration. She has had some serious problems in her family and I know that the Gospel will help her so please keep her in your prayers.

Thanks for all the love and prayers!

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck 

Pants Exist??? Letter 5-23-16

P-Day

P-Day With the District

Hello world! Your favorite Hermana Hauck here!

This week was just lovely. As you know, it´s starting to get pretty hot but still hasn´t quite hit THE HEAT.  We are sweating quite a bit though and I’m going through sunscreen reeeeaalllly fast. 

If you´ve heard, sister missionaries can now wear pants in my mission... WHAT?! How weird. Hna Ylst started getting really excited when they told us, thinking we´d maybe be able to wear light linen pants or something like that. Apparently they need to be dress pants, which will be a killer in the heat but will help protect from the mosquitos (that I swear are on steroids). It´ll be really weird to wear them because I´ve been in a skirt for 11 months, but I´ll do anything to keep my legs away from the mosquitos!

AW! Investigators!

So as of now, we have two investigators that have baptismal dates.

Rocio is still headed for her date in June. She has some fears about not being able to commit but we´re trying to encourage her and help her do the things that will grow her testimony (i.e. read the book of Mormon and pray).

Daniel is very timid but really likes to learn about the messages we have. He´s preparing to be baptized in June too. 

Things are just fabulous with my comp. She´s darling and we get along really well. I’m trying to convince her to move to St. George when she finishes her mission. We have transfers this weekend, but I’m guessing we’ll both stay here another transfer.

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck

Here Comes The Sun Letter 5-16-16

The Heat Is Killing Us!

TORTILLA!

Beat the Heat with an Icy Treat!

Here Comes The Sun (doo doo doo doo)

Ladies and gentlemen, Hermana Hauck live here to report to you that the heat has started. I REPEAT; THE HEAT HAS STARTED! 

According to the members and investigators we´ve talked to this week, we were hitting 110 this last week. That kind of heat isn´t exactly new to me, but it still us a lot of work to walk outside all day under the Sonora sun. Dehydration is actually a big problem in our mission so we´ve had to drink a bunch of Gatorades and things like that to keep us going. Hermana Balboa and I like to distract ourselves with work (and ice cream).

Things have been going pretty well. Rocio has a baptismal date, so does Daniel (son of Maria Socorro and Daniel sr.). Cuauhtemoc told us that he´s not ready for baptism so we stopped teaching him but will probably go back in a month or so. We’ve been finding lots of new people to teach so now we just keep teaching them until we can find the ones who are ready to enter into the covenant of baptism. 

This week we have received quite a few nasty comments about the church and about our beliefs, specifically about Joseph Smith. I wanted to bare my testimony to you about that.

I really do believe Joseph Smith´s account of having seen and talked to God the Father and Jesus Christ when he prayed that spring morning. Through him, they restored the church that Christ established. I know that he also received the Priesthood in its fullness. With that Priesthood power he translated the Book of Mormon. It’s through the Book of Mormon and prayer that I know these things. This testimony is really important to me and is what keeps me tied to this church because I believe that the same Priesthood that Joseph Smith received has been passed down to our living Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, whom I fully sustain as President of the church directly guided by the Savior Jesus Christ.

I hope you all have a fabulous week

That’s all there is. There isn´t any more.

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck

Mothers Day Skype Letter 5-9-16

Yesterday´s Mother´s Day Skype was AWESOME!!! And I can´t believe that was the last time I´ll be Skyping! The next time I´ll see you crazy people will be in the airport of St. George... weeeeeiiiirrrdd.

Since I talked to you just one day ago, this email will be shorter. I just wanted to fill you in on some investigators.

Rocio is a 30ish year old woman with two little boys. When we met her in the street, she told us she already had a Book of Mormon and had been to church once but she didn´t know what happened with the elders teaching her. We´re guessing that they lost connection between transfers or something. But I´m so glad we found her because we´ve taught her twice already and she came to church with us. 

Cuauhtemoc (Kwow-TAY-moke) is a 50ish year old man that we found this last week. He seems to be pretty interested so I hope he can keep his commitments and make it to church with us.

Maria Socorro and Daniel are an older couple that are very interested but have been unable to come to church with us because of their work. They actually really want to be baptized so we´ll see.

Health is looking up. We found out that the stomach problems I´d had were not caused by infection but by parasite. GROSS! Yes I had some sort of amoeba living in my tummy:( But Hna Robinson got me a parasite-killing pill and since then I´ve been way better.

That´s all I got for you today, folks!

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck

Bodily Reactions To 20 - Letter 5-2-16

Hello world. 

I´m now 20 so I am officially wiser and more mature... Jokes. We all know that I´ll never mature past the Disney princess and Winnie the Pooh stage of my life.

Thanks to all the birthday love! So sweet to think of me, you rascals. The week was lovely... well, until Thursday... but we´ll get to that in a second.

Tuesday my zone made me a beautiful chocolate nutello cake, which they promptly destroyed with my face (no complaints because it was delicious) and they sung me ¨Las Mañanitas¨ that is the happy birthday song here.

On my actually birthday (Wednesday) Hna Balboa made me pancakes for breakfast! Then members gave us pizza for lunch and we finished the day off with a mini chocolate cake also provided by my companion. 

It was a lovely day of celebrating and LOTS of eating so I didn´t feel too weird that my stomach was pretty bloated and I felt sort of sick by the evening. Now, to paint you all a lovely image of your favorite Hermana, I woke up at about 2 am vomiting violently, which did not stop until about 11 in the morning. Bye bye to all that yummy birthday food. I was in bed the entire day totally knocked out. This sort of disastrous sickness surely was a side affect of turning 20! My body is rejecting it! Buuuttt it also could have been a stomach infection caused by a mango from a street vender I´d eaten two days earlier, which ever´s likelier of the two.

Bodily reactions to my age or dirty mango, my stomach has been out of commission for the week. I´m still in the soup and saltines genre. I guess the cool thing is I´ve lost like 5 pounds of Sonoran food that I´ve gained.

Things have been pretty good with the work here. We´re working really hard and getting some investigators. It´s pretty hard getting them to church but we´re working on it. 

One thing I really love about our area is that the members here are really willing to help visit us. Some wards don´t have many members like that. I love working with members because we can establish more ties to the church with these investigators than just missionaries. And the extra testimony in the lesson really helps!

Hehee.. Just realized I spent way more time telling you about my stomach infection than the missionary work that I did this week. But I´m out of time so until next time.

Wait, no! UNTIL SUNDAY!!!! Yay for Mothers Day!!

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck

Rocky & Adrian Letter 4-25-16

Rocky and Adrian,

Hi world. So this is a happy week and a weird one, because I´m turning 20 on Wednesday… like, what!? I´m pretty sure I stopped maturing after 6 so that can´t be right but according to all legal and official documents I will no longer be in my teens. I´m actually half devastated by it but I´ll probably be over it in a week or so.

Aaaand a huuuuge SHOUT OUT to my favorite Papa in the world!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!! I love you so much. We´ll have an extra big party next year to celebrate. :)

Also this week I turned 10 months old in the mission... WHAAAT!?  I´m not sure which is weirder turning 20 years old or 10 months on my mission. They´re both equally weird, I guess. I will celebrate here with my Latinas eating loootttts of tacos :D

Anywho, this week has been pretty loco with training and opening area. Hna Balboa and I have gotten lost quite a few time but we´re starting to get it down. And we´re starting from scratch with investigators. It´s all very adventurous really. 

Our area is called Villa De Seris (thats ¨bee-ya deh seh-rees to you Americans) and it is really big. Actually it is supposed to be a biking area, but hermanas can´t ride bikes in Hermosillo so we´re on foot. And Hermosillo is hot, maybe around 90´s right now at noon, but we have much more heat awaiting us. GETTING PUMPED!!! I´m actually really happy to be back here in Hermosillo, with the sizzling sun, the mosquitos and all.

Hna Balboa is so cute by the way. We get along really well and we´re already great friends. Pretty much we were made for each other (ie Rocky and Adrian reference). We have a good time teaching together and joking around in our spare time. And it’s amazing because she speaks English and Spanish fluently! (I was slightly scared to train an American thinking I´d have to teach her Spanish).

That´s about it for this week. Thanks for the birthday email, I can´t wait to read them!

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck

Mi Hijita :) Letter 4-19-16

My Guaymas Hermanas

My Apartment

Kisses Goodbye

Mi Hijita :)

Apologies for being so late. I have just experienced one of the craziest weekends of my mission.

So it all started Friday. One of the converts of Hna Mendoza was going to do baptisms in the temple for the first time and invited us. We got permission from President to go with her the following day. After watching her convert do baptisms for her grandparents, we got to enter a session. Then afterwards we left and we found some of the Elders that work in the mission offices and persuaded them to spill the beans on our transfers. The news came that Hna Mendoza would stay in Guaymas and I would be coming to Hermosillo again to open area and.... TO TRAIN!!! 

I was immediately excited because we haven´t had hardly any new hermanas coming to the mission so I was thinking I might never train. I found out that there were only two new coming hermanas and the other missionary that would be training was going to be my MTC comp, Hna Ylst! It was crazy packing because our neighborhood didn´t have water the whole weekend so I couldn´t wash my clothes but with the help from some members I managed to get everything done in time.

It was pretty sad to say goodbye to the people of Guaymas, especially Miriam, Alicia and Mario. But I´ve been super excited to come back to Hermosillo and to welcome a new missionary!!

I got to the mission offices Monday morning and Hna Ylst and one of the greenies were there (Hna Ruiz from Ecuador). We had a small training meeting then President assigned Hns Ylst to the hermana that was already there and told me that my companion, Hna Balboa, was coming from the Provo MTC and we would pick her up later that day. 

We went to welcome her at the airport, but she didn´t arrive after waiting for an hour. President then found out that the offices had received an email telling us that her flight ticket was cancelled and she was still in LA. So I ended up staying with another companionship here in Hermosillo for the night and this morning. I basically had to live off of what I had because my suitcase and ALL OF MY BELONGINGS were in the offices. President took me to the airport again today where we welcomed one of his daughters and her family (who have come to visit) and my new companion. We´re in our new area now and we´re going to have to work really hard to get things going here quickly. But I´m really excited for this transfer!

My companion is DARLING!! Her name is Hna Balboa (but sadly her first name´s not Rocky) and she´s from Hawaii. Well, her Dad is in the military so they´ve lived all over really but right now they live in Hawaii. Her dad is from Mexico and her mom from Venezuela so she already speaks Spanish:) AND GUESS WHAT?!?!? Her sister is a missionary in St. George! You HAVE to find her. She´s in the temple right now and her name is Sister Balboa too. Say hi from us and that I´m going to do my best to take care of her little sister. I am really excited to have this time with her and I just hope that it will be a good experience for the both of us. 

One thing that was really cool is that Hna Robinson told me while they were assigning the companions yesterday; they were about to put me with the other sister. But then they said a prayer and read the description of Hna Balboa and the Spirit was ¨ strong and very clear¨ in telling them that she and I should be companions. And so that´s what they chose.

Did I already tell you that I´m excited for this transfer?!

Okay that´s about all I´ve got time for. I love you all so much!

Con amor,

Hermana Hauck