Hermana Stone: Peru, Lima North Mission: Happy Dia de Papas (Fathers Day. Get it?)

HOLA FAMILIA! So every week when I come to email I get the chance to look over my past week and pick out some highlights. Knowing my memory and the lack of new things you do here, this might be a little short. Haha I dressed up like Anna from Frozen this week! A bunch of people said I look a lot like her and my compañera had a dark green dress she bought from some indian (dot not feather) place so I braided my hair and sang "El amor es una puerta abierto" all day!! I wish we were allowed to take pictures on days other than Pday because it was super funny! Also, sorry if I freaked you out last week. We learned in a health and sanitation lesson this week to not mention that you're sick to your parents if it's not too bad because then they'll spend the whole week wondering if you're ok.... I am fine. A little "siempres" never killed anyone (tell Vanessa thanks for her hippie medicine!!) I am LOVING the CCM. I honestly have so much fun and work so hard and feel the spirit so much and eat weird food and make best friends and everything is 100% great. There was a day this week though where I didn't exactly feel 100% great. I was getting pretty down on myself because compared to a lot of the people in my district, I don't have a lot of experience with teaching the gospel or finding scriptures to support lessons etc. Also the language is kind of hard. Anyways, I was feeling really down but I didn't want to say anything when Hermana Rivera (our morning teacher) said she wanted to take a break for a minute and show us a video. It was titled Missionary Work and the Atonement and SANTA VACA. It changed my life. It was by Elder Holland and Elder Eyring and I have never felt the Saviors love for me as strongly as I felt it then. Not only did I feel His love for me, I also realized something about going through hard things and how important it is that we go through hard things. If I hadn't have been feeling discouraged when we watched that video, I still would've enjoyed it but I wouldn't really appreciate it in the way that I was able to. I know that God and His Son and our Savior loves each of us so much!! Another spiritual high this week was continuing to teach our "investigator" Camila. I don't remember if I already explained this or not but we get to teach an investigator (our teacher) several times a week in these little houses they have outside. It is so cool because it is like a real approach. We do contacting and prepare lessons and it's great. Anyways, Hermana Eliason and I taught THE BEST lesson. We had a whole lesson prepared and literally only got about 5 minutes in of that because we were straight up led by el Espiritu Santo!!¡¡ We committed her to baptism and she accepted (we have taught her about 5 lessons). I could't wipe the smile off of my face. I can't even imagine the feelings I will get to have when it is a real investigator!! On a different note, there are some key phrases you need to understand from the CCM. On any day you will hear the following:

¿Que en el Mundo? what in the world

Santa vaca. holy cow

La bomba (that was) the bomb

¿Que pasa calabaza? nada nada limonada. What's up pumpkin. nothing lemon (Yeah, it gets weird..)

This week Ekins and I took a bunch of the flowers they were going to throw away and hung them on the extra bed in our room. They touchup the landscaping around here so often that we get to take the flowers. It makes me so happy because fresh flowers are the best. Another kind of funny thing (again, I don't remember if I wrote about this last time....) but I play sports during our physical activity time! You really wouldn't recognize me running and trying to hit volley balls and play fútbol and playing ultimate frisbee.

WHO IS THIS HERMANA STONE AND WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH SAVANNAH?

I still can't do a pushup though. That's a goal by the time I leave the CCM. Finally I just wanted to give a brief overview of what the typical day looks like in the CCM so you have an idea of what I do every day. We wake up at 6:30 and get ready like zombies until breakfast at 7:15. Breakfast is the scariest meal of the day but luckily they have cocoa puffs so I usually eat that. The leche fresca you put on it is a little different but it tastes good. From 8-9 we have personal study and it is so nice because we can just sit outside and learn the gospel! We start class from around 9:15-12:30 when lunch is. This class gets looonnnng but my teacher is the cutest and we break it up with a little bit of "flex time" where we play games and take a lap or something. After lunch we have companion study and then TALL. TALL is a language learning system that we do on the computers all about grammar etc. It was so funny because one of the Elders this week said "If I had to choose between going to TALL and cutting off my ear.... I would choose TALL but I still really hate it". We have PE from 3-4:05and then are back in class at 4:45-6 dinner. After dinner we go back to class but that is when we teach our investigators usually and go over feedback from our previous lessons. At 9 we do planning for the next day (it's super easy because our schedule is the same every day) and then do what we like to call "District bonding time". We share favorite scriptures and then I make everyone tell me their fun facts. I love fun facts. People are so surprising and SO COOL! I love the CCM and I love being a missionary and I hope you all are doing well at home! I hope my pictures are going through. Talk to y'all next week! (I don't know where this came from but lately I've been saying y'all a lot.....?????)

Your favorite hermana,

Hermana Stone