CCM Hermanas

CCM Hermanas

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Tech. Difficulties, Amatitlan & E/mail


Personally, it's been hard not hearing from Teigen for so long. She and I were trying to solve a problem via weekly emails and suddenly she was silent. It was very difficult trying to wait patiently and not worry about the situation...to trust that God would take care of her. I waited, counting the days and hours before I got her email this week. But her email isn't working for some reason and I ended up getting a note that had been routed through her companion, to her companion's grandmother and finally to me! Whew!

Hi there! I can't sign into my email for some reason, so this is just an email to let you know i'm alive in guatemala and i'm having a great time! I'm in Amatitlan in a trio with Hermana Brower and our trainer Hermana Garcia. The people are really receptive to the gospel and other than technical difficulties and a little bit of a cough everything is peachy keen!

I looked up Amatitlan and found that it's about 20 miles from where she was. Probably like many folks, I heard "Guatemala City Central Mission" and thought she would be in the city the whole time. I know, that's not how it works but it's how my brain processed the information! I'm going to have to get myself a map so I can document where she's been!


Additionally, I got a letter from the Mission President:
Dear Family of Sister Teigen Olivia Weatherford:

Please enjoy this photograph of Sister Weatherford, whom we had the joy of welcoming into our mission on September 18th, 2013. We truly appreciate your efforts in preparing her according to the standards of the Lord now that the bar has been raised for missionaries entering the field of labor in Guatemala and everywhere in the world.


We require our Elders and sisters to write home weekly. We would encourage you to do the same, as evidence of your support for her labors in this part of the Lord´s vineyard. It is important to encourage continuous spiritual progress, as we guide Sister Weatherford to become a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that she will know her doctrine and delight in teaching it.
Along with your missionary, we pray for your family´s safety and protection. Again, we will strive to teach and protect Sister Weatherford, so that she can have a wonderful mission serving the Lord Jesus Christ in Guatemala.

Yours Faithfully,
M. Joseph Brough
Mission President

 

And due to the fact that Teigen has not been getting my emails…I asked the mission home for the correct mailing address.  Thankfully, I did not have to wait another week to get that answer!
Thank you for your inquiry, and thank you for supporting your daughter as she serves the Lord here in Guatemala. All correspondence intended for your daughter can be sent to the following mailing address:

Sister Weatherford
Guatemala City Central Mission
Apartado 921-A Zona 9
01009 Guatemala City
Guatemala
Guatemala
That is the address of the mission office. Once we receive it, we will be sure to deliver it to your daughter.

For those that perfer the Dear Elder option, I have updated that on the side bar.

All of this information came yesterday and today…after 2 weeks of hearing nothing. It was rough, as I mentioned and I spent a significant amount of time in prayer. What I learned was that the Lord is watching out for her. I don’t NEED to hear from her all the time to know that she’s doing great! (Of course, I still WANT to hear the daily news) I am grateful for the knowledge that even though I cannot be watching over her, someone is!
Great is the Lord!

Friday, September 20, 2013

Note from Biana...

I received a short email saying that the mission home would send an email stating that Hermana Weatherford had arrived safely at the mission home. They said it would come this week. I've been waiting for it to arrive so that I could share, but it's not here yet! I'm not worried that she's lost in Guatemala because they would have contacted me...I'm impatient though!

I will share when something arrives.

Word is...she will probably email this coming Tuesday. Probably.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

#, Earthquakes, and Visa!

So much happened this week and I don't have much time to explain it
all! Here's hoping I can get it all in :) Also, my enter key is
broken, so whenever you see #, that means that it's a new paragraph
#So this week I did 3 language fasts, where I didn't speak any
english. I was great! Really hard, but not for the reason you'd think.
It was hard because people kept looking at me to translate things into
English for them, but I couldn't. I felt bad, but it was more
important for me to not speak English at all than to translate things
(usually for my companion who doesn't speak Spanish that well). # One
day this week while I was fasting I went up to a North American lady
at the church and asked her how I could help clean and the woman
thought I was latin and that I couldn't speak English so she actually
brought someone over to translate! It was real awkward. # The amount
that people think I'm latina is craaaaazy. I counted 5 times this week
that people told me I looked latina. It's ridiculous. One girl said
she thought I was from Honduras until I started speaking Spanish...
ha. So I guess I need to work on my Spanish some more... #This week I
experienced my first earthquake! It's called a temblor or sismo here
because it was pretty small. The earthquake was closer to the border
of Mexico and was a 5.9, but we're a little ways away from it.
Apparently it was felt country-wide! It was kinda fun, but for the
first bit I thought it was because I had been sick and was going to
pass out! #Everyone gets sick around here. I'm on the recovery of my
second bout of a cold. It's a blast. My companion is sick today and so
I've been on splits with other girls in my district, but amazingly, my
comp made a recovery just in time to write her family ;) #GREAT NEWS:
My VISA is in!!! Everyone else in my district has to go get temporary
visas tomorrow but me and my comp! It's a Christmas miracle :) #BAD
NEWS: My debit card doesn't work, so that's really stressing me out. A
lot. It's alright, the Lord will provide a way! #I won't be writing
next week until who knows when because I leave for the field Tuesday
morning. It's a little scary, but I'm ready to be done being sick.
That's really a bummer. #I finally got dear Elders from the middle of
August! I don't know what took them so long to appear, but I got it!
Thanks for your letters :) #Last parting note: I'm really feeling the
temptation to cut my hair. Like real bad. It gets in front of my
nametag all the time and it's heavy as all get out. But I think I'll
just try to get it trimmed and layered and thinned. And if that
doesn't work, I'm chopping it. You've been warned. #That's all for
this week folks. By the time I write you next, I'll be in the field!
Write you on the flipside! #Love, Hermana Weatherford


I know I could have fixed the # issue, but it was kind of cute! And it shows how she's adjusting to the challenges that come her way. As a mother I'm saddened to hear that she's sick. Again. That happened when she was stateside too...so I guess it's just business as usual.

Like you, I will find it hard to get through next Wednesday without an update from Teigen. But, this is why she went to Guatemala. So,

Go Forth with Faith

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Hobos, Gift of Tongues, Birthday Oreos

I got this letter a couple days ago. It was extremely tragic actually. In an attempt to keep her feeling the love, the mail her often...in every form I can. I usually send her a short email (no time for her to read AND respond and I know what's most important) the day or two before her Pday. This time she send her email on Monday, which was a holiday for those of us in the USA. I had no email for her! I didn't even realize she had written! Well, hopefully she understood that absence of letter didn't mean absence of thought.

Anyhow, here is her letter:

So we've hit the 4 week mark (almost. on wednesday it'll be 4 weeks). Today is a wiggity wack day because we have a field trip tomorrow and so we write our families today! But surprise surprise, pday isn't until tomorrow.

I swear that no one knows what the heck is going on. This morning during personal study, they kicked us out of our classroom (to use it as a workshop area for the kids leaving tomorrow) and said "go find a classroom or something". So we wandered in the wilderness for what seemed like 40 years, but was really 40 minutes and finally found a class. We don't know where our teacher is and we're squatting in some room. An Hermana in my district said that we're like the CCM hobos. We just go wherever we find a place. Sometimes we teach ourselves. Today we walked to the internet place (which is only a block away) by ourselves. But the streets are lined with sketchy people and security guards with guns and beggars and people sleeping in the grass and whatever. It's weeeeird. I talked to the guy at the entrance to tell him we were leaving though, and everyone was so impressed with my spanish :) haha, if they could understand it, they'd know how bad it was....

Things are pretty chill here. Yesterday was Fast and Testimony Meeting and we literally fasted for 24 hours. It was BRUTAL. But we got over it and I definitely saw the blessings in my life. I was happier and more patient and loving while I was fasting. Which is a Christmas miracle in September, cause I am not a nice chica when I'm hungry. I got up and bore my testimony in Spanish, which was a bit scary, but what was the coolest thing is that my companion did too!! It was so great. She is learning so much! She remembered the word for rice on her own today (arroz) and her testimony made sense too! Gift of Tongues. I'm just saying.

Not really much to report otherwise. When I came to the CCM I smuggled in 2 packs of oreos and I still have some left. But thanks to the humidity here that seeps into EVERYTHING, the oreos were kinda soft. It's not the best, but we smothered them with peanut butter and used it as a "cake" for one of the sister's birthday. I took my mini flashlight and held it over the oreo and when she blew on it, I clicked it off! It was super ghetto, but really fun and she enjoyed it a lot! The flashlight candle is going to catch on. It'll be a trend. Just you wait.

A couple weeks ago on the temple grounds I lost my balance and fell backwards down the stairs into a small tree shrub thing. It scratched up my back super bad, but it's finally healed! I can now wear my skirts over the wound. So that's a plus. Also, I coined the term "Guatemullet" on our last field trip. We'll see what other fashion trends I can spot and name on this field trip!

I'm excited to go out into the field and it feels like it's just around the corner! Tomorrow we'll be the old kids here and that'll be weird. I don't even know anything! They change stuff around here all the time. The building is always under construction and the districts are moved around on the daily. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow they make us study in the gym. haha

And now the part where I share my testimony: I know the church is true. But more important than that knowledge is the knowledge that the gospel is true. A church is made of people and people are imperfect. I'm imperfect in everything I do, yet the Lord has called me to be a missionary. He knows that even though my Spanish isn't that great and my teaching skills are less than par, the gospel is true and as long as I teach with the Spirit, the people will see through my flaws to the message I'm trying to share. That is my goal, to take people the truth and have them see that it's not from me, but from the Lord and that I am his messenger!

And that's all for this week folks. If you have any questions or things you'd like me to write about, send em over! I feel like I ramble a lot. So... give me some purpose. Please.

Lots of Love!

Hermana Weatherford

Thank you all for writing! I know that she loves to hear about our lives. To be honest, I think she likes the everyday stuff just like we do! I love hearing that she is making friends, using those Oreos for good and healing. Just like normal folks!

Step by step...We'll Bring the World His Truth.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

BONUS ITEM

Hello Devoted Readers! I have a treat for you today....we got a paper letter from Hermana W! It came at the perfect time as well...Kylie and I were working hard and rewarded ourselves with a letter break! Hermana W included a letter to each Kylie, Sofie and I. Of course, we passed the letters around until we had read every last word she wrote.

Here are the highlights:

About Guatemala: Everything is super cheap, the streets are super busy, no one pulls to the side of the road for ambulance or anything, at the airport people kept eyeing our luggage so we had to guard it, the food is amazing (I’ve already gained weight!), some people speak English, actually a lot of people speak at least some English, it rains every once in a while (like every other day) and really hard. I don’t really know what else to say! We have washing machines here and the wind is really nice and breezy. There are gates outside some building and armed security guards everywhere. Not too scary though, they leave us alone.

But some things are a little weird. The air pollution isn’t too bad, but there are cars and buses everywhere, going super fast! Honking and screeching and lights at all times of the day and night. And on the short walk to the computer lab or temple, we see 2 or 3 security guards with shotguns. Or people falling out of moving vans or motorcycles with ladders on the back. Man, I love the ghetto. Not every place, but a lot of places have gates around them and almost everywhere they have personal armed security guards.

Apparently the traffic really weirds her out. She also mentioned to each of us the security guards. I'm not sure how I feel about that...I mean, I guess it's necessary. I am very glad that she's behind a gate for now!

More food:

The food is seriously like CafĂ© Rio. This morning we had breakfast burritos and fried bananas. We eat SO much food, but we eat every 5 hours. Fast Sunday is going to suck. My stomach hates me, but my tongue loves it. That was a weird sentence, but it’s true.
THE CCM President says he’s a partner at the Taco Bell on 9th, so I told him that you and I ate everything on the menu and he said “Well, you helped me fund my mission. Thank You.”
In case you missed that tidbit...Sofie and Teigen had a Summer 2013 goal of eating every item on the Taco Bell menu. They went to the one on 9th street. And the last round was pretty pricey because they needed the big ticket items. It was insane. The three of us had dinner and lunch the next day. Ugh.
A Corvallis friend:
Hermana Bender- She has been such a blessing to me. We talk about home, her siblings, her family, the ward, the Portland temple, what not. She’s going to the Guatemala City East mission. She only has 1 week left till she enters the field! I’m so excited for her.
She wrote about the cat:
I actually miss him! I haven’t seen a live animal in awhile. It’s just dorms and dorms and classrooms for me.
And finally, a little review of her day:
I love my classes! I have tons of Spanish every day and gospel classes a little too, but mostly language. I’ve already learned it all, so people think I’m a pro, but I’m so not.
Cheeky girl!

 

ALERT!

ALERT!

I have misinformed you! The Dear Elder letters are not getting to Teigen! Apparently, there is another option that I didn't find until just now. When looking for her mission....we need to select the Guatemala MTC Mission not the Guatemala City Central, like I told you.

If you let me know that you are writing her via Dear Elder, I will keep you posted on the correct address. You can let me know in any way that works for you...I will have a private list of who to keep informed.

I will try to keep my errors to a minimum.