The past two weeks have been crazy! It has felt like a month has gone by but I guess it hasn't lol. Anyway, good time, bad times, funny times, rule breaking times, risky times, and all the in between.
Okay so recap of the first week in my new area. I have a new companion, Sister Fudge, and she is from Florida. She is my first companion that is older than me lol. At home I felt young still on the mission I feel old lol, but I'm not I promise. Anyway, so transfers day was awesome! Because I got my new companion and we had a lesson to teach that night. The next day (Thursday) we traveled to the island that is in my area, yes my area covers an island. But it doesn't just cover one island it covers around six islands and I can go on all of them! So cool!!! However, I can really only justify going on three of them. I'm so excited. So that day we just explored because she hadn't been on the island either and we ended running into an grandma that was awesome! She is very lonely because her husband recently died. So we left a plan of salvation pamphlet with her and told her we would come back. Mind you exploring and island and finding a miracle person all happened on the first day.
Okay that was the most exciting part of last week, now this past week yay!
Monday- we decided that for pday we would explore one the smaller island and boy was that an adventure. Only one set of elders came with us and no one else really wanted to travel that far that day so the four of us started our adventure after email that day. We took a bus to the first island (it has a bridge connecting it), and then a ferry to the next island (a bridge should be built soon) and the ferry ride was only about 15 min. Well in that hour and half we ended up playing three games of bang -on the bus and while waiting for the ferry. So much fun! After that we got the island and lets just say it was very deserted and we decided to be adventurous and explore the more deserted part of it. While my companion thought it would be a great idea to explore rice fields lol. Well we ended up meeting people and seeing the area is worth exploring more. These people have never seen missionaries before in their lives! How cool is that! Anyway, on our way back to the ferry we were walking along this small cement road, both sides had water with dirt and bushes. I was of course on edge from the beginning but then out of nowhere this fezent popped out of the bush and of course me being me, I grabbed on to the first thing I could, which in this case happened to be one of the elder, Elder McLean. He finally brought me back to after a minute when he said, "Can you please let go of me." I apologized a lot and was super embarrassed but then the older elder, Elder Robinson, decided of course to mock me for the rest of the walk back. Where was my companion the whole time, two feet ahead on the phone with our district leader. Yes, hilarious pday. No worries after breaking the rules with Elder McLean I decided repent and held on to my companion the rest of the way back instead.
And Monday was the birthday of the best nephew ever, Erick!!!
Tuesday- I'll make this short, I discovered my new English class has a couple of creepy men in it. So Elder Robinson will now be teaching the class with me thank heavens. And we visited a less active who after three years wants to come back to church and decided to ask for help.
Wednesday- Well now I know what it's like to be a pop star, and the elders in my district need some humbling. We went to do service at a high school with low income students. We obviously went to help teach the only thing we could-English. Well as we are walking to and into the classroom all the students eyes are on us. They all were saying hi and getting super excited. We walked into the classroom and immediately the excitements heightens and the teenage girls start going crazy over the elders and well us in general. The teacher starts the class and asks us to introduce ourselves, my companion is first. She says her name and then come screams - all that was missing were the flashing camera lights- then again they have phone cameras. Then wow, Elder Heglewall starts to introduce himself-he is blonde, blue eyed, tall, and bit muscular- need I say more? And Koreans LOVE Americans- especially blonde and blue eyed Americans. This continues for the rest of the introductions but two of the elders got the most screams. It was awesome to be able to help and I loved the girls I was with they were awesome. We even talked about families and I told them how much I love my family and that my best friends are my family. They also wanted to get our phone number, I didn't know if it was allowed so I told them next week.
Well one of them ended up coming to our English Class on Saturday and brought two friends- so exciting!
Thursday- we went back to the island and rode a bus to try to get information about the other island we want to explore. On the bus we found the perfect person. He was a kind, service oriented older man. The elders will be meeting with him :). We were at the bus terminal on the island and we decided to go on a bus that had many grandmas and students lining up to go on it. It was great because we know where to go now but on the way back we decided to get off the bus and explore a bit. Well it turns out not many buses drive on that road... so we ended having to hitch hike our way back to the terminal so we could get back to the mainland in time for our dinner appointment. We are only allowed to go in a car with a female in it so we had to make sure she was a female driver. My companion ended up teaching the first lesson to her :). So cool! I'm glad she stopped because if she hadn't it would have been about an hour or two walking distance. Oops, at least now we will be better prepared. Then our dinner appointment/back to being pop star we went to eat dinner at our investigators house with the elders because they will be teaching her husband while we teach her. Well on the way there my companion was stopped by a man which isn't unusual we are stopped often to say hello. She does a little hair flip I tease her about all the time, she flipped her hair out of her badge. Then he shows her pictures of us teaching at the high school, apparently they are online??? Then he wants a picture with us! Crazy right!!! Turns out he knows someone from the high school and that is why he knew about the picture, but so cool!
Friday- We had interviews with President Morrise (best mission president ever!) And later that night we were supposed to host a game night to help the ward and our investigators meet all the new missionaries and each other but we only had our investigators turn out and only two of them. No ward members :( (Please go to ward activities) I was devastated because it was perfect time for our investigator to meet the ward and no one showed up :(. Well the other elders wanted to have more people so they went to find them and we had 6 more random boys come to the activity. It was a fun a night all in all.
Saturday- My birthday!!!!! The Relief Society just so happened to be going to lunch and a movie that day so we were invited to the lunch. So I got free lunch! Then had an awesome English class turn out! Afterwards my awesome district took me out to Baskin Robbins were we all shared a bucket of ice cream! So much fun!!! The day before at interviews I was also able to get letters, cards, and a package from great people back home! Thank you so much!! I didn't expect to get anything since my birthday package from my family had come early but it was an awesome surprise!!!
Okay that was my week, yes the expectation is pretty high for this week! We will go to the temple and hike one of the biggest mountains in Korea!
Love Always,
Sister Tovar
