Tuesday, August 26, 2014

I cant believe I"m in Florida

 Hermana Baugh and her Mission President and his wife


Hey everyone! So just wanted to say that I made it to Florida safely and already have 7 baptisms lined up since being here so things are going pretty good. Just kidding.

But the work here is really good I've been really busy. At first it was really weird leaving the CCM, my time there felt like two weeks but also like I had been born and raised within those walls. It was weird switching our brains back into English going through the Atlanta and Tampa airports. We went through customs and couldn't help saying things like oh lo siento or como esta and the workers were like what are you white girls in America wearing church clothes doing speaking to me in Spanish?

President Cusick and his wife met all of us in the airport. And by all of us I mean the 20 or so missionaries that met up going to Tampa in the Atlanta airport. There were only three Hermanas. Being an Hermana in an English speaking mission is kind of like being a different species of missionary. Or at least that's what it feels like here. But anyways we all went over to presidents house and I had my first meal of not rice and beans and Nutella and frosted flakes and mangos and salad with berries and ranch in 6 weeks and it was probably the most glorious thing of my life. The next day was full of different training meetings. Best part of he day was when we all got iPads. It's kind of weird having technology again but at the same time it's not because it's pretty much just like having electronic scriptures. Whe we are around wifi though it's nice though because I get to read emails that come through during the week.

Thursday was the day that we were assigned our companion and area. I felt like I was being set up in an arranged marriage as president called us and our companion up one by one and told us where we were going. My companion is Hermana Newbill and she's been out for 14 months and we are serving in the Cortez area which is in the city of Bradenton which is about an hour south of Tampa I think.

I like Bradenton! It's not the prettiest or the nicest haha but there's palm trees and people who speak Spanish so I'm happy. I was a little overwhelmed when I got here because there are so many people we are teaching. We've taught over 20 lessons since I got here Thursday afternoon so yeah we've been busy! Teaching is pretty much all we do. We don't have many member dinners because we have a rule where we can't have a dinner with them unless they invite a nonmember. It's a good rule though because it encourages the members to do more missionary work and discourages missionaries like me from getting fat haha. We did have one with this Columbian family who invited their 7th day Adventist friends to dinner and we had this Columbian dish I don't remember the name of and taught about the restoration. It was really hard though because the dad if the family was so caught up about how the sabbath should be on Saturday and yeah this was all in Spanish so I didn't really know what was going on so my companion talked to him while I just sat and smiled and pretended like I understood what was going on which I'm getting pretty good at doing. Ahh Spanish is hard I'm kind of having a hard time with it. It's hard trying to remember to have patience and to not get frustrated at myself sometimes. I'm glad that there are a lot of Spanish speaking people here though because it's helping me to practice. We teach a few people in English though so it's nice having a break every now and then.

Sunday was great! We went to two wards because one of our English investigators went to the English ward. But 6 were at the Spanish branch with us it was great! The branch president is really nice... The first thing he asked me when I walked in though is if I played the piano haha so looks like I'm going to have to be doing at a lot. I have a "try out" on Thursday and I'm debating if I want to fail it or not.

Florida is soo humid. I've discovered that I have a talent for being able to sit and do absolutely nothing and still be able to sweat. It's pretty impressive actually.  We have a car though but I'm scared because I think we are going to run out of miles soon and when that happens that means bikes. The air con in our apartment has been broken the last few days though so that's been death sleeping at night. It doesn't help that I don't have a pillow and have been using my sweatshirt as one haha. I keep saying that there is a reason I was called stateside...and the ability to have air con was one of them so hopefully that gets fixed soon!

Well I'm running out of time. I always feel like I have so many things I want to say during the week but then when the time for emailing comes I forget them all and end up saying a bunch of random stuff. Mission life is hard. It's really hard and I'm already tired all the time haha but but I just keep telling myself that that's good because it means that we are doing our job. I know that if we keep working hard like we've been doing there will always be people to teach here in Bradenton. Love you all and hope everyone has a good week!

Love Hermana Baugh

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