Hermana Kiara Harker's Mission Adventures

Kiara's First Email!!!

(mom please send this to everyone) is this real life? oh my goodness. contact with the outside world. i cannot believe it is here. its been way too long. i dont even know where to begin. family, i met a hermana (sister missionary) right at first when i was checking in and could still see you guys. her name is Hermana Balls and she is so sweet and cute. we stayed together until we found the other group of missionaries going to mexico as well. (i have no time for punctuation and grammar and capitualization. dont care. just want to talk.) and then we met the rest of the missionaries. we waited for another two hours until we could board, just talking about where we are going and all that crap. and then it was weird on the plane. my eyes were still puffy from crying and my head ached and i didnt feel well. anyway i tried to have my first missionary experience. there was a lady sitting next to me and there was an empty seat next to her. she asked if we were missionaries and i said yes and i just casual conversation. and then when we were getting ready for take off, she said "ive had a bad morning. i deserve this" as she moves to the empty seat away from me and starts reading her book. it was fine. i didnt want to talk to anyone anyway. it was hard on the plane to not watch movies or play games or anything on the screen right in front of you. there was a guy kitty corner from me playing sudoku and i played it in my mind. i didnt want to sleep becuase i didnt want to give the lady the impression that i wasnt professional. i tried reading my spanish book of mormon but i couldnt. we landed, and got our stuff and checked in with the missionary guys. and then got on a school bus that took us through the city to the CCM (MTC). mexico drivers are crazy. there are guys in the middle of the street selling tamales. we get to the CCM and have an oreintation. we grab our suitcases and take them to our casas. my companion is Hermana Whitney.we were instantly friends at the airport and kinda stayed together the whole time. it was so cool finally putting on my missionary name tag. i love it. and then we went to dinner and every tuesday it is costco pizza for dinner. its actually really gross and old. there are also places for salads and fruits and rice and beans. the beans are gross. then we had a devotional which was cool. it was all in spanish. songs, speakers, the objective we had to memorize all in spanish. then after the "greenies" (we had to carry around a green packet because we were new and it had papers and important stuff in it. thats how you can tell if someone is new. the cursed green packet) had to go to their houses and unpack. it is just me and hermana whitney in our room. there are like six other rooms in the house with up to four girls in them. but its just the two of us in ours because it is so small. we have our own bathroom and two sets of bunkbeds and our own closets. At night you can hear "fireworks" (most likely gun shots but its better to think of them as fireworks) and then theres a guy with a megaphone walking around outside the wall selling tamales. its real fun. and creepy.

this first week was really hard for me. i cried everynight and sunday sucked. i wanted to be with my family and i was just super depressed but my companion helped me and i received a blessing which was really cool. but after sunday, the days have been long but it goes by so fast. at the end of the day i cant remember what we did in the morning and it feels like just yesterday was monday.

im picking up the language. cant say im anywhere near fluent. we taught our first "investigator" (she actually works here) on our first real day and it was all in spanish. we have lots of tools and books. it actually went really bad but after that we have been really successful. we actually got her to commit to be baptized and invite her devout catholic husband to come to church with us! yay! too bad its not real. but we got reviews and she said we have been really good and to actually help the other sisters with their spanish. there are only four sisters in our district. and six companionship's.

funny story. the other night our carbon monoxide alarm wend off when we were about to go to sleep. so we had to go outside because we could smell gas. that was fun. and so we had to wait until a worker came and helped us. so we were supposed to be asleep and in bed around 1030 but my companion and i had to wait up for some other workers while everyone went back to bed so we didnt get to sleep till 1130. that was a fun morning. its weird how much an hour less of sleep can impact your morning.

another funny story. another other night i woke up at 1230 in the morning asking my companion if we were supposed to go and get ready yet. and i looked outside the window and it was still dark and my companion just said "i dont know". i also started taking the sheets off my bed. because we were having our bedding cleaned that morning and i needed to take off my sheets and stuff. silly kiara. also i havent been called kiara in a real long time because my first name is now Hermana so i feel like im not myself. but its fine.

really everyday is practically the same. wake up. personal study. breakfast. language. book of mormon. TALL (more language stuff) lunch. sometimes gym time. companion study and prepare for teaching the "investigator". dinner. language study. study something else. daily planning. personal time to get ready for bed. but we are always doing something. memorizing. studying. preparing. working constantly. it makes time go by really fast.

we are now not the newest ones here. we have been here for almost two weeks now. we got a new shipment of "greenies" for our zone this past tuesday and we were able to introduce ourselves and it feels good to have some wisdom under my belt being a week older than them.

i cant say how many times praying and reading my scriptures has helped me these first 10 days. on sunday when i was having one of the worst days ever, we were fasting for the Gift of Tongues, and when we should have been at lunch we stayed and i asked my district what scriptures they read whenever they are having a hard time. and it actually turned into a mini testimony meeting. i got a lot of really great scriptures and inspirational thoughts from my district. and it has really helped me a ton. it is so beautiful and meaningful praying and hearing prayers in spanish. i can say i can say a lot in my prayers in spanish. both personal and with the group. the first step is praying in spanish and i can say i can do that. we are getting taught by locals in spanish all day and so now my thoughts are in spanish too. we have to try to speak as much as we can in spanish during the day. and it can be hard sometimes because whenever i try to think of a work to say in english, i cant because i have been thinking and talking in as much Spanish as i can. first world problems.

i think i covered just enough to scrape the surface of this past week.

if youd like to send me packages, send them through missionary package mx. dont send letter because they will take forever to get here. send them through missionary package mx if you can. just look it up on the interweb or facechat or whatever you kids call it these days.

also, i only get an hour to read and respond to emails and that sucks but whatcha gonna do.

i love you guys so much. keep praying for me. i love you!!!!!!

with all the love in mi corazon,

Hermana (kiara because im still here) Harker