I LOVE
YOU ALL SO MUCH! I am here!! I´m in the field! Safe and sound! My mission president is amazing, as is his
wife. I don´t know if I have met a more incredible couple. (My parents
excepting, of course. hehe.) I am in my first area, which is Mao. I love it so
much. It´s smaller, but not too small, and way more calm than Santiago proper
or Santo Domingo. It is much more fresca up here in the north! I love that part
sooo much. P-days are actually Wednesdays in my mission, but yesterday was
transfers and we didn´t even get here until about 530. I have to apologize for
any bad or lack of punctuation because I don´t know how to turn the keyboard
back into english settings. My compa is Hermana Veras! She is so kind and funny
and a native to the DR. I know that having her as a companion will help me grow
SO much. Last night when we got here, one of the members was with the other
sisters who share our house to pick us up. She procured a margharita for my
luggage. It´s not an alcoholic drink- it´s a little funny open car thing! I
will try to take a picture to show you. They are adorable, and I have only seen
them here in Mao so far. After I unpacked a little, we went to an activity at
the church which was muy divertido. The elders from our area were there and it
was just about 12 members gathered to play games. There was double dutch jump
rope with actual rope and sack races with actual rice sacks! Hahaha. We played
in the overflow and can I just say that Dominicans are MUY CHISTOSO. haha.
Playing with them was a blast. There was one game we played where we sat in a
circle and had two ties, which the elders so graciously donated from around their
necks (lol). One tie was on each opposite side of the circle to start. The
object was to just tie the tie around your neck (like the beginning of a knot,
the way you tie shoes) then loose it and pass it to the next person, however
one tie had to be tied twice, so it took a little longer. If you ended up with
both ties, you had to go to the middle of the circle and pretend to be an
animal of the other players´choice. It was SO funny. Some of the guys would
take a long time with the double tie so that the single tie would start to
catch up and the people after them were tying the ties like their life depended
on it! It was SUCH a fun time!!! We are not allowed to do knocking on doors
(which here in the DR means yelling BUENAS through the open doorway), because
the president wants us to work more with the members and get referrals through
them. I am so excited to get to know them. It´s a little hard because I don´t
understand everything and there is a lot of hot latino blood here, so I don´t
want to mess up and offend someone! Mostly everyone is really nice though, and
I know that Hermana Veras is looking out for me. I am already in love with this
area. It´s always mosquito season though, so I already have lots of bites on my
ankles, but I repented and pulled out my bug spray today. It should be good! I
had some Dominican food yesterday which was pretty good, just rice and some
ground beef with some vegetables mixed in. Also some jugo, which I think was
made of pineapple, with a rice base and something else... it made me think of
horchata. It was so sweet and sooo good. Haha. This morning was quite the
adventure... our shower doesn´t work, so we use the hose through the window- it
was like a movie. At one point I let go of the hose to do something and it made
its way right back out the window. I had to call out to Hermana Veras and yell,
¨Yo perdi la agua a traves de la ventana!¨ Hahaha. It was pretty dang funny. Oy
that water was cold. I´m going to have to break more of a sweat in the mornings
when we workout, so that it will feel more refreshing and less like a torture
method. bahaha. Hermana Veras told me that we teach a mission prep class here
and apparently I am going to start teaching an english class. LOL I don´t even
know spanish, but I´ll be teaching native speakers english. Bienvenida a la
misión, as we say. Haha. Oh and if you remember, there are tons of chickens and
roosters here. All of which were crowing all morning! What a funny experience.
They just crowed and crowed all morning long. I bet Dad will get a kick out of
that. Well, I need to go but I love you all! Take hot showers!!
Love, Hermana Harden
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