Week 12 = Week 8 in the field.....good times in Ramona

July 12, 2015

Our investigator has a date for the 25th...it's cutting it close, so

we might have to push it a little, but if we see him enough we can do

it! He's funny! He's an old man who lives in a van. We teach him at

the church with a member.

My comp and I are complete opposites, but we get along really well and

I've yet to get super annoyed or angry with her. She probably has with

me---ESPECIALLY this week. I don't blame her though....I made the

dumbest mistakes. I would be mad at me I got pulled over for the

lights (new cars have day and night lights and I didn't know that)

Annd I locked the keys in the house. I know what you're thinking : oh

Scarlett that isn't surprising at all. And you're right. It isn't. But

we get along pretty well and we make videos on the iPad about our

experiences. She thinks it pretty funny after something really dumb

happens. Did I mention she's from Seattle? I'm her first companion

that hasn't been from Utah, so I'm pretty special ;)

We got the area book planner app and yesterday we tried to use

it....so confusing. But I think we are getting the hang of it

now....so that's good. It's pretty cool, but everytime we get a

referral or set an appointment we are going to have to whip out our

iPads instead of our agendas so that's going to be awkward. Maybe I'll

just get a little note book and write it down. Then I can just enter

it in at the end of the day. Right now we have to enter all our area

book records into the iPad. And if you ask any missionary they'd

probably say that's going to take forever. We have to do every record

that's ever been made from the past 2 years (and beyond if they were

taught a lot).

This week was pretty good though, other than all the dumb stuff I did.

I'm getting better at sports! I have to since I'm forced to play the

mornings we don't run and p day. It's pretty fun, actually. I enjoy

it. So yeah I'm getting super cultured out here on the mission.

Look up chucharon in a jar and imagine me eating a piece of that.... 😷

I eat so much Mexican food it's ridiculous. And their serving sizes

are huge so it's a good thing I have to run a lot and play sports and

be active. I would be fat otherwise.

Did you watch the funeral for president packer? We got to watch it and

it was very good. I actually learned a lot. The cool thing about

funerals is that it's one of he only times we get to hear an apostle

pray. It's so cool.

Cool things I learned from the funeral:

Let the pending items pend (always be willing to wait for the council

and inspiration from The Lord.)

Study of doctrine will improve behavior quicker than a study of

behavior will Improve behavior--Elder Packer

Cool things I learned during studies:

" Refrain from repeatedly thinking or saying negative words about

yourself--there is a clear difference between humility and

humiliation. Identify and use your unique talents rather than dwelling

on your weaknesses" this was from a talk and I have been dealing with

feeling really inadequate but this has really helped me. I've just set

really high expectations for myself and my comp always tells me that I

need to be ok with being a beginner. So, I'm learning. Slowly. I have

my days, but it's not as bad as it was at the beginning. Yesterday was

very hard and I was thinking that way, but I need to realize that I am

a beginner and enjoy it. I don't even worry about Spanish anymore. I'm

far from fluent, but I'm pretty advanced for how long I've been out.

I'll reassess in a month and see if I need to fix anything but

yesterday my comp said I speak like I've been here for 6 months (which

is still not very good, but I've only been here for almost 2 months.)

so out of all the things I'm stressing out about, that is not one of

them. At first it was but then I few weeks ago, I don't know what

happened. I just realized I'm a beginner and it will get better.

Tomorrow is my 3 month mark!!!! Woot woot!!

Time to email president! (We do that every week)

Love,

Hermana Lapp

Sent from my iPad

MORE PICTURES

Week 11 - Grasshoppers and more Missionary work

I chewed up and spit out a grasshopper.....It was disgusting. Our branch pres brought it home from Tijuana (everyone here goes to TJ all the time.) we're basically living in Mexico sometimes. 

Some good things about Ramona: the branch pres calls us "mis niñas"

because he loves us and there's a less active who says she needs an

angel hug (sister missionary hugs) when she sees us. I've been to a

Spanish ward party now and my view of ward parties will never be the

same, There's never parking so I'm learning how to parallel park, and

the branch is improving! We've just got to hit it hard this next

transfer. Oh yeah I'm in my 2nd transfer now!

Fourth of July was pretty boring...we just stayed inside from

6-bedtime. We just watched the John tanner story and only a

stonecutter (pretty inspiring movies), updated our area book, and

called other sister missionaries. It was good times. We did help our

ward with the 4th of July breakfast. Think about this: the Spanisn

ward made the breakfast for the American Independence Day. They made

some awesome breakfast burritos though and all the English wards loved

it.

This week was pretty much the same. We got dropped 4 times which is a

bummer, but we just need to do a lot of finding activities! And I need

more faith!

Can you believe 2 apostles have died? That's crazy. We watched elder

Perrys funeral and now we get to watch president packer's. Their

funerals are actually pretty inspiring so I enjoy watching them. And

we actually get to hear apostles pray! That never happens because they

always speak at general conference and things but at funerals we get

to hear them pray.

I got a kick out of nannys pictures,[in Switzerland] those ladies are teenagers again

when they get together....they take selfies and "artsy" pictures. They

crack me up! Gotta love em!

We did a ton of service this week, it was ridiculous. I love service

so it was all good.

My Spanish is improving slowly but surely. There are other areas in

the mission that hopefully I go to. They speak Spanish so much and

that's where you get basically fluent. But I know I'm here for the

struggle of learning because it's actually come pretty easy for me so

far. It's the understanding that gets me. So anyway, I love this area

though and I love our branch. It can be hard sometimes, but we get

through it!

Love,

Hermana Lapp

Week 10 - Life in Ramona

June 23, 2015

It's so HOT outside! I just saw the weather in Idaho......like 73. :(
it was 101 a week ago at 10 in the morning! And we don't us our car
all the time because we have a certain amount of miles. We usually
park and then walk to other places in the area. It's soooo hard when
it's so hot! But the people are awesome!

Well this week was an interesting one. We had a mission presidents
fireside where we got to sing a lot in a choir and listen to
missionaries to musical numbers. It was pretty spiritual and a good
opportunity to get to know other missionaries....and to see sisters
because we never get to see them!! We are the only sisters in our zone
and that can be difficult sometimes.
I went on exchanges to Santee this week and that was pretty fun. The
STL I was with is a white girl from Mexico....she grew up in Mexico
but she's white. It's so cool. Anyway it was really fun and it was
nice to get away from Ramona for a day.
We also had to move this week. We switched apartments with the elders
so now all the elders live In the same complex and we live by
ourselves. Our apartment is a lot smaller and the a/c is t as good,
but hey that's the missionary life, that's how it goes. At least we
have a place to live, food to eat, a bed to sleep in. We've got it
good!!! We have to unpack tonight though and I'm not very excited for
that.

My running is slowly improving, I am getting better. We also play
ultimate frisbee and that is a blast. We have a lot of fun playing
that and I catch every frisbee that comes my way! It's just the
throwing that I need to work on.
Last week we went to a Padres game and this week we are hiking up to
potato chip rock, so I should have some pictures next week. They had
wifi at the Padres game so I just emailed pictures from there! That
was pretty cool.
My comp and I had a heart to heart last week......
I'm grateful that she's my trainer. Plus she makes
cookies for weekly planning and it doesn't get much better than that.

In other news, we have iPads now, I now have all the ensigns and
general conference talks since 1971 (that's how far it goes back in
the gospel library) so that's pretty sweet.
We get the area book planner app soon which I am very excited about.
We have an area book with progress records of ever person in the area,
every mission has these in every area. But now that we are an iPad
mission we have to enter all those into the area book app and then we
will always have it with us, so when we don't know who to visit we
just go to that and it'll show us a. Map of our area and where all the
people are. And then we can just visit them from there. Sometimes it
is hard to have something g to do because we are not allowed to go
knock on random doors in our mission, they have to be a referral or an
old investigator. So it'll be nice to just have that on us and we can
just go knock doors of old investigators! We also will have our
planner on there, so we won't have to carry around planners anymore.

This week was same as usual. We do a lot of service and that's pretty
cool. We are trying to work as hard as we can, the area is pretty slow
in missionary work right now, but we are doing our best to speed it
up!

We had a miracle though. We met a street contact who is SUPER
interested in having a lesson and another guy on the street came up to
the less active we were meeting with at yogurt barn and said he wanted
to hear about us. MIRACLE. We have like 5 investigators and none are
progressing, so we praying. We have two other investigators that have
soooo much potential! They are so prepared, but we can never find
them/they never have time. But they are so prepared and so interested!
I don't know what's up with one of them. He's just never at home and
we don't have his phone number. The other guy just works a looooot and
he really needs to, so he never has time for us. I love both of them
though and really hope that the lord will provide them with just a
little time to visit with us.
Another miracle is that the branch mission leader finally came out
with us to go tach yesterday. That was a miracle too!

I also have two hours to email now which is awesome because now I can
respond to everyone! Everyone has been so supportive and awesome! :)


Love you mom!

Hermana Lapp


Sent from my iPad

Week 9 -

I had asked her some questions and her email this week was in response to my questions....

This area is the 2nd hottest area in the mission and I have to be here in the summer.....but that's ok! We'll be safe...(I asked her if they are predicting any fires this year with the heat and drought).they usually evacuate missionaries super fast if there is a problem in an area. 

The food is good, it's almost always Mexican food which I'm already sick of...I need to go to the Wendy's near by and get a burger so that I won't be sick of Mexican food anymore. It's cool that we get to be in Spanish work though, because it really is a different culture even though we're still in the states. If I was in English work, we'd be going to giant houses where rich people live. I'm happy with the call and i know I'm where I'm supposed to be.

The area is different than all the other areas in the mission. It's a town just a bit bigger than kuna....which I wasn't expecting. It's nice though because I get to train in something I'm comfortable with and then when I'm done training I hope they send me to a big city because I want to go somewhere that the work is just blowing up. That's the problem with small towns....the work just slowly progresses and our branch is tiny, so leadership and referrals from members are sparse. It's a great place to be though!! I love the mission!

We do laundry at a members house. We live in a dinky little one bedroom apartment. Our mission just got iPads.......so now the bag is too big....but I'll still have uses for it. It'll come in handy every time I have to move and for exchanges (going with an sister training leader). 

Our Mission Pres. let us go to a Padres game!

Week 8 - Zebra farms and HOT days

OK!  I am finally online again. My laptop had to be replaced because I dropped it at the airport. I will post all of the weeks we missed today.  Thanks for your patience!

June 9, 2015

This week was very short...the days go by really fast already. I thought this first transfer would be really slow, but it just doesn't seem like the days are long enough.

Last Wednesday I cleaned the stalls (yes the stalls) at a zebra farm. Did you know those existed? Well, they do and I serve at a zebra farm every Wednesday. So yeah, that's pretty fun

Today for pday we are going to the Julian Mines...I'm not really sure what that is, but I've heard its pretty fun.

My Spanish is slowly progressing. I can't really understand anyone, but I can talk alright. I can teach a lesson wonderfully if they don't ask questions! haha it's going well though. I feel like everyone in the branch is judging my Spanish and I feel the pressure.  But it's all good!

We get ipads on Friday, so that'll be interesting and it will make things pretty easy. We can see the area book anytime we need to! That's a blessing right there.

it's soooo hot! Ramona was 100 yesterday at 10 in the morning! Luckily, we have a car. I would die!! Some days are super productive and some days are a little harder to find people to teach, but the work is progressing! I can tell the members are getting more excited for missionary work (we've been working on that with the members). As long as we teach the members about missionary work with a fire in our eyes, we will get through to them!

we changed our area split with the elders in our branch, and the members were not happy about that. THey love sisters more. The elders say its because the sisters always leave them with warm fuzzies while the elders leave them with bold doctrine. which is true, But the problem is that the branch needs bold and our mission needs BOLD so we're trying so hard to be bold. The members don't need warm fuzzies, they need doctrine!

Get people to send letters, I'm going to start feeling like a loser here soon!

OH and We have a car and a week before transfers, I have to start driving! I'm so scared, the car is a 2014 Jeep......brand new. Yeah I don't want to be responsible for that. And btw we can't speed because we have TIWI that yells at us when we speed.

Anyway, It;s been a good week :)

Love,

Hermana Lapp