Oh Puerto Rico!

September 22, 2010

Doing service at an elementary school.
 It reminded of my grade school in Chile, San Lorenzo

Puerto Rico is a funny place.  Sister Krout and I were brainstorming all of the crazy things they do and this is the list that we came up with.

1. Puerto Ricans clean their house with a hose—on the inside too.  They can just move out the furniture and spray everything down (Some couches they can even leave inside too)  They use mistolin and a broom to clean everything.  Walls, showers, patios, I have even seen people scrubbing down their cars with a big ole broom.
2. No body ever goes to the doctor.  It is straight to the hospital.  I don’t know how many times I have heard people say “I had a cold, or I was dizzy, so I went to the hospital.”
3. All Puerto Rican Parties include elaborate and ridiculously overpriced cakes, bizcochos, that taste awful.
4. Red lights are more like guidelines, even for the police.
5. We live right by a funeral home and the funeral processions are a huge ordeal. There are forever long lines of traffic, but it’s great because the hearse is usually blaring loud sappy Latino ballads.
6. For the typical Puerto Rican male, Mohawks, rat-tails, or “duck butt” hairstyles are very popular.
7. Puerto Ricans do not function in the rain.  You would think that since they live on a tropical island they would have learned how to get used to it by now.  But now we know that even in the slightest of showers we can expect all of our appointments to call and cancel because of the rain.
8. There is no regulation or licensing for construction.  Anyone can pick a spot and build whatever they want.  As a result all of the houses are very poorly designed.  For instance our house that only has 4 outlets.  All in extremely inconvenient locations.
9. And my favorite of all, the Puerto Rican pride.  Very few Puerto Ricans hold a job.  Almost all receive money from the government or some sort of medications.  My favorite is our across the street neighbor who is an extreme advocate for Puerto Rico to break away from the states. I don’t think he realizes that if that were to happen his magical social security funds would stop and he would actually have to find employment.

I love and miss you all.  I just got a pack of letters that were sent to me in July and it was good to get letters from the roomies and family.  Better late than never.

I miss you all and pray that all goes well in these next weeks. 

Hermana Palmer

Hello Sis. Palmer,

Young Women in Juncos Ward

Hna Palmer asked that I send this to you, I wrote it to my mother and I am sending it on to you.

So we played a joke on our district and zone leaders this last week, I thought it was pretty funny. We have this thing called “Foundation” which basically means that you get 140 contacts and 20 lessons. Sis. Palmer and I could really care less about numbers, we work hard but numbers aren't everything. But our leaders kept saying we need to reach foundation we need to reach foundation. So we decided that the only thing that would really be worth working for would be to play a trick on our zone leader who we don’t really work well with. So we do 20 lessons and 139 contacts!!!!!! OH MY GOSH WE ARE CRAZY SISTERS ON THE LOOSE!!! So Sunday night they call asking for our numbers and we tell them we only have 139 contacts, we say we feel good with what we have achieved and need to go home. They beg and plead “please get one more contact just one more!!!!” We say we’ll think about it” Then we went and did 3 more. So we had 142! We thought it was pretty funny. They were so stressed that we wouldn’t do it and that we were just being rebellious. It gave us some pretty good motivation this week.

Hna Krout

Juncos

Christina's Baptism

Well, we had Christina's baptism yesterday.  It went really well. She is going to do so well within the church.  She really wants to work and change the ward.  I have really liked teaching Christina because it is more like teaching a friend than anything.  We are the same age and all get a long very well.  Christina is just so excited about the gospel.  She gave her Book of Mormon away to some one she met in her class yesterday and we are going to hopefully start teaching the friend.  I really admire the passion she has for the gospel.  She has been looking for it for years and is finally able to share her knowledge with everyone else.  She is just going to be so powerful.  I think my favorite part of her baptism was that as she was getting changed when asked me if she should take her belly button ring for the ordinance.  I said, “yes, that would be good” and she took it out and threw it straight into the trash.  Way to go Christina!  She is so fun and spunky.

On Friday we had a really great FHE with the Familia Anderson.  I love that family because they have 3 daughters who are all drama, drama, drama.  They love sparkles and Hannah Montana and they all love to talk at the same time.  Hermano Anderson reminds me of Dad, suffocating in a world of all girls.  Anyway, we invited Christina over and did an FHE with their family.  We played Pit in the 10 commandments version I invented and it was an absolute hit!!  They loved it!   We got so loud and into it I am sure all the neighbors were wondering what was going on. 

We have also started working with a really fun less active couple, the Iannones.  They are so loving and generous to us.  They are and older couple and both are from New York.  Typical New Yorkers.  The wife Hilda is Puerto Rican and is just the sweetest, kindest person.  The husband John doesn’t speak much Spanish and loves talking to us in English. Typical New Yorker he calls his wife “Babe” 100%  of the time.  ;) He used to be a comedian and is absolutely hysterical.  He know a ton about New York and I would absolutely LOVE to tour there with him one day.  He tells us about all the great Jewish and Italian pastry shops.  Knows all the right people to buy good Broadway tickets and supposedly has met all the great ones including Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond and others.  He is a fascinating man and not your typical Mormon.  He was telling me of his conversion story and how he used to be in the Mafia when he was a teenager.  He was young and wasn’t too far involved, but man I learned a lot from his stories.  I felt pretty naive  asking about how the Mafia works and how you get in, but man it was so interesting.  I think New York Puerto Ricans are my favorites.  The Branch President in Fajardo and his wife were also from the Bronx and were some of my favorites.

Hilda and John Iannone

When we got to the Iannone’s for the appointment we had Sister Krout and I were completely taken aback.  We walked in and the table was beautifully set.  Oh my goodness they had made the best food ever.  American style roast meat and potatoes, a leafy and lush salad and sour dough bread!!!!  It wasn’t rice and beans and it was so delicious!  Oh, I love anything that isn’t rice and beans.

I am so much happier to be working with less actives. I just feel so much more peace of conscious focusing on those precious lost sheep.  It was something I had wanted to focus on all of my mission and it is so gratifying.  I love this gospel and although I am definitely far from perfect, I love being a missionary.  I just hope and pray the Lord can help me become what he wants of me.

Hermana Palmer

Car czar

 Wednesday, September 08, 2010 10:38 AM

Reading the Book of Mormon on Aida's porch

Watching Legacy in the chapel for Pday!

  Happy Birthday Mom!!!  Hope you had a good day.   I was wanting to sneak in a phone call all day. 

  Wow.  What a ward party!  Power point and all.   You should just forward them all Keri's letter.  That would be an eye-opener.  I loved it.
  Not much has happened this week.  It was pretty ordinary.  We have new office senior missionaries and the husband is power hungry and horribly cruel.  He hates sisters.  He is confiscating all of the good cars from the sisters and giving us the junkers, because "sisters are more accident prone".  Even if your driving record is completely clean every sister is still labeled as incompetent.  He is also the elder who wanted me to move into the house without fumigating.  He is rather rude. 

  We did a service project yesterday with 4 elders.  It was painful to be around elders all day.  Really painful. 

  Dad, Peru sounds really pretty.  I guess I don't know too much about it.  I told some ward members that I will now be going home to Peru and they were just shocked and so proud.  They were happy that I will be practicing my Spanish but warned me, "They don't even eat rice over there... just a lot of vegetables."  Puerto Ricans are not into eating healthy and vegetables are a real rarity here.

  The power-point sounded funny.

Ilia's a mini missionary!

Sister Krout is still amazing.  She extended her mission until November, so we will most likely be together until then.  After that there is no telling what will happen, but I will deal with that later.  For now we are doing great and having some good success.  

Not to much out of the ordinary happened this week.  I am just trying to let go of my worries and serve whole-heartedly.   Look forward to hearing from  you again soon

Hermana Palmer

A visit from Earl

September 1, 2010
Dear Family,


This week was a special visit from hurricane Earl.  It was a huge hoopla and craze.  Not too much damage here in the inner island, but I heard that Fajardo had some flooding and the island of Culebra as well.   Basically what I have learned about tropical hurricanes is that is means that just before the storm hits things will get very, very hot.  I didn't think things could get much hotter here. But the entire day before I was just dripping wet.  It didn't matter where you were shade, sun, inside, outside, it was miserable.  Also the sky just before the storm is beautiful.  It is a panoramic kaleidoscope.  Every 10 minutes the sky is completely changed.  Clouds above are just streaming across the sky and the colors and shades fade dramatically into one another.  Blue, pink orange, blue, purple, black.  It was gorgeous.  The island of Puerto Rico however, was not so beautiful or so serene.  There was panic and mayhem.  Everyone was rushing to the store the morning of and stocking up on water and food.  The day of the hurricane there was tons of rain and lots and lots of wind.  It was interesting to try and do missionary work in the midst of a hurricane.  We were out working until 6:30 pm, but it was just ridiculous trying to find things to do.  Anyone we talked to asked "Do you know there is a hurricane coming?  What are you doing? Go home?"  Of course all of our appointments cancelled and trying to do contacts in the street was just absurd. Anytime we left the car we got completely drenched.  We were able to find a few less-actives who were cornered into their house and unable to avoid the missionaries so that was good.  We also taught a lesson to Christina via telephone.  That was fun.
But in the end hurricane Earl was a typical Puerto Rican event.  Lots of hoopla and shouting and flamboyance for nothing.  The wind just knocked a few trees over and gave everyone a big scare.  At 8:00 when the storm was supposed to hit things were pretty tranquil and the frogs were croaking serenely.  It was very fitting.

Sister Krout and I are working a lot with our investigator, Christina.  She is amazing.  She has finished the Principles of the Gospel book and is in Helaman in the Book of Mormon.  She is just eating everything up.  I can see her being a real leader and powerhouse in the church in Puerto Rico.  She has overcome some real doubts through sincere prayer.   Her testimony is growing so quickly and beautifully.

Teaching with Valeri Izarry

Tutoring Daniela Anderson

Church on Sunday was a paradox.  Sacrament meeting was so good and so spiritual.  The talks were well prepared and 100% doctrinal.  Nadia, my recent convert, was actually one of the speakers.  She spoke about nurturing the family and ward.  She had some powerful points about visiting teaching.  She is the visiting teaching coordinator and she had some wonderful testimony and insight on the matter.  This ward needs to hear it.  Sister Krout and I did a musical number which fit in perfectly with the theme.  It was a very spiritually uplifting experience.  Relief Society, however, was not.  The President gave a lesson on "Appropriate Dress for Church"  and basically railed on people who wear pants to church in an extremely not tactful, not spiritual way.  The spirit was not there and instead there was a cloud of discomfort and awkwardness.  The teacher spent 20 minutes with a pre-lesson apology asking that no one be offended.  That was our first signal that something was up.  The teacher was extremely cynical and went on horrible tangents of fashion fuax-paux and just was extremely offensive. I learned the importance of teaching  pure doctrine in church.  The spirit can be present and testify in that situation.  Did I mention that Christina was wearing jeans?


Christina left church saying that she would never come back to church again if there were people like that in the congregation and that she did not want to be baptized.  We are so grateful that as she was driving home in tears she felt impressed that she should pull over and pray.  She prayed to know if the book of Mormon was true and if this was the true church.  She felt, of course, that this is the true church and decided that even if the people in the church are not kind or Christ-like that they would not keep her from the truth.  She has now decided that the reason that she is in the Juncos ward is to help change the atmosphere.  She is taking the problem head on and asked if she can come with us to other less-actives and share her testimony and experience.  She will one day make a great leader.  I am so grateful that she prayed and that the Lord answered when she needed it.

I am so grateful to be serving here in Juncos and with Hermana Krout.  We are working so hard, learning so much, and just loving it.  I miss you and hope you are doing well.

Hermana Palmer