Happy New Year...

family!

holy moly it was so good to see you guys on Christmas! ive missed your cute faces! dont worry i didnt make me homesick at all. im glad your christmas was great! I LOVE the pictures you sent! gosh my family is good looking! my christmas was great! we had breakfast with our zone and did a gift exchange and then we watched UP (not a christmas movie but oh well) and then I got to skype you after 2 hours of running around looking for internet hah next time I will be more prepared! after we skyped we went to down town Arequipa (i forget what its called everytime) with all the missionaries in Arequipa and sang and contacted. it was so much fun. i loved it! This week has been great! we had Milagros baptism on Saturday! She´s awesome. i love teaching her! im very excited for her because this is something shes wanted for a long time! in two weeks we have another baptism for Macarena but after that we dont have anymore so we are focusing on finding new investigators this week! Im excited because i will be able to be with these investigators from the start! 

I feel like i dont have a ton to say because i just talked to you on christmas but i am doing so good! i have my days when its just so hard (well everyday) haha but i love it! i should have spoke spanish to you guys on christmas because i think i know more than you guys think but when i skype you in May i will be fluent! it comes fast when you have a latin companion! I love hermana Andia, we had a lot of good laughs this week! in our room we have this really really ghetto bunk bed and i sleep on top and so yesturday we were both laying on our bunks reading our scriptures and i legit fell off the top bunk, it was probably the funniest thing ever. the package you sent me is what broke my fall haha im grateful that was there! we both laughed for like an hour about it! also the people that live below us decided to start a rock band this week. So that has been a nice addition to our house. free music all the time. especially late at night! 

I forgot to tell you when i was flying to Arequipa from Peru I accidentally had a pocket knife in my bag (no idea why or how it got there) so when i was going through security they took me aside and hand cuffed me. just picture this...10 latin elders standing here watching this all happen. some lady talking to me in really fast spanish with me fresh out of the CCM haha i was freaking out. they made fun of me for the rest of the day. good times. 

anyways im glad my pensionista is sending lots of pictures! shes crazy. but i love her. she showed me the pictures you sent her! I LOVE YOU GUYS! im pretty sure their baby hates me. he gives me the dirtiest looks all the time. but they´re like my family here! 

thats about all thats going on in my life. the mission is so great! i love it here in arequipa! its real hot but im grateful for it!  anyways, i love you all so much! thank you so much for your prayers! you all mean the world to me! Happy New Years! 

xoxoxox 

-Hermana Holt 

El Misty 

View from our window-sunset for you dad.

My desk 

Got my Christmas package. I LOVED IT!

New Christmas Eve PJ's

Feliz Navidad..

hola family! que pasa?? haha

oh mannn what a week! so yeah Arequipa is great! its just so different here i dont even know how to explain it! i am trying to upload photos right now but its insanely slow so idk. I woke up this morning and washed my clothes on the roof of our house thingy we live in and then tried to clean our bathroom because its just so gross haha so yeah thats exciting. but this week went so fast and so slow at the same time. i dont know how to explain it! ill just kind of tell you how my days go yeah? soo we wake up and go running....well i do haha and then we walk to our pensionistas house for breakfast which is always so interesting. we eat so many carbs here it makes me worried haha my stomach still hates the food. its jacked up but whatever. i thought i had the flew this morning but i think it maybe passed? idk haha anyways after that we go back to our pension and do personal and companionship study for two hours then get ready and leave! we teach like 5 or 6 lessons a day and i talk like for one minute in each haha i cant even begin to tell you the frustration. but after that we eat lunch at like 3 and then do language study and 12 weeks study and then leave again for more teaching or contacting or whatever we have that day! its super hot here but i love it! its sooo dry which is perfect for me haha. we eat dinner at like 10 at night on our pension floor so i usually dont eat it becuase gross....then we go to bed! sooo yeah haha each day is a Little different though. we spend a lot of time with our zone! me and hermana andia are the only hermanas in our zone and i am the only one who doesnt speak spanish so thats super fun. our zone leader is from Utah and is leaving next transfer...oh and Elder malloy is in my zone mom haha i told him his blog made me laugh so hard. hes cool. i love my zone! they make fun of me like 100 percent of the time but its fine. ive been playin the violin a ton here! one of the elders form chili brought his violin so i played for a church thing and then for ronaldos baptism! ill tell you more about that in a second.

I really want to dye my hair hahaha i have yet to see another blonde person here and everyone just stares at me....i am ALWAYS the tallest person on the bus haha its pretty funny. i smack my head probably five times a day. hermana andia thinks its hilarious! i love her. she is so so so patient with me! we have a lot of fun together though. my spanish is coming along. i can basically communicate how i feel in broken spanish haha and i can understand a lot more then i could on tuesday so i have faith it will get better haha!

on saturday was ranaldos baptism! it was the chillest baptism ever haha i was so confused about it. we went to get him from his house thing and he just writes a note and puts it on the door that says "went to my baptism..chau" haha then we went to the chapel and he got baptized at like 9:30 at night haha idk it was weird but im so excited for him! he is the only one in his family that is a member so hes going to have to be strong! hes 13 i believe...after the baptism we were so late to getting back to our house and the taxis or buses would not stop for us haha it was hilarious! each of us were standing on different sides of the Street trying to flag down someone. it was fun haha the buses here are soooo crazy. its like a small van type thing and they just pack like 50 people inside. sometimes i sit up front with the bus driver which is probably so hilairous because im a gringo haha i love it.

so for christmas i think im skyping at 5 here so like 3 your time. i think thats what she said... haha i have an hour to skype. yayyy! im excited but nervous it will make me home sick haha. i love you guys soooo much! im so happy to be here. this is the hardest thing i have ever ever ever done from throwing up everyday because my stomach hates the food to not being able to understand anything hahaha (it sounds worse than it is) but its so worth it. seeing ranaldo get baptized was so cool. we have another baptism on saturday for Milagros. shes 17 years old and a nanny here. were besties even though we dont know what we are saying most of the time haha i love her to death! im so excited for her!

anyways, i love you all to death! i feel so blessed. i know i say that all the time haha but i just do! i hope you guys have a great week and i will talk to you on christmas!

feliz navidad!!

xoxoxox

Out of the CCM.....a whole different world!

FAMILY! coming to you live from idk where....but i get to just write you and tell you that i am here in Arequipa and i am safe! i dont even know how to put my life in words right now! i am in Central Arequipa so i am right in the middle of the city and its ridiculous how pretty it is here! i mean it is its own kind of pretty haha i am in the middle of the desert but i love it! i feel like i have the best mission in the world! my mission president and wife are the kindest most chill people i have ever met! so i will give you a really fast update on my life right now because its mad crazy! haah so we got here on tuesday morning at like nine. we left the CCM at 4. the flight here was good. i slept the whole way haha and my mission president was at the airport to greet us with the APs and his wife! i have to say that was maybe the happiest day of my life. i was just so happy to be here! we first went on a little tour of the city which is just insane idk even how to explain Arequipa (so much better than Lima) and then we went to the site of the new temple which wont be built while i am here but maybe the ground breaking will be. who knows. then we went to the center of the town (dont know how to spell it) but its so pretty. its a big fountain and a cathedrial (excuse my spelling) and we took pictures and met our trainers! then we went to the mission home since we are such a small group (only three hermanas came) and we ate lunch and talked about rules and all that good stuff! and found out where we would be serving! so yeah im in central arequipa and anderson and menlove are 6 hours away somewhere near the ocean! i shed many tears when we parted. haha i love those sisters and i knew that was the end of english. so yea. my companion is from Bolivia (hermana Andia) speaks no english really and so mostly we just stare at eachother and i just follow her around. i have no idea whats going on ever haha. we had a big zone thing yesterday with five other zones for christmas! it was crazy fun! we ate dinner and each zone did a skit! idk what ours was about because its all in spanish but i had to be apart of it. it was embarassing. so yeah that was fun yesterday because i was around other north americans! i have taught five lessons in these two days and ive talked in every sinlge one of them, pretty sure they dont understand me. actually i know they dont beacuse in last nights lesson with ranaldo (hes getting baptized on saturday) his grandma came in and basically told me to shut up. whatever confidence i did have is now gone haha but hasta bien! but in the lesson before that with milagro (the cutest 17 year old ever) it went okay! she is going to teach me ketchajua (however you spell it) alot of people here speak it haha!  i am going to learn spanish crazy fast with my trainer! its so rough right now but it will all be okay! shes so kind to me! my brain is absolutely fried but i just want you to know I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! its a whole different world here. we are so so so blessed. my pension is basically just four cement walls haha i dont want to talk about my bathroom and all that...but i feel blessed because i have a flushing toilet and most dont haha! most people here live in garages or idk even how to explain it. nothing like we have ever seen. we are just so blessed! my pensionista is so dang nice! they are my new family here! she lives a couple of blocks from me and we go to her house for all of our meals! each one has made me sick but thats so normal! there is an elder in my zone who has been here for 6 months and is sick all the time haha! its fine. my pensionista said he added you on facebook because tey took some pictures of me the other night. they decorated their whole house for me! it was so nice! i am their first gringo here so theyre excited haha even thoguh i have no idea what they are saying! anyways... i love it here! its going to take some getting used to but im excited to work hard! i think i get to email you again monday! not sure yet because no communication con me companion but yeah! ill maybe have details about christmas! also, i know you packages are here in peru i just havent recieved them yet! ive tried to ask my companion multiple times but i dont thnk she understands! haha oh well. I LOVE YOU! i will talk to you soon! 

xoxoxoxoxo hermana holt 

work carefully always with a smile...thats our mission moto haha i think president says carefully because its crazy here haha i pray for our safety every single day and my companion thinks its hilarious! the traffic here is just insane...BYEE

Peru MTC Christmas Devotional......

 Kinzie sang in the choir. Yay!!

More Sisters oh and Elders in the back. 

 Sister Hailstone (in the red) is Kinzie's companion.

 MTC Presidency

MTC grounds.

Happiness...

another week at the CCM..rice, espanol, and...idk what else haha its all the same. but

holy moly i love my family haha i was laughing so hard at the pictures you sent me! I LOVE THEM! they let the group before us send pictures but said no to us..lame. anyways i cant believe i am leaving on Tuesday. it seems surreal! its going to be hard leaving because i love the people here haha but im super excited! i dont know when ill get to talk to you again but i get to skype you in two weeks! can you believe it!? man im excited haha!

sooo heres whats been going on this week....we had two christmas devotionals this week! one was the one they do every year in provo and i could just picture you guys sitting down by the christmas tree and fire place watching it! i thought it was super good. and then on monday we had a christmas devotional here and all the Lima mission presidents came and the area authority and we sang which was really good. i actually love singing in choirs now haha and then we finally got to turn on the lights outside which was magical haha and they served us hot chocolate which was kinda weird because its so hot here but that was probably the happiest night of my life haha so good! so i mean it feels a little like christmas now! there are two videos i want you all to watch on lds.org you might have already seen them but they give me chills Everytime. theyre so perfect. the first one is called Share the Gift. (amazing) and the second is old but its my favorite video they have ever put out there. its called because of him. brings instant tears to my eyes everytime haha. also sunday was our first fast sunday. nearly died haha. jk. but it was super super good. there are some amazing elders in this CCM. i was the only sister that ended up bareing my testimony but i figured i had to take the opportunity to share my testimony in english one last time! anyways, its weird to think that today was my last time at the temple for 17 months! i wish the arequipa temple was done already! I was surprised at how much more i understood in the temple today from last week! its coming along haha. i got some cool stuff today that i want to send home but dont know if i will be able to so i guess you all will just have to wait 17 months!

I am really so proud of dad for getting fire fighter of the year! thas amazing! i really am so proud! :)

im stoked to see if carli gets a dog for christmas haha i hope this pet stays alive long enough for me to see it when i get home! haha 

anyways, i dont know what else to really say but just that i am so crazy blessed! i know i say this every week but i just love you all so much! i cant wait to see all of your cute faces for christmas! THANK YOU for all of your prayers and kind words! i will talk to you....idk when but soon!

xoxoxo -Hermana Holt

Week 4

hello everyone!

holy cow only two more weeks here. I cannot believe i have been out a month! my mission is going to fly hah. I am really excited to get out of the CCM. its getting old haha i still have no idea what i´m doing it will just be nice to have a change! So this morning we went to the temple as usual and i´m pretty sure we fit a record breaking number of people on the bus. we were laughing so hard because they just kept piling more and more peruvians on haha plus we are all too tall for the bus so we have to bend our heads down. good times. i got some cool peruvian pants and a scripture case today so im pretty excited about that!

so some highlights of this week...we had thanksgiving and watched a devotional from provo which was alright. and then had a thanksgiving meal type thing. it still consisted of rice but they tried haha! a bunch of kids from pueta (i think thats how you spell it) peru came and visited the CCM the other day and we got to talk to them which was definitly the highlight of my week! it was so much fun! i talked with this 15 year old girl for over an hour! we sang rhianna together and katy perry haha it was just so fun! I LOVE the peruvian people. they are thee kindest people i have ever met! its starting to get super hot here! ive already got a really nice tan line going so thats exciting haha! umm me and Hailstone were called to be the new sister leaders over all the hermanas in the CCM this week so were pretty excited about that! it will be super fun! oh and i got to see the moon for the first time this week haha usually its behind the clouds but someone told me its upside down here? are they messing with me orrr yes? idk but it was pretty! lets see what else...they put up christmas lights this week! its pretty exciting haha we are having a lighting ceremony on monday and im singing in it hahahaha hilarious right? the things you do for your companion...it seems crazy its december because of how warm it is but im not complaining! hah it sounds like its begining to look a lot like christmas at home (cheesy i know) but i love the christmas season! i cant wait to see what it will be like here! oh one more thing...first off im soo happy i am going to arequipa! i just keep hearing how beautiful it is there but we found out this week that they mostly speak quetchajua (dont know how to spell it) there and it is this insane language haha the lady i sat by at the temple this morning was from arequipa and was literally not any taller than my hips! i was a giant and she had no teeth and spoke only quetchajua haha. so i mean hopefully we wont have to learn that! but im just really excited im going there! lima is nice and all but not somewhere i would want to stay haha! anyways i hope everyone is doing well! i love hearing from you all! i appreciate everything you all do for me! LOVE YOU ALL!

i´ll leave you with this quote a hermana shared with us before she left on tuesday (which was really sad by the way! i hate when missionaries leave haha)

p.s. i dont know where the quote marks are on this keyboard soo yeahh..

there will nver be another time in our lives when Christ will ask you to step away from your family and leave behind everything you love. but there will also never be another time when he gets you all to himself. he is so excited and waiting for you to fall into his arms completely.

i really liked that. this time that i have out here is so short. i am so so grateful to be here and KNOW this is where i am suppose to be! i love it. and  love this gospel with my whole heart! i hope you all have a great week!

xoxo -Hermana Holt  

Happy Thanksgiving

hey everyone!

HAppy THanksgiving!

half way theere! (through the CCM) hah time is flying so fast now its crazy. i get semi sick when i think about leaving this place haha my spanish is not going to be anywhere near ready but its cool. I am still loving it here. i love being in the Peru CCM because it´s so small you get to know everyone! This week was AMAZING! complete turn around from last week. i cant even explain hah we had two baptisms this week which i know is only with fake investigators but they do not make it easy on us and me and hermana hailstone have been working our behinds off! we have been working so hard to strengthen our companionship. we started reading the spanish book of mormon together and we are already through 2 nephi! i feel like it has been strenghtening our relationship so much. we have seen HUGE improvements in our lessons! so yeah, this week has been the best ever! hah thank you for your prayers. I KNOW they have been helping me! i feel like i don´t have anything really to say hah this week was just great! the weather is getting warmer but not too warm yet. we have been so blessed with the best weather ever. i love studying outside because it is the perfect temperature! they do not celebrate thanksgiving here (obviously) but we are having a ´nice´dinner tomorrow and a devotional from Provo which i got to ask a question in. so i´m excited for that! and they started putting up christmas lights around the CCM so that will be fun! the grounds here are gorgeous! i love it. i wish i could send pictures to you all! we found a starbucks today in Lima. kinda was like the states for a second haha. im getting pretty good at volleyball haha we play it every day after hermana sloan kills us with her work outs! i tried playing futbol with the latins but it was just a gigantic fail. not happening. hmm what else is exciting here...we found out what is making us sick haha its the juice. hermana sloan dedicated a whole day to finding out what is was. she drank only juice for breakfast. ate only rice for dinner. and had only meat for lunch. by the end of the day the conclusion was its the juice. so now we avoid it at all costs haha. i wish i could think of more to say but i cant so i will just leave you with something i thought was cool this week!

an elder in my district (elder greggson) shared this with us. we memorized the first vision this week and in the first vision. the first word God says in THIS dispensation is Joseph. that just shows how personally our Heavenly Father knows us. he knows us all So well and so personally. i thought that was super cool.

thank you all so much for your support and love! i know your prayers are helping me emensley! i love you all so much and pray for each of you everyday! til next week!

xoxo -Hermana Holt

Crazy Blessed

i hope you are doing so great because i am!  i have never been so frustrated in my life but ive also never been so happy. how does this go hand in hand? idk.  i know i am being so blessed. my spanish may not be coming along as fast as some others but im amazed at how far i have come. dont worry about me ever though i sleep so great at night and eat great for what we have haha. i love our family pictures haha i miss you guys! just not tooo much! i love my sisters here though. i was thinking about that today in the temple. i love these girls so much! me and hermana ossola have become pretty close! i cant wait to share pictures with you all of my district and zone! some people from our zone left for the field yesterday and it was pretty sad because its such a small CCM we get really close easily! but anyways some of them had some pictures so i told them to send them to me so i could forward them to you guys but well see if that happens. im excited for this next week. i know its going to be alot better! i have so much faith in myself and my heavenly father. i really do. i know that through him i can do all things.

the weather here has been amazing lately! i always sit outside for study time and we get physical activity everyday which is  alot of fun! everyone that i talk to about arequipa here just talks about how good the food is there soooo i mean thats good and bad haha but im so excited that is where im serving. i feel like my emails are a mess so im sorry. i get so stressed because we only have an hour. but tell carli i love her hair! she looks crazy beautiful always! anyways i love you guys so so so much. you have no idea. you all mean so much to me. im crazy blessed! ill talk to you next week! 

                    -your Hermana Holt 

HOPE

Hola! (ya that is still probably all of the espanol i can speak. sadly) I have so much i want to share i dont even know where to begin. first off my grammer and all that is going to be crazy. sorry. SOO one week down. holy cow. longest week of my life. i´m pretty sure that one day here equals about three days in real life. my first day here was the LONGEST day i have ever had in my life. it was never ending. my teachers hermana coca and hermana corilla dont speak any english and so basically i just sit in class and focus SUPER hard on their mouths trying to figure out what the heck is going on. the other day hermana coca was yelling at me in espanol for a solid five minutes telling me to throw away my granola bar and i was just staring at her. learning a language is exhausting. my brain is fried by like 8pm.BUT i am proud to say that i am progressing so fast. i can understand a lot of what goes on i just have no idea how to answer back...we all had to choose a Christ like attribute that we wanted to work on this week. so i chose Hope. I know that if i have hope AND faith in myself and my Heavenly Father that i will get this down evetually. i just have to have patience with myself and continue to have fatih... soo heres what my day is like. i just have so much to tell you i hope i get it all haha. so I wake up at 5:30 which is an hour before everyone else so i can get a shower because there is three showers total for all of the hermanas here. ridic. after that we have breakfast which consists of watered down eggs and a peice of toast (which tastes like heaven) in Peru it is really rude to not finish all of the food that is on your plate so during the meals we are either trying to figure out who will finish it or the best way to hide it! i´m surprised they dont try and include rice in our breakfast because no matter what we are having for lunch or dinner they incorperate it some how. the food is pretttay nasty but i am getting used to it. (thanks mom for the snacks you packed. they are saving many elders lives) we found the perfect scripture to discribe what the food is like here so if you want a good laugh look up Jeremiah 4:19. lets just say the food here either makes you severly constapated or youre in the bathroom every five minutes. my whole zone has been blessed to experience both ends of it in just this short week. so my zone has 6 hermanas and 2 elders. us 6 hermanas are the only hermanas in the CCM that have 6 in one room. its about the size of my closet but i honestly LOVE them. Hermana Menlove, she is from utah and her and I are TWINS. I love her to death. we both struggle in class so bad.  Hermana Anderson, she is from las vegas and is crazy smart and is basically already fluent in spanish. her and hermana menlove are both going to arequipa with me! yay! Hermana Ossola, she is from colorado and is also crazy smart and extremely quiet but we get along so great! Hermana Sloan, she´s from Canada and we jokingly call her Hermana Michaels becuase she makes us do these crazy work outs everyday (like julian michaels) and last but not least mi companera....Hermana Hailstone. she is from Cedar City and Lets just say she has made my patience and love grow atleast ten fold just in this week alone. but hey only five more weeks right!¿ The last three hermanas are staying right here in Lima! and the two elders are Elder Gregson, from portland oregon. and Elder Haas from California. they are like our brothers. i absolutely love them. all the elders give them alot of crap because they are in an all girl district but i know they love it! Today was our first pday, obviously. we got to go the Lima temple this morning at 7 and it was amazing.our bus ride there was thee craziest ride of my life. I had a small, fat peruvian mans belly rubbing up against my face thee entire ride. But i was just too happy to be out of the walls of the CCM to care! i was thinking it was going to be really nice to just relax a little and get our minds off of things but trying to do a temple session in espanol is anything but relaxing. i had a few good laughs. besides that it was an amazing experience that i´m so glad i got to do! afer that we went to a few stores around lima and then just headed back to the CCM. my companion has never been outside of utah so she was a little on edge thee entire time. bless her heart.  So besides all of th craziness here i have loved it. I have never been so frustrated, exhausted, happy, and everything else in my life. i have come SO far already and still have so so much to learn but i love it. I absolutely love personal study time. i really am having a blast here and love who i am surrounded by. You cant help but to be happy here all the time. no matter who your companion is....I am just so grateful to be here having these experiences. i am so excited for another week! I LOVE YOU ALL. thank you for all of your love and support! I will get better at this email thing. and we arent allowed to send pictures but i am taking a ton. dont worry! Paz y amor!!!

Quiero compiartir mi testimonio con usted. yo se que Jesucrist es nuestro salvador. yo so que las familias son eternos. yo se que dios me ama. este conocimiento me ayuda a superar desafios y tener esperanza. yo se que jose smith es un profeta. yo se que las escripturas son bendicion y insipirado. en el nombre jesucristo, amen.

(for those of you who speak spanish. dont judge. i know that was rough.)

xoxoxoxo -Hermana Holt

She made it!!

helloooo, well i made it to the MTC. i would rather cut my finger off than do that plane ride again haha but i am so happy to be here! my pdays are next wednesday so sorry mom youll have to wait a week. I already have so much to tell you! also these keyboards are so hard. BUT we just got our name badges and I LOVE IT! it gave me the chills haha i love being a sister. Im so so happy. I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! talk to you next week!

xoxo -Hermana Holt

Airport

Ready to leave for the airport!

The night before.....

Just after Kinzie was set apart as a missionary, YAY!!