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