Kelsea said, "Cute little Jake"

They spent Christmas with Deli and her family and they gave them some of their Christmas decorations and a few presents.  She said it was fun to be with them.

Kelsea and her sweet companion, Hermana Clove

Christmas brunch with the Zone.  They also had a white elephant gift exchange.

Another Christmas Eve dinner with the Gullons

Christmas Eve dinner with the Burets (Branch Pres. and family), the Elders and Deli and her family.

These are picture from their Christmas dinner with the branch.  They also had a bonfire.  I asked her if it was hot outside during the bonfire.  She said that evening it was about 60 degrees- but that while they were roasting hot dogs they would put their hand in for about 5 seconds and then step back for a bit before doing it again.

Kelsea and Hermana Clove.  That was one of the few things Kelsea asked for in her Christmas package.  She wanted a gingerbread house kit and the ingredients to make chicken gnocci soup.

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas season. It´s sure my favorite time of the year. And although there was no snow or Christmas music or Santa Claus or caroling, we had raisins and pig and aguinaldos and a great time with the members. Shows that Christmas isn´t about what you do, it´s who you´re with. And I had the privilege of being with some pretty special people. 

This week we received special permission to go to Santo Domingo to go to the temple. It was such a great experience. We got to go with the Fagerstens and while we were there we went to a restaurant on the ocean and walked around the park with all of the beautiful Christmas lights and we got to go souvenir shopping and drive through Colonial City. It was a fun little trip, and it was such a privilege to go to the temple. What a beautiful place. I also got to see a couple of my CCM teachers. It was such a fun trip.

We´ve been teaching a family, a reference from Deli. They´re amazing. They´re from Haiti, and Filomiz, the mother, still doesn´t speak Spanish. They´re such a humble, sweet family, and it´s been so fun to teach them. Deli always come with us and interprets. They´ve been to church the past couple of weeks, and they have accepted the invitation to be baptized. They´re such a special family, and I can always feel the Spirit when we teach them. Their life experiences have truly prepared them for the gospel. I feel so blessed to be able to teach them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! Thank you for your love and support! Happy New Year!

Hermana Jorden

This is a picture from when we skyped with kelsea today.  We got to talk to her for about 2 hours.  It was wonderful!!!!  She is doing so well and so happy :)

Merry Christmas!
It´s been a pretty crazy week here. I´ve had such a great time!
Wednesday: branch bonfire (the members put on a bonfire, and everyone came! It was so fun to have a good time with all of the members)
Friday: Cena Navidena (our Branch Christmas dinner.) President Buret bought a pig!  The food was so Dominican, but it was delicious! We had 9 investigators there and 8 less-actives)
Sunday: Christmas devotional in the park (we had a zone activity, and we set up the church´s Christmas video for everyone to watch, and we gave out Christmas pass a long cards and sang hymns and gave a              devotional)
Tuesday: Christmas carolling with the elders (last night we visited the members and sang to them. We sure love our elders)
Today: zone brunch (Thanks to the lovely Hermana Fagersten. We had a yummy brunch and then had a white elephant gift exchange.)

It´s been a crazy week! Tonight we have two dinner appointments with the members, and I don´t know if there´s any room left in my stomach from this morning. haha I´m so grateful for the members here and their love. They´re some really special people, and I´m so grateful for the chance to serve them. This Christmas season has really helped me recognize the blessings I have received in my life, and how grateful I am for the life I have been given. I´ve missed my family and friends a lot, but one Christmas away from them is well worth the chance to serve here in this wonderful country.

A Day in the DR:
This week Hermana Clove and I learned all about Dominican caroling, at about 5 in the morning. The people get together in the middle of the night, hop on their motorcycles, and ride around town blasting music and yelling and revving their engines. Every night. Definitely not my favorite Dominican tradition. haha They´re called aguinaldos. Luckily they only last about a week. Then maybe we´ll start getting some good sleep. haha
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Love, Hermana Jorden

 Kelsea got to meet up with missionary from her MTC district this week.

Her trainer is next to her.  She went home earlier this month.  Her new companion is the one with a purple skirt.  Hermana Clove.

Feliz Navidad!

Christmas is just around the corner, and I´m so excited! We´ve already been invited to two Christmas Eve dinners, and the Fagerstens are putting together a breakfast brunch the 24th. And my family sent me a gingerbread house to decorate and the ingredients to chicken gnocchi soup, my favorite. And I get to Skype my family in a week! When I first got here, I was really worried about this Christmas, but I´m so excited to spend it with the members here and to focus on the real meaning of Christmas.

As the traveling singing sisters, Hermana Clove and I got to go to the zone conference in Santiago yesterday, and I ran into the two elders who came here with me from the CCM. It was so fun to catch up with them, and talk about the good old days in the CCM. 

Something that has been a challenge here in the DR is that a lot of the people don´t understand our message. It´s almost like they have too much faith. It´s wonderful because almost everyone is willing to listen to us share "the word of God." They believe everything we teach, but they don´t seem to understand it. We´ll spend 30 minutes explaining the Restoration of the church of Jesus Christ, and they believe everything we say, that Christ established his church, the priesthood was taken off the earth with the death of the apostles, and Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, that they told him that none of the churches had the whole truth, and that through Joseph Smith we have the priesthood once again and the fulness of the gospel. Then we finish the lesson and invite them to be baptized once they read and pray to know for themselves, and they say "Oh, no. I was already baptized!" But, didn´t you just agree that we need prophets today and that our church has the correct authority? haha It´s a unique challenge, but they are quite a few people who understand the power of our message and are willing to change their lives to follow their Savior, Jesus Christ.

We´ve started teaching Brendalis´ two best friends, Odri and Carleny. They´re both sweet girls, and they really understand the things we´ve been teaching them. I love teaching them, because it reminds me of the time when my best friend was taking the discussions. I always feel the same excitement that I did when my friend, Dei, was progressing in the gospel. I´ve really enjoyed teaching them and I hope that they can accept the gospel and become incredible examples just like my best friend. It´s been so fun to teach them.

A Day in the DR:

Something that cracks me up is seeing my companions give people compliments. A few months ago, Hermana Hunsaker and I were visiting a less active, and Hermana Hunsaker commented on how cute she looked that day and that she liked her shirt. She said "You like it? Oh, let me change so I can give it to you!" So she ran inside and put on a different shirt and gave it to her. Hermana Hunsaker said that it was okay and that she didn´t want to take it, but she finally accepted it because she was afraid that she was going to hurt her feelings. She also got a silver ring the same way. haha Last week, the same thing happened with Hermana Clove. Her and a member were talking about painting and she tried to give her her paints and some fabric. She tried so hard not to take it, but she started to get offended, so she took it. We´re quickly learning to keep compliments to ourselves!

 Christmas Zone Dinner

 Zone Skit

 Kelsea and Hermana Clove's Christmas decorations. 

 Kelsea loves everything about Christmas- she has since she was a little girl~

The sign of a true missionary!

Buenas!

It´s been a pretty crazy week, we´ve been traveling all around the mission these past few days. On Thursday, we got a call from Hermana Douglas, the President´s wife, saying ¨Are these the singing sisters?¨ haha She asked us to sing ¨Have you received His image in your countenance¨ at all of the zone conferences. It´s pretty fun being the ¨singing sisters.¨ We sang at our zone conference last night, and we have two more this week. 

Well, my dear Hermana Hunsaker is gone, and I´ve really had to step up to the plate. I never realized it before, but I really leaned on her for speaking spanish and teaching. I was really nervous because Hermana Clove and I know about the same amount of Spanish, but the Lord has blessed me so much. I think I knew more than I gave myself credit for, but my Spanish has really improved the past week, and teaching is a lot easier. I guess I just needed an opportunity to prove myself.  :) 

Last night was our zone conference with the President and his wife. There were about four other zones as well. I always love zone conferences, because it´s a change to see old friends and to make new ones. Each zone put on a skit, and it was a lot of fun. The senior couples put together a Christmas dinner for us, and it was delicious. And I always love Hermana Douglas´s talks. She always tells incredible stories. Last night, she talked about how we can know Jesus Christ. She gave  simple but powerful steps that we need to take in order to know Him.

1. Faith

2. Prayer

3. Scripture Study

4. Take upon us the name of Christ (I love the talk from General Conference, ¨Sacarament: A Renewal of the Soul,¨ that talks about what this means)

5. Do worthy works of repentance

6. Become like Jesus Christ, or live how He lived

These steps are so simple, and we should be doing them every day, but I think today is a great day to stop and really think about if we are truly doing these simple things. I know that I have a lot to work on, if I want to become like Christ. The whole point of her talk was to help us understand how we can receive His image in our countenance. That´s why I´m here on a mission. I hope that I can give myself wholy over to the Lord and become like Him. The words to the chorus of the song we sang are ¨Have you received His image in your countenance? Does the light of Christ shine in your eyes? Will He know you when He comes again because you shall be like Him? When He sees you will the Father know His child by His everylasting image in your eyes.¨ I hope this week we can all think about our relationship with Jesus Christ. Are we living how He would want us to live? Are we reaching out to others, lifting those whose hands hang down? I share my testimony that Christ loves us. He died for us. We have been so blessed in our lives, and all He asks is that we reach out to others. I promise that in service lies true happiness, and it is only then that we can receive His image in our countenances. 

Have a wonderful week!

Love, Hermana Jorden

Buenos dias!

There has been a lot going on this week! My trainer, Hermana Hunsaker, finished her mission and is headed home to Idaho! She was a great trainer, and I´m going to miss her. I´m still in the same area in Jarabacoa, and my new companion in Hermana Clove from St. George, Utah. She was in my zone last transfer, so we´re already friends, and we´re so excited to work together. Yesterday, the zone leaders asked us to sing a last minute musical number in the transfer meeting (and by last minute, I mean we decided what we were doing when we got up to sing! haha), and our voices blended so well. It was so fun to sing with her, and I´m really excited to sing with her in lessons. She´s so great, and I´m really excited to see what I can learn from her. 

I´ve learned that a big part of the mission is about planting seeds. We haven´t seen a lot of progression here, but we´ve planted a lot of seeds. Two weeks ago, one of our investigators died. She was an old lady who couldn´t hear very well, and she was just in so much pain. We visited her and her caretaker every Sunday afternoon. We mostly taught the lady who took care of her, Dulce, but she always loved to hear us sing. She couldn´t hear much of what we said, but she was always touched by our music. She wasn´t able to get baptized, but I feel confident that when the missionaries reach her on the other side of the veil, she will remember the two missionaries who sang to her every Sunday and be open to listening to their message. Another seed we planted was in the hearts of two little girls who live near one of our investigators. Whenever we pass, they run up to us and hug us and beg us to read the Bible with them. We had a lesson with them once, and we tried to come back to teach their parents. They weren´t very interested in our message, but they were willing to let us read scriptures with their daughters. They are such sweet girls, but we can´t baptize them without their parents. So I left them a pass a long card to use as a bookmark in their Bible. I hope that someday when their older, while they´re reading the word of God, they will come across that pass a long card and be pricked by the Spirit. 

Lately, we´ve been working with a young boy in the ward named Owens. I think I mentioned him before. We´ve been teaching his mom, and about a few weeks ago, she told us that she had kicked him out of the house for stealing her money. A few months earlier, he had stolen and sold the iPod of one of the missionaries (luckily he got it back). I felt so sad for this boy. He really is a sweet kid, he just hasn´t grown up with a father or good friends to help him choose the right. I had been thinking of what I could do to help him change his life around. One day, after visiting his mom, we saw him walking around his neighborhood. We talked to him for a minute, and then kept going. About halfway home, I couldn´t walk any further. I knew we needed to turn back and talk to him. So we asked him what was going on, and helped him realize that he needs to apologize to his mom and to stop stealing so that he can change his life and be happy. We told him that, even though his mom can´t go to church, if he goes, we could tell him mom that he is being responsible and trying to change. Since then, he has talked to him mom and made things good with her, he´s gone to every branch activity, he went to church on Sunday, we went to the Noche de Rancho at the Rosario´s house, he´s made friends with the Young Men, he went out to teach with the elders, and last night I saw him at seminary. It´s incredible. He just needed to know that someone cares. The branch has given him a place of belonging, and he loves being around the Young Men. It´s been so incredible to see him change so much. 

A Day in the DR:

Something I love about this country, is the confidence that these people have in themselves. They see their strengths and they are always willing to share their talents. In Sunday School this past week, the teacher asked each of us to go around and share one of the talents that God has given us. A few of the missionaries had a hard time thinking of one to share, but the members knew exactly what they wanted to say. I think sometimes in the US, we try to potray ourselves as humble by focusing on our weaknesses rather than our strengths, but it was so sweet to see these people proudly proclaim their strengths and talents. My favorite was when a recent convert talked about something he was good at, and then added ¨But my special talent from God is humility. I am so humble.¨ I love it. I hope each of you this week can think about your talents and focus on the strengths you have, and give thanks to God for what you have been given. 

Love, Hermana Jorden