Week 13 - She speaks Spanglish!

Querida mi familia :) 

    Howdy guys! How are y'all doing? 

    This week we went golfing, and almost hit a squirrel on the way home from dropping Hermana Sumsion off. Hermana Sumsion was transferred a week ago to a new ward that they are opening up, and now it is only Hna Jorgensen and I holding up the fort. We went to a wedding for two of the elders' investigators who then got baptized right after. The only people glowing as much as the Bride and Groom were Elder Murdock and Elder Pogroszewski, who have been teaching them for a long time. I went to the General Womens' Meeting broadcast at the stake center and met this lovely lady named Glinda. It was really funny because her husband (who pushes her wheelchair) asked me if I was from Utah, right? And when I told him I was actually from Connecticut Glinda burst out laughing and told him he couldn't be more wrong than that. I wanted to say that if I was from Armenia or something he could be more wrong but I didn't.  Foreign or uncommon or just average I am glad to be from the most important state in the Country! ;)  Oh and we watched the broadcast in Spanish and I understood everything but President Uchtdorf's talk. It was a miracle I tell you. 

    This week we got a referral from Church Headquarters about a man named José Rivas who wanted a Book of Mormon that lived in our area. A referral is when a member of the church recommends that the missionaries meet with someone that they know.  José, however, is a different type of referral.  Instead of someone recommending him, he found an add about the Book of Mormon somewhere and decided that he wanted one.  So we went to find him and give him his Book of Mormon. Well, we found him.  He pulled out his bible and was telling us how much he loves to read it.  When we gave him the Book of Mormon he was so excited.  I could see his desire to read the words of God in his face.  And I was so excited to give it to him.  José wants to change his life, and I know that more than anything that the Book of Mormon will do it. 

    Many people think that there is nothing that the Book of Mormon can do for them, why do they need another Bible?  For the same reason that God sends out missionaries two by two.  The Book of Mormon is the companion of the Bible.  Together they testify of God's love.  Together they declare that the Son of God came to the earth and that he lived for us and died for us too.  Together they teach us how we can return to live with God, make our weaknesses become our strengths, and find the purest kind of happiness.  I cannot begin to describe the light and the power of that book, but I know that I have seen it clearly in my life, and in the lives of those I am teaching.  I know that the greatest happiness we can have in this life begins with that book, and literally all we have to do is read it.  All the problems of our lives can be solved with the truth in its pages.  However much happiness you have there is more to had.  And all this I know because I have read and studied it.  Please read it.  If you need a Book of Mormon or want one please just ask me. 

    I love you all very much!  And although some would think it impossible, I know that God loves you even more than I do. 

Have a marvelous week, 

-Hna McCurdy

I had a few questions for Madison and here are the answers she gave me, I thought you might enjoy them!

Well mummy, you asked a lot of super good questions and I am feeling extra talkative today, so you are going to get the longest email of your life haha.

Yes I do get fed almost every day but those nights where I don't have a dinner appointment are also the nights when I am so grateful that taco bell is so cheap. My companions do not get hungry a lot but there is always an angry little monster in me. Speaking of food- you would love all the salsa. I've never had so many types of salsa in my life. To be honest I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to eat food without salsa one day again. Also all the Spanish people like to call me skinny a lot. It is weird. Suddenly I have become very tall and very skinny. It has helped with the self esteem a lot. And I did this test and apparently I am ten pounds under weight but I don't know how much I believe that. And I am not sure how long that will last because I get fed a lot of tortillas. So far I haven't gained a pound. 

    So when I got to México I almost had to get another tetanus shot because it would be ten years by the time I leave but the guy told me that it was okay for the United States- which says to me Rhod will have to get another one. But they will give him that in the CCM so don't sweat it. Also I am really excited to never speak another word of English to Rhodric. And it will be fun when he comes home and can't think in English any more and I'm like, bro, I speak your language. He is going to come home with a Chilean accent. They pronounce their "s"s weird. Also I think it is cool that even though I was called to be Spanish Speaking, I am actually Spanglish speaking. We contact into English people a lot and so I still get to preach in English. It is surprisingly super easy now that I have had to do it in another language. When I teach in English it's like, 'woah, check out all those vocabulary words I actually have in English." 

    How is the Spanish coming? That is a super complicated question that is difficult to answer, but you know that's okay because you don't really know what questions to ask. And you asked some really good ones so here we go. I would say the language is coming alright. Hermana Jorgensen would say the language is coming great, but I think that she only says that because she is trying to make me feel good. I can read preach my gospel and el Libro de Mormón in Spanish. I haven't really tried other things. We read out loud in Spanish better than almost all the people we teach. Right now my vocabulary is really gospel based, so I doubt I could understand random other things, but with time I think it'll work I am sure. Do I dream in Spanish? No. The closest I get to it is an occasional hola or adios or gracias. Speaking of which, I have difficulty speaking to white people in English. I see them in the store and smile and I'm like, "Hola!" And then they look at me weird and then when I try to apologize that ends up coming out in Spanish too. How much do I understand? It depends on the person and my level of concentration. But it gets better every day. Some accents are hard to understand than others and some days I have more motivation and more energy too. But, yesterday we were at the General Womens' meeting and I was a wee bit stressed because I had the opportunity to watch either in Spanish with an investigator and my companion or in English and understand everything. It was a really hard decision for some reason. I prayed really hard and asked for help and a miracle happened. I understood every word except for about half of President Uchtdorf's talk, because he speaks better English than I do and uses a lot of really big words. It was a miracle. If you would have told me a month ago that I'd be able to understand completely Spanish conference I would have laughed really hard. But here we are. 

As you will find out tomorrow, Hna Sumsion has been transfered and I am now in a regular companionship with Hna Jorgensen. Did we three get along? Yes.  We also spend a lot of time with the elders in my district. They are funny and nice even though I have the only dissimilar sense of humor in the whole district we get a long without a hitch.  Training in a trio is hard because if I don't want to say anything I don't have to. I am not stretched as much as I would have been. It is easy to third wheel. But I am also blessed because instead of one Spanish teacher I have two. Instead of one person to observe I have two excellent examples of the missionary I want to be. I am grateful I get the best of both worlds especially now that I am also in a duo. But the lord is not afraid to give me hard things. I know that he sees great things in me still especially because of my relationship with my mission president. He really likes to push me harder than others in some ways. For example he put me in a trio. That time I spoke in zone conference he completely called me out and said that even if I hadn't done the assigned topic in my companionship that he requested my words too with a large knowing smile over the pulpit. He is giving me hard things and a really unique situation. But every time he does I feel the sparkle of hope twinkle brighter in my heart because I know that means I am made of really great things and that I am a really unique individual. 

Being out here and in the field I have noticed that, other than the driving, I was a lot more prepared than a lot of people when I came on my mission. Especially in the areas of scriptural knowledge and my testimony. I am glad that I came out here with a strong,  living, testimony of the things I am teaching and do not have to find it while trying to teach it. I am also glad that I have so much missionary experience- having gone out with the missionaries, watched conversions happen. I didn't realize how many convert friends my own age I had until I met people who didn't know a single one. I am so grateful that even then I got to watch some conversions and be part of others. This week I said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting, which is actually the first time I have ever given a prayer in sacrament meeting and it went rather well. I am also one of three people in the ward who apparently plays the piano. So I have been assigned to the relief society, and the other person is the bishop, who covers sacrament and primary. But it looks like I am his substitute in those things. I would be slightly stressed about it probably, but the way I look at it at least I can play it because having no one to play would be really bad. I started learning the piano to use it on my mission and here we are. 

We are teaching a lot of people. There is a 12 year old less active member named Edgar who has a video game problem. Our investigator Miriam was going to be baptized but then canceled her baptism because she is cheating on her husband with a serial killer. We are teaching this recent active named Paty, and her husband named Alfredo who will be baptized on the 17th and their two kids. Then we are teaching José who I talked about today, and this lady named Karol, and other part member family, but we are trying to get their dad baptized. Then we have another less active named Veronica, and a less active family and their friend named Ana who is really prepared but we can't teach her right now because of lice. Our investigator named Jesus is 17 and he will be baptized next Saturday. We teach lots of people from English classes and a couple other people. 

So the first time that I met Jeffrey (she is talking about Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles) I opened my eyes during the prayer and looked at him praying on the stand while the YW said the prayer. I will always remember what it looked like. He was so rooted, so enraptured, so intently focused it changed the way I prayed. The other thing I learned this week was that we are supposed to pour out our souls to God when we pray. It occurred to me that if we are pouring out our soul we are empty, and that means that God can pour other things in. 

    So that's all the stuff I had to say. Love ya 

Week 12 - The Great Adventure part 1: Damsel in distress

Just before I forget, I did actually have a dream that Gandolf and I went on an adventure to save the world in a gray SUV. I don't remember how it ended haha. 

To my family (which does include everyone of you), 

    Last Monday my district (the Elders and my companions) and then another companionship went with us into downtown Houston to go to the science museum because it was p-day. We took the metro in and I met this really sweet old lady with a southern accent named Edna, and it was more concrete than I have seen in a long time. Most of all it really made me miss the city (New York City). 

    Although there are three Houston missions (The Texas Houston East Mission, and the Texas Houston South Mission exist too, but my mission is the best), my mission is the one with the Houston temple in it. Yesterday we got to go to the temple and give tours (in Spanish) around the outside of the building for our investigators and people who were just curious about the giant beautiful white building. That was really cool! 

    In my mission we have cars and most of the time we just drive from teaching appointment to teaching appointment, but the other day we decided to do walking. Somehow in the middle of Houston I found myself on a dirt road next to a set of lone power lines next to a small field. The overall effect was that if I closed one eye a little bit and stretched my imagination, I was the main character in an epic tale of a life or death adventure. So maybe there are not dragons or princesses in this adventure of mine (and let's face it, if there were I'd probably be stuck unglamorously in the tower), but I am on a life or death adventure and the farther I get down the road the more I realize I though I am here to help 'rescue' other sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, I am also here to rescue myself. I have lived in a different country and now speak a different language, but the thing that has changed the most is myself. 

    God has given each of us a path to walk in life. It ends in his house, when we finally make it home and can live with him again. The path has a gate, and is rocky and dusty, the sun is warm and bright overhead, and I suspect that it also has a lonely pair of power lines running parallel to it too. The prophet Nephi said, "And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save. Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life." 

    I know that as we pass through the gate and walk our path of life with a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men, keeping his commandments, we will find more light and a larger capacity for happiness that we ever thought possible. We can be better and more improved and more happy every step of the way. 

     I know that this is true, especially as I help others walk on that same path and see them change their lives. I am so glad that I chose to come on my mission. The gospel is true. It can make all of us happy and can heal our wounds. I know this truth to be universal. 

    I love you guys! Let me know if there is anything I can ever do for any of you :) 

     -Hermana Madison McCurdy 

    

Ps. This is what my district calls our Vampire diaries picture because it's all black and white and fabulous

Ppss. This is us in downtown Houston

At the science museum

Pppsss. I dont know how to explain that

The zumba group of missionaries

In the jersey store!

Week 11 - The Peanut Factory

Aloha to my favorite people! :)

    Just a few odds and ends before I get to the meat of this week: 

    I got to work in the Peanut Butter factory of the church this week. I worked so hard I rubbed my right hand raw; it was AWESOME!! 

    Remember how there is only one set of missionaries to an area? Well this week one other Hermana in another area and I swapped places for a day. It was so hard and so fun! I also got to take this picture of Downtown Houston!

    I got a question from a kind and beautiful soul this week about what a day in the mission is like. I wake up exactly at 6:30, and then my companions and I go running for thirty minutes. Then we shower and get ready for the day. Then I read the scriptures for an hour, study with my companion for the next hour, then study Spanish for an hour, and because I am in training we then do training stuff for an hour. Then we eat lunch and hit the road. We then go teach people all the day long. In Spanish. If we don't have people to teach we go and look for them in a variety of ways. This is called contacting. We go home at 9:00 pm, plan for thirty minutes, and then we get ready for bed and are in bed at 10:30. 

When I first got to the MTC (CCM) I had a really hard time with waking up exactly at 6:30 because I was so tired. The one day, I was reading about the end of the life of Jesus Christ when he was suffering for our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane and his apostles were sleeping (This is all in Matthew 26) and he kept asking them, in the Madison McCurdy translation, can't you just stay awake for an hour? Here the Son of God is carrying the sins of the world. He is more than exhausted and yet he is still being exactly obedient. This hit me in my heart. I am as a representative of Jesus Christ. This is his year and a half, not mine. He is not asking Peter to stay awake, he is asking me. All he asks is for "me" to stay awake for a single hour. 

    After that I have not had a single problem staying awake or getting up. 

    God is not only asking me to stay awake, he has also asked for this year and a half of my life. The more I experience it the more I am glad that I gave it to him. When I chose to give him the reins he has began changing me and helping me grow. How I am excited for the next 15 1/2 months too! 

    I love you guys!! Try to stay awake that extra hour this week and I know you will get so many blessings. That is the great thing about the gospel. The more you give the more God gives in return. That is the beauty of my message. :)

-Hermana Madison McCurdy

The Peanut Factory

Shakes

Beautiful Houston

Feeling French

Week 10 Possums apparently swim

Hello my favorite people!

    This week I have learned a couple important things: 

1. Family History is slightly more complex in Spanish but I LOVE IT. This week I Had a dream about all the records I can index in Spanish when I get home because I was so excited. Perhaps God called me to speak Spanish so I can help out the Mexican Indexing effort later. (Indexing is a form of digitizing records for family history that I do when I am stressed out and is a habit that only I and a lot of elderly people seem to have.) then it made me laugh because only I would think of that and how nerdy it is that I am looking forward to it! 

2. My ability to understand Spanish gets better and better every single day. I am so excited! It helps if I say it along in my head when they talk so I can hold onto the words, and some Central American accents are really hard to understand, but how cool is that!! (Super cool!) 

3. It does not matter what language you speak but as long as you can speak frozen all little girls will love you. I made a family laugh so hard yesterday as I was rocking out with a little girl to the Demi Lovato version of "Let it go." I never thought that knowing all the lyrics to every Disney song would come in handy, but it was a blessing in disguise after all. 

My little friend named Daniel who we have been teaching was baptized this week! He is very small and we had to pin up his pants but it was a beautiful service. I love that kid! (There is a picture included) 

Does anyone have any questions about what I do as a missionary or what a normal day is like? Or any ideas about how I can make these letters better? I am open to anything! 

My area that I serve in inside the Texas Houston Mission is called Houston 6, and geographically it contains the George Bush Airport. Only my companionship serves in this area. One of the cool things that we get to do is go to Hispanic Zumba every Monday to work out on P-Day because we have a lot of investigators that work there and so we get to teach them and we work out. (I can assure you it has not improved my ability to dance one bit!) It is really fun, and we have made a lot of friends and found many people to teach from there! Missionaries are supposed to exercise from 6:30-7:00 every morning on days that are not P-Day. In the MTC I would do things like volleyball, but here in Texas Hermana Sumsion in in charge of the exercise, and she loves to run. 

    At first the running was very hard as many of you can probably imagine, (No one laugh please. Especially you Angel.) I could only make it to the bottom of the street and back once without having to stop. My strides are also comparatively short to my companions who are 4 inches shorter than me, which I think makes it harder on myself. After one week of me being here my dear Companions thought it was going to be a great idea to run all the way to the church from our apartment. Maybe it was a good idea for them, but I nearly died. How I wished I could be a runner like them! Well for the next two weeks we ran and ran and one day I could run all the way down to the end of the street and back twice, and then later three times! Every time I made it a bit farther I celebrated a little victory. Once when I was running this nice lady even stopped and told me that I inspired her to work out more because she drives past me everyday to work. (Though I'm not sure if that means my work ethic inspires her to run or if she sees the look of pain on my face and knows she should be running if I can too, but I took it regardless.) 

    Then this Wednesday my companions decided it would be another great day to run to the church. When I heard this immediately fear filled my stomach and it was difficult to even walk out of the door into the humid Texas morning air. As we started down our street I saw at the end of it looming at me where we would turn onto another street, and then in my minds eye the next street and the next street and the next street and the five other next streets. I wanted to sit down on the ground and not run a single step. But mission rules say that we have to be within sight and sound at all times which meant I was literally going to have to run too. 

    And so we started running. I got a cramp in my side like I usually do, but kept going. It took a miracle to get to the end of the street but we turned the corner. The thought occurred to me in my head that perhaps if I went in the front I could stretch out my strides a little bit and my death would be a little less grueling than usual. So I pushed in front of my companions and led the way by about 5-10 feet as we ran down street after street. Each time death seemed a little closer and I would promise myself I could make it to that mailbox, or this stop sign. And somehow I kept running. 

    The moment I saw the church I wanted to yell Hallelujah at the sky, but considering that I was already having breathing difficulties I didn't. We entered the parking lot and I gave it an extra little burst and not only made it to the parking lot but ran up and touched the wall of the building. Then I turned around to wait for my companions. To my extreme surprise (and theirs too, actually) when I turned around I saw my companions panting, entering on the very edge of the parking lot. I had out ran my companions! As I stared in wonder, I realized that the ache in my side was gone and that I could have gone on running. 

    I think there might be a runner deep deep deep down inside of me. (Next to the volleyball player.)

    My friends, do not think that I have turned into a runner. I do not tell you this story to convince you that I am actually good at running, but because it was a miracle. It is my belief that God sends us here to earth not to see miracles or perform them for others, but to become them. All we have to do is keep running. Paul says in the Bible, "Let us run with patience the race that is before us." We are all running races in our lives, every moment of every day. Not all races are easy and some of us struggle a bit more than others. But when we put one foot in front of the other God teaches us how to run. The moral of the story is if Hermana McCurdy can run to the church, you too can do impossible things! 

    When you want to run a better race, no matter what kind of race or the ending destination, I promise that the running gets easier and we get faster when we pray and read the scriptures and especially when we read the Book of Mormon. I know that this gospel I am sharing is true. I know Jesus Christ lives. 

    I love you all and have a super duper week. Let me know if there is anything I can do for y'all. 

    -Hermana McCurdy

Ps. I saw a live possum. They swim apparently. Who knew? 

Ps. This is Paty and her family and the Arreola family (look for all the Mexican jerseys) and I'm sorry that Elder Pogroszewski looks really weird in it. 

Pppsss. The other picture is of my CCM district right before we all left.

Week 9 - Teaching English

Hey guys! Houston is beautiful and y'all are too! :)

I don't have much time, sorry! This will have to be quick! 

This week I attended English church for the first time in two months, and can I tell you, it was weird. The chorister was getting really into it, I was trying hard not to laugh!  I am not sure if I like it or not any more! I have also learned that people here actually do wear cowboy boots to church. Some of the men wear them under their dress pants. This makes me laugh and I am excited to wear cowboy boots to church one day too :)

I am not sure if I have forgotten to mention this in previous letters, but here in the Texas Houston Mission the Spanish Speaking missionaries get to teach English Classes. We teach them every Tuesday and Thursday night from 7:30-9:00. At first I was really nervous about this, as I have only been speaking Spanish for a grand total of two months, and my own ability to speak English has been decreasing since then, but really it has turned out to be great fun. All the people are really impressed when they asked me if I started learning Spanish when I was a child and when I tell them that I really only started two months ago. Their eyes get really wide and they are always really surprised. It is in these moments when I realize how blessed I am to be able to qualify for the gift of tongues. Sometimes I think back to two months ago when all I knew was 'Hola' y 'Adios' and about 5 other words, and I marvel at how good God really is. We had a Spanish lesson in an English member's home this week and the poor family had no idea what we were saying or what was going on as we were teaching their friend the gospel of Jesus Christ to this lovely lady named Elizabeth in her native language even though they had studied Spanish in school. But I could understood just fine, and I also helped teach. A door in my mind has been opened that I don't ever want to close and I am excited to see the other doors that this will open up in the future.

Because we teach English classes, we were required to go to an English Class Teachers' Training outside the Mission this week. It was really weird and cool to venture outside of our mission boundaries and go to the Houston South Mission to meet a bunch of other missionaries. It was so fun! For one activity my group was charged with a list of 25 items that we had to narrow down to four things that we would need to survive on an island and for some reason we really came down to only two: a swiss army knife, and a parachute. Although parachutes are awesome, I know that really the only thing we need to survive is the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we follow it we more than survive, we flourish. We do more than learn how to survive on an island, but our perspective becomes so much wider. How grateful I am to have this knowledge! I know that I would not be myself, or be able to happy in this world if I did not have this priceless gift of the gospel: that my family can be together forever, and that God loves us! Often I wish I had a giant megaphone so I could tell everyone in the world how marvelous it is, but that is besides the point. If God wanted to share his gospel with a giant megaphone, he would. But instead he has called this shortish (though in Spanish speaking company, really tall) 19 year old girl from Shelton, Connecticut and 80,000 other people like her to do it. What I have learned is that we should not be looking for a giant megaphone, but for small and simple means. It changed my life, and it could change yours too. You too can get off that island! Just ask how!  

Have a better week than I am going to have!! I love you guys! :) 

-Hna Madison McCurdy

ps. This is Daniel and my companions. He is getting baptized this weekend! 

ppss. This corn was SO GOOD. 

pppsss. Hope that all made sense. Gotta go