ashley's pictures at the mtc!

another week's email!

July 24, 2014

Hola!

well this week has still been great! time goes by really weird here. sometimes i feel like its flying (like how i am already half way through my time in el CCM) but sometimes it feels like forever (the days are muy largo). i got your letter! the one megan sent and then the one from nonny and poppy. apparently its rare to get mail brought to the CCM if its sent to the mission home but someone must have brought it here which was great! please tell nonny and poppy thank you for me. i loved hearing from them. i cried when i read it. 

so my emails are probably just going to be random stories and thoughts, sorry.

a few days ago after lunch we went to the classroom and elder kinikini(an elder in my district) was playing the piano while elder paulino (one of the native elders) was rapping to the piano. he went on for about 20 minutes straight making up this rap about teaching the gospel and being missionaries and the elders ties. it was in spanish so i got most of it but not all. it was crazy though! 2o minutes straight!

apparently here they tell jokes about spainards like we tell blonde jokes. its also hilarious to see hermano nunez impersonate a spain accent. you know how we add an O to the end of a word if we dont know it in spanish? well apparently they add an -ation to the end if they are trying to say a word in english that they dont know. weird huh? another thing hermano nunez always says... "santa vaca" which means literally, holy cow but its not a saying they use here. he just likes how we say it in english so he started using it in spanish.

we went contacting at the university on friday and oh mi madre, it was awesome! the people are so friendly and patient with you when you dont know the language. we gave away 7 pamphlets and 1 book of mormon over the space of and hour and a half and we had some good conversations with some people. i cant wait to go again tomorrow! and then next week we go on splits with the actual missionaries! scary...but im so excited!

elder cornish who is a member of the area presidency gave a devotional on tuesday and it was really good. he knows so much about the gospel. this one was about asking ourselves if the lord can trust us, because we can always trust him! it was good. the devotional this morning was so good too. pretty much everthing is so good here.

hermana olsen and i have figured out that all the celebrity look alikes like here. theres an elder that everyone calls justin beiber then there are workers that look like usher and bruno mars and another elder that looks like clark kent. we think its so funny!

we had "mangu" this week. its plantains made like mashed potatoes. its interesting but i think ill get used to it.

words of the week:

well this week has still been great! time goes by really weird here. sometimes i feel like its flying (like how i am already half way through my time in el CCM) but sometimes it feels like forever (the days are muy largo). i got your letter! the one megan sent and then the one from nonny and poppy. apparently its rare to get mail brought to the CCM if its sent to the mission home but someone must have brought it here which was great! please tell nonny and poppy thank you for me. i loved hearing from them. i cried when i read it. 

so my emails are probably just going to be random stories and thoughts, sorry.

a few days ago after lunch we went to the classroom and elder kinikini(an elder in my district) was playing the piano while elder paulino (one of the native elders) was rapping to the piano. he went on for about 20 minutes straight making up this rap about teaching the gospel and being missionaries and the elders ties. it was in spanish so i got most of it but not all. it was crazy though! 2o minutes straight!

apparently here they tell jokes about spainards like we tell blonde jokes. its also hilarious to see hermano nunez impersonate a spain accent. you know how we add an O to the end of a word if we dont know it in spanish? well apparently they add an -ation to the end if they are trying to say a word in english that they dont know. weird huh? another thing hermano nunez always says... "santa vaca" which means literally, holy cow but its not a saying they use here. he just likes how we say it in english so he started using it in spanish.

we went contacting at the university on friday and oh mi madre, it was awesome! the people are so friendly and patient with you when you dont know the language. we gave away 7 pamphlets and 1 book of mormon over the space of and hour and a half and we had some good conversations with some people. i cant wait to go again tomorrow! and then next week we go on splits with the actual missionaries! scary...but im so excited!

elder cornish who is a member of the area presidency gave a devotional on tuesday and it was really good. he knows so much about the gospel. this one was about asking ourselves if the lord can trust us, because we can always trust him! it was good. the devotional this morning was so good too. pretty much everthing is so good here.

hermana olsen and i have figured out that all the celebrity look alikes like here. theres an elder that everyone calls justin beiber then there are workers that look like usher and bruno mars and another elder that looks like clark kent. we think its so funny!

we had "mangu" this week. its plantains made like mashed potatoes. its interesting but i think ill get used to it.

words of the week:

-guineo= thats what the call bananas here but only in the DR apparently

-benga= bring it on. weve been using that one when we find out about the foot long centipedes and spiders as big as your hand and no hot water or running water at all or electricity that we'll be dealing with out in the field

- adivienen que??= guess what. our teachers use that one a lot

- obispo= bishop

the weather here is hot and humid as i thought but the humidity doesnt bother me too bad. its like instant moisturizer or at least thats what we say to make it seem better. hermana olsen and i bought nilla wafers at the store a few weeks ago and they dont get stale. instead they get soft. its weird.

well i have had a great time here and am learning so much about the gospel and spanish. one thing i might ask for you to do is pray that i can receive the gift of tongues in order to share this wonderful message with others. also, the book, our search for happiness is great and i recommend it to everyone.

well i love you all!

love,

hermana allen

this weeks email!

         

Hola!!

Well this week was great! they get faster ever time i've decided. on pdays we usually go to el templo en la mañana but its closed for 2 weeks so this morning we watched a devotional instead and then we just email and write letters and stuff like that for the rest of the day until dinner. mom, look up the dr missionary moms page. hermana olsen's mom wanted you to know about it.

so my district has decided that chickenguyna is inevitable and we are all going to get it sometime while we're here. its a disease from daytime mosqitoes but its not fatal, just not fun apparently. all the teachers have had it. they call it broken bones disease here because thats what it feels like. hopefully i wont have to experience that! the doctor for the dr missions is a little loco and in our meeting with him he pretty much said we were all probably going to die here. that wont happen though dont worry! hes just trying to scare us into following the rules, so i wont do anything dumb, promise. some other missionaries that came to the temple last week said they havent run into anything scary the whole time and one of them was almost going home so that was comforting.

we ate yuca this week. dont try it, its nasty. haha its like a potato thing but its just weird.

you'll never guess what me and hermana olsen have to do on sunday...we've been asked to sing in sacrament. in spanish. even though neither one of us sing. or speak spanish. thats going to be interesting, especially since our CCM size about doubled because we got about 16 new missionaries yesterday, all the ones who already speak spanish. needless to say, im pretty scared for sunday. i'll let you know how it goes.

almost everyday for gym time we play ultimate frisbee and it feels like im back at BYU! the other day we went contacting around the temple so theyre all members but its still scary. and im pretty sure theyre teaching me the wrong language here because dominicans DO NOT speak spanish. they speak dominican. its okay though, it will come faster once we get out there. we go to the university tomorrow to go contacting there. im so excited but also pretty nervous for that too.

the lights do go out ocassionaly but its not a big deal at the CCM because apparently they get them back the quickest in the capitol. we'll see how it is in the field. i learned something else about the CCM. people from all over come here to stay so they can go to the temple and then travel home the next day. i thought that was cool!

theres a worker here who has cycling clothes on every morning at breakfast and it reminds me of dad!

we went to the store yesterday. it was awesome to see a little more of the city. and its going to take a little bit to get used to the pecos. i bought some oreos though! they taste a little different here but theyre still oreos!

so words of the week... tocino=bacon (that ones for you Lolo), oh mi madre= oh my goodness (they say that ALL the time)

the spanish is coming along okay. i can usually understand most of whats going on but i struggle with forming my own sentences and speaking. lessons are getting easier to teach though and i can talk about most gospel topics...very slowly though.

well i love you all and i miss you of course, but thanks so much for the support!

love,

hermana allen 

we just got an email after her first week in the MTC! 

Hola!!

this week has been great! my companion is hermana olsen from utah and she's awesome. we both dance and took french and we have the same bag so pretty much we were meant to be companions. haha the food is just what we thought, lots of rice and beans and meat and fruit, especially for lunch but its really good! we had brownies this morning which really confirmed for me that i love this place! we had hamburgers on the 4th of july for lunch and then a big thanksgiving like dinner and they decorated it all red white and blue for us. it was so sweet.

this country is SO beautiful, i can't get over it. i've only seen the airport and then the mtc (ccm in spanish) and the temple grounds but its gorgeous. we can see the ocean out of our hallway window and we are all hoping we get to have an area on the coast at least once so that we can see it and maybe run along it in the mornings. that would be wonderful! the trees and plants and everything is so pretty. i cant send pictures because i somehow don't have my camera chord that plugs into the computer... maybe you could send one? or i can look for one at the store. we get to go next week but who knows if they'll have one.

the flight here wasn't too bad. there were a lot of missionaries from salt lake to dallas but most of them went to the mexico mtc from there. 6 of us stayed to go on to miami and then we met up with some there. there were 20 missionaries total coming here and we almost doubled the missionaries already here. there are 38 of us right now which is much different from provo im sure! it's great though! i love getting to know everyone. everyone that came with our group is either going to the east or west mission and then most of the ones who were already here and going to puerto rico. there are 3 haitian sisters who we room with actually and they are SO funny! they dance around and sing jennifer lopez songs and the other day they said a pretty bad word and wanted to know what it meant. we were a little shocked. didn't think we'd be hearing that at the mtc! hermana olsen and i get to use our little bit of french so that we can communicate with them! my languages are getting all mixed up though. spanish is coming along faster than i though it would but i still pretty much don't know anything. i can pray and testify and roughly teach a lesson...using notes. hermano nunez is one of our teachers and hes crazy! hes from here and served in my mission. he quoted bob the builder the other day. he was like "instead of can we fix it? yes we can, it will be can we do it? yes we can." he tells us about his dreams where he lives in candy land and lives in a licorice house too. again...hes crazy, but we all love him.

presidente freestone is great. the interview with him was awesome and he told us how missionaries and foreordained to be missionaries but God leaves us the choice to serve or not. we went to the temple this morning and did sealings and an endowment session. that was awesome!

i wish i could tell you every experience i've had so far but i don't have enough time! pday is thursday so ill be emailing then.

i love you all! thank you for everything.

love,

hermana allen

first day at the mtc

arriving at the mtc

July 3, 2014

Our first email from Ashley at about 2:30am Dominican time!
               
                    Hi Mom and Dad!

I made it here safely and the trip was really fun with all the missionaries that we met up with! We just have a short time to email before we get to bed so I'll just email to you quickly. We have our companions and we just got settled into our rooms but its really late...or early so I'm going to get to bed.

Love you all so much!!

Love,

Hermana Allen

off to the mtc

July 2, 2014

Today Ashley left the Salt Lake City Airport to the Dominican Republic MTC! It's hard to see her go but, we all know she's doing the right thing.