Ether 12:4

I have very limited time this week so please forgive the brief letter. It has been an absolutely insane week and we have definitely felt the guidance of the spirit. I know that the Lord protects us through this wonderful gift and all we must do is be worthy of His companionship and then heed what He tells us. I am so very grateful to know that if I will just be obedient I have the promise of protection and divine help. Right now in our area there is child trafficking (I have no idea how to spell that). It is when people kidnap children and then take out their organs to sell them and just leave the body. Three kids have been taken and killed this past week and everyone is living in fear. I never cease to be amazed at the kind of world we live in. I truly believe that the only hope we have is through the gospel. There is so much visible corruption on the streets and it humbles me that I was blessed to be born to a good, strong family in a safe place. As I see the effects of true poverty-literally living day to day as you look for food- I can´t help but cry sometimes and ask how I was so special to deserve a house and food every day of my life. I have learned so much from the wonderful people here. They live in poor circumstances with very little hope and yet give all their hearts and faith to the Lord and to those around them. I am so very grateful to have been able to serve among them for this short time and will miss them immensely when I return home.
 

The Lord knows and loves us and invites each and every one of us to come unto Him. If you are stumbling, keep rising each time you fall. If you are crawling, keep going until you learn how to walk. If you are walking, keep up the pace until you can run. It does not matter how fast we get there or how we look when we arrive...the only thing that matters is that we go. To Him. And that we start now. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing now is the time to stand a little taller and make sure that you are facing Him. I have so much more that I wish I could express but the time simply does not permit me today. I know our Savior knows and loves us and through His sacrifice we can overcome any challenge we might face here in this life.
 

Keep the faith! See you all in a very short while!

Sister Ewell

Longer days

The time is winding down rapidly and each week I am amazed that another seven days have passed. In the Book of Mormon it talks about the Lord giving power to one of the prophets to make the day move slower. I feel like that would be pretty useful right about now. haha. 

Conference was wonderful as always! I love being able to hear from our prophet and the apostles. What an incredible blessing we have in our lives! I was also moved by some of the sacrifices that people made to be able to attend conference. There is only one chapel here in La Vega that has a satelite so if you live further you must walk to get there (and believe me...it´s far). The conference starts at 12 here so that means that a lot of people went without lunch to be able to attend. One of our less actives (Ariadna´s grandma) walked there for all 4 sessions with her non-member husband and her 4 young granddaughters. I was impressed with her dedication and desire to hear the prophet and greatly admire and respect what she sacrificed. 

I have also learned during this past week that no matter what others say about us we must always love and respect them and speak nicely. Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing and many times there will be opposition. I also feel that many times the best people are those some of those with the worst reputations. Why? Because good will always be tested. Even Christ was told that his power came from the devil. The only perfect person to ever walk this earth was also opposed by those who would have said that he was nothing more than a crazy man. As His disciples we can expect to pass through the same. No matter what happens it is our calling to love and lift. It does not matter if those around us recognize the good that we do or are. The only thing that matters is what our Heavenly Father thinks and knows of us. 

I hope each of you will take time to review the conference talks and apply what they say in your lives. Remember that the Lord knows and loves us and is aware of our good works. Keep the faith and keep the light in all that you do!

Have a great week,

Sister Ewell

Mosiah 4:27

My days here are numbered and the only thing I want to do is sprint to the finish...so the Lord sent me a little reminder this week "it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength." I have spent the last 3 days at home sleeping. Literally. I wake up to use the bathroom and eat occasionally and then fall right back asleep. Sister Fagersten told my companion not to let me leave the house and that is the only reason we´ve stayed home. haha. We went to see the mission doctor today after feeling bad for a few weeks but just ignoring it. We´re still not sure what I´ve got besides a lot of pain in my back and extreme fatigue along with a good case of cabin fever. I am itching to get back out and teach again (and honestly sometimes leave to be a missionary a few hours a day anyway so that I don´t lose my mind at home).
 

That being said, a few cool things did happen this week. We had a wonderful baptism for Ariadna and Alexandra on Saturday. A ton of people came to support them and it was really spiritual. Sister Ruiz was also able to come back and watch them both be baptized and it was so special to see her again for a few minutes. After seeing his mom get baptized, Alexandra´s 17 year old son also wants to be baptized. He has never showed much interest before but I guess seeing the change in his mom softened his heart and now we are going to start teaching him. I absolutely love being able to watch people enter into this plan of happiness. It hit me a little as I watched Alexandra in the font that this will probably be my last baptism in the mission. It is a little bit sad but there is also a wonderful satisfaction as you can look out on the congregation on Sundays and see many faces that you have helped to teach.

As I bore my testimony for the last time on Sunday I felt an overwhelming emotion looking into the faces of all of my less actives and converts in their Sunday best. I imagine the joy in heaven will be similar as we find those that we helped in this life. Heaven will not be complete without those we love. As a missionary there is a full joy as you see people walk into the church each week. When those people choose to make little choices like wear a white shirt and tie, or cut down on cigarettes, or read their scriptures. There is also a great sadness as you watch them choose not to do the good things or as you sit on Sunday asking why so and so didn´t show up. You can have 18 less actives at church and still feel sorrow for the 2 that didn´t show up. That is why it is so important that we do our part here during this life. We are looking not only for their salvation but also for our own eternal happiness. We will never feel content if we know that we didn´t do everything we could have to help another.   
 

I know the Lord loves us so much. He is in every part of our lives and truly is in charge of this work. I am so grateful to be able to be one of His missionaries for a few more weeks and be able to serve and learn from this wonderful people.
 

I love you all!

Sister Ewell

Ariadna and Alexandra's baptism with Hermana Ewell and Hermana Ruiz

Hermana Ruiz, Ewell, and Landaverde with Alexandra

Alexandra and Ariadna's baptism

 

Living in the middle point

This week flew by as always. We had many wonderful moments and many sad ones as well. I will definitely be sad to have to say goodbye to all of these wonderful people in a few weeks. In a family home evening we shared a message from President Uchtdorf about always living in the middle point. He talked about how we have existed forever and will continue to exist for eternity and so we always find ourselves in the middle. Life has many beginnings and endings but we must live as though we are in the thick of it to be able to take advantage of every minute. It was a good reminder for my new companion to not be afraid of not having much experience and just work hard and for me as I am finishing to work as though I am never going home. I hope that you will each try to put the same in practice this week. We are in the middle point of our lives. Give your best every day and trust that the Lord will help you. 

Things are going well here in Conani. Sister Landaverde is adjusting more to the mission and I know that in no time she will be an incredibly strong missionary. This week we will have Ariana´s and Alexandra´s baptism and I am so excited for both of them!

I know the Lord is aware of us and is watching over us each and every day. There are always miracles around us if we will just open our eyes to see them!

Have a wonderful week

Sister Ewell 

All you need is love

When I talked to President a few weeks ago about how I wanted to finish my mission I told him that I wanted a challenge. I am here to tell you all, I received my challenge. I love training but I definitely have a great task set out for me the next 5 weeks. I feel more fired up than ever and am ready to just go out and convert the world...starting with my companion. 

It has been interesting training again. I now know that I never learned real Spanish because I can hardly understand my companion and she understands me even less, the mission life is so natural for me now that I forget that some people don´t just know and live all the rules, and more than anything I have realized just how much I have changed in the past 16 months. Hermana Landaverde is wonderful and really likes to participate in the lessons which is a blessing. However, I have felt ever since she arrived that there is something missing. She doesn´t like to obey any rule (sleeps in late and doesn´t study, etc), won´t carry her scriptures to lessons, has openly admitted she hates the people here and does not want to be anything like them, and on her first day told me that she planned on going home early. I remember having some similar feelings at the beginning of my mission so I decided to just try and love her and give the example of obedience and love. Each night I write her a note saying what she did great during the day, I do my best to listen about how much better El Salvador is than the Dominican Republic, I tell her good morning each day at 6:30 and then let her sleep, and so on and so forth. 

Yesterday we had an amazing zone conference with President and Hermana Douglas. The theme was Doctrine and Covenants 4 which is our guide as missionaries. They had me recite it by memory for the 100 or so missionaries there. Then we talked for several hours about how to truly serve the Lord with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength. It really motivated me again to be able to finish strong. At the end I was able to bear my testimony since I will be leaving this transfer. I tried to testify directly to my companion about how the mission can change you and how you will develop a love so large and encompassing for every person you meet. When we returned home and were preparing to leave after this really spiritual morning my companion commented once more just how much she hates the people here. I told her that she could love them if she wanted to. To this she responded, "I have no desire to do that." In that moment what I like to call my righteous indignancy came out. After a week of telling her nicely and listening to her bash these people who have come to be like family to me I said, "Why did you even come here? If you don´t feel the desire to love and serve then why are you a missionary? If you love the Lord then you do what He requires. Honestly it hurts me when you bash everything constantly. I am not Dominican but I love the Dominicans. It is a crazy place but I love it. How would you feel if I went to your house and started telling you that everything sucks? That your family is weird and the way you talk is stupid and that I hate everything there? If you just came here to miss El Salvador for 18 months then you are wasting your time. IF you only came here to judge these people and don´t even have the desire to love them then it would be better that you go home. I want to help you. I want to train you. you have great potential as a missionary but if you don´t have the desire to do anything then I can´t help you. I can´t give you desire. I beg you to change your attitude. All I ask is that you give it a chance because I love these people and this area and have worked too hard to watch it all fall and that is what will happen if you don´t start obeying and acting like a missionary. I care about you a lot. I´m here to help you but until you change your attitude there is nothing I can do and you will just keep suffering through each day."

She was quiet and didn´t talk to me for a few hours. I let her cool down and then went to talk to her. I apologized for the way that I had told her and admitted that I should have waited to do it in a more official and proper way. To my surprise she thanked me and said that if I had done it any other way she probably wouldn´t have listened. She said it had never occurred to her how her actions were probably hurting me and the people we visit and said it hit home when I told her I considered these people equal to my family. We talked a lot after that and she said that she realized that she only came here to please her dad because he has always wanted a missionary in the family. Beyond that she doesn´t really have a motivation. I figured it was something like that. She told me she wanted to call President because a missionary can´t be here without a good reason for coming. I told her that she wasn´t going anywhere for another 5 weeks. haha. I assured her that even though her reason for coming may not have been the best, now is her chance to choose her reason to stay. She agreed to give it a chance and said, "I hope that I can get to the point that you are at now. Thank you for loving me enough to correct me and loving the people enough to defend them. Now all the little things you do for them makes sense." She gave me a hug and we went to bed. Today she was the one to wake me up. :)

I feel like love really has been the theme of this week. I have realized that more than anything else in my mission, I have learned to love. I have gained so much more compassion, trust, and charity for others. To become like Christ we have to stop thinking about ourselves because that is something He never did. We have to give all we have and all we are to help His children. That is why every day we buy juice from Erika because I know that she needs to money, and why I only have 4 skirts left because I have given them to members that only had 1, and why we visit the old lady by our house once a week without any expectation of her visiting church. I don´t say all of that to get recognition or say that we do so many awesome things or because I think I´m anywhere close to perfect, but rather to emphasize that love is something simple. It comes through the little things we choose to do daily. When we do those things we really do receive the blessings and other people can see the Savior in us. 

I know this email is getting long but I want to share one more story...one of the blessings that I was able to see this week that came from trying to be a true representative of Christ. There is an old man that sits outside his house in the shade every day. As we pass I always wave and ask him how he is doing. This week when he noticed that Hermana Ruiz had left he asked why. I explained that she is in Santiago now and he promptly asked, "But you´re not going to leave very soon right?" I told him that I only had 6 more weeks here in the country. He started to cry and said, "Who will say hello to me every day? I am just a lonely old man with very little to live for but every day I know that you will pass by and smile and wave and ask me how I´m doing. It makes me feel important. I am not rich but if I had money I would throw you a going away party. Please don´t ever forget about me." I couldn´t help it and put my arm around him to comfort him. I was filled with such a feeling of love and compassion for this sweet man. It was such a wonderful testimony to me of the small and simple things. I have never had a real conversation with him or shared an official message but through my smiles and waves I was able to help him feel the Savior´s love and help him feel loved, wanted, and needed. I left feeling very humbled and grateful for the experience. 

I hope you will all take the time to let others know you love them this week. It is through the little things we choose to do. Share a smile or a wave. Give without expecting anything in return. Challenge someone you care about to be better and then show forth an increase of love afterward. The results are incredible. I know that the Lord loves us. He knows us each individually and is taking care of us day after day. Share that love with someone else.

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Hermana Ewell

 

Hija numero 2

Last week President called me to train again in Conani even though I only have 6 weeks left and training usually lasts 12. I´m super excited because I love my area and training will give me a good challenge to keep me sharp these last few weeks of the mission. Hermana Ruiz is now with Hermana Santana (my daughter and step-daughter are together haha) and Hermana Landaverde from El Salvador is now here with me. It will be a challenge but I´m excited for it!
 

So many things have happened this past week. We went back to a contact that had actually read the entire restoration pamphlet, had many goodbye parties for Hermana Ruiz, and I ate mondongo (cow intestines) for the first time and they actually taste pretty good!
 

Alexandra is still progressing a lot. We had an awesome lesson with her this week where she really opened up and shared a lot of her life story with us. When she was 10 she left her house to live with an older man to take care of her. She got pregnant when she was 11 and then had her son at age 12. He got sick with a bad fever and she didn´t know how to help him. Now he has brain damage and can´t talk and is developmentally retarded. A lot of people blame her for what happened but she was just a kid and didn´t know how to help him. She told us that afterward she was really depressed and became and alcoholic and started smoking. A few years ago she had a really bad accident and almost died and decided to turn her life over to God. She quit drinking and started looking for churches. This week we taught her the word of wisdom and she committed to quit smoking for good next week. She has so much desire to do what is right and follow the Lord. I love seeing the miracles in these people´s lives as they come from horrible backgrounds and leave it all to come unto Christ. I am so excited for her baptism and love the faith that she shows every time we are with her.
 

Sunday was also a really spiritual day. I had been feeling a little overwhelmed with some things that are going on here and during the sacrament was able to say a prayer and really feel the spirit comforting me in that moment and reminding me that we don´t ever have to be perfect, just do our best and give our hearts to the Lord. It was testimony meeting and I got up to share my testimony. As I started speaking I was filled with such gratitude and love for the Lord and all the blessings he has given me. I also realized how much I have grown to love my companion and how much I would miss her when she left. Hermana Ruiz has come to be one of my best friends ever and it will be really hard to adjust to someone new.

The meeting ended up going 20 minutes over because so many people wanted to bear their testimony. It was so special and spiritual! Erika got up during part and bore her testimony of faith and endurance. She had not been to church for a few weeks and 2 weeks ago her and Chico and their family showed up. We had thought about not visiting them because they didn´t seem super interested any more and were losing speed. She explained that she had stopped coming because she felt a little defeated going to church alone with the 5 kids every week. She knew that if Chico didn´t come that it wouldn´t be as worth it. She talked to him about it one more time and this time he agreed to come back. He has been to church 2 weeks in a row now...and he has even put on a white shirt. She said that he was the one that woke up the family to come on Sunday. Tears filled my eyes listening to this. The man that told me that he was not Mormon when I came here and refused to let us share a message is now sitting in sacrament meeting in a white shirt and tie and his wife is bearing her testimony about the possibility of a forever family. The branch told us that this family would never come back, that it was a waste of time...but we had faith in them and loved them and tried to help them and now they are back. It was such a special moment for me and I really felt like I was witnessing a miracle.
 

Well everyone, the Lord loves us. This is His work. He is working miracles all around us. I know that as we put forth our best He makes up the difference. Trust in Him and in His ability to shape and mold. Look at the people around you as what they can be and then you can help them to become just that. But if we only see them as they are right now, then they will never have the vision to become all that they could be.
 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Hermana Ewell

Hermana Landaverde and me

Our non-tea party with Ariadna teaching the Word of Wisdom

 

Helping Victor build a new house because the government tore down the other one to put in a road

All the Dominican women put their hair in "toobe" after they go to the salon to keep it straight and they walk around with no shame in the streets haha

Giant centipede (luckily it was dead)

Hermana Landaverde and me

 

Just the Way You Are

This week has been an interesting one for me. We have had some wonderful experiences teaching this week and also some of the most difficult experiences I have had to face in my mission yet. I have debated all week about what to say in this email. Whether to share all the dirty details or not. I think I´ll stick with the positive of what happened and then someday in the future if you all want to know what went down this week in the mission you can ask me.

We are still seeing wonderful things. We had 16 less actives come to church again on Sunday, we have 4 people with baptismal dates for the next month, and the branch thanks us many times a week for the miracles that they have started to see here. We always remind them that we aren´t the reason for the success...it´s the unity and the desire that EVERYONE has that is bringing so many wonderful things to Conani. 

As you all know, I am a little direct. I tend to tell people how it is. It is something that I have been trying to work on but I also realize that it is a big part of who I am and that perhaps the Lord needs some people that are just very straight to the point (I mean where would we be without Elder Holland?). This week I had a few experiences where I saw the blessings of being brutally honest. The first was with a member that is preparing to serve a mission. His mom is not a member and hates the church. She is very opposed to him serving and said that if he did not find a job soon to pay for his mission she would kick him out. Work doesn´t exist here. It is almost impossible to find a job and if you find one it usually doesn´t pay anything. He called us a few days later to say he had found a job...but he would have to work Saturday and Sunday. I told him to turn it down. He got a little frustrated and said, "I thought you would be happy for me. You don´t understand the pressure I´m under with my mom and you know that jobs are impossible to find especially here in La Vega!" I asked him who he loved more- his mom or the Lord. Then I said, "If you accept that job you will go inactive. You will find a reason to not serve and that job will be the start of a different life for you. Do not do something stupid for money. Do not sacrifice the opportunity to partake of the sacrament for a few pesos. I promise that if you show your faith right now and you turn down that job, the Lord will open up doors to you. You will find a better job that does not require that you work on Sunday. This is your chance to show your faith and show the Lord that you are willing to do whatever it takes to follow Him." This member proceeded to tell me a lot of really rude things and rail on me for talking to him that way but he eventually softened his heart because 2 days later he called again. "Hermana, I wanted to thank you for being so blunt with me about work. I had 2 other job offers and received one of the other jobs. I put my own hours and will make more money than I would have at the other job. Plus now I can keep going to church. You were right, the Lord wanted to see where my faith was and I´m grateful that you helped me see that."

We had another experience with Victor who is still struggling as he tries to quit smoking. We have shared about the love of God and all the different tools he can use (once again I am so grateful for Sunrise and all the professional training I have helping people with addictions!). This time as he started to make excuses for smoking again I cut in and told him I didn´t want to hear any more excuses. I told him that through his actions he was demonstrating that a cigarrette is more important that his relationship with his daughter and with the Lord. Veronica is always begging him to quit smoking and he can´t hold a calling because he does not live the commandments. I don´t remember what else I said to him but I was pretty straightforward about the consequences of his continuing to smoke. Then we made a plan and I challenged him to only smoke 1 a day for the next week. Then we would do 1 every other day and so on and so forth. Before he was smoking up to 40 in a day. He got really frustrated with me as well and told me I didn´t understand and that I can´t just go into other´s houses and tell them how to live. We explained that we care about them and that is why we challenge them to be better than they are. We called the next day to see how he was doing with the goal. He thanked me for being honest and helping wake him up to reality. By the end of the week he had gone 3 days without smoking at all. 

The last experience came with a family we are working with. The wife is a less active member and her husband and granddaughter are investigating the church. Her granddaughter, Ariadna, is 9 and really wants to be baptized. Yesterday we went to extend a date for the 27 of September with the two of them. Ariadna accepted right away but Rafael was really hesitant. He said that you need to be sure about what you are doing before you get baptized in a church and that you can´t just play with the things of God. We assured him that we would be there to help him prepare and that if the date came and he didn´t feel completely ready that we would change the date. That didn´t work. For everything we said, he had an excuse not to do it. I asked him if he had faith. He said that he did but that things take time and he wanted to change first. So I asked, "Do you believe that Christ can change someone in a month?" He told me, "Of course." Then I asked him, "How long did most of the miracles Christ did take to fulfill? When He healed people did they have to wait years to see the effects?" He told me that they happened in the very instant. Then I asked, "Do you believe that Christ can do a miracle in your life?" I testified that as we choose to let Christ into our lives He can work miracles and completely change us if we allow Him to do so. I challenged him to use his faith and by the end he agreed that Christ could help prepare him during the next month to be ready to make this convenant with God. He accepted the date. 

I don´t share all of these stories to say that you should go out and just tell people how it is. We should always act with love and according to what the spirit tells us. But I learned an important lesson this week and it is that sometimes the things that we look at as weaknesses can be used as strengths in the service of the Lord. I received a priesthood blessing during the week and that was one of the things He told me. That I should never be ashamed of who I am because the Lord uses the different skills of everyone to do the work and we just need to be sensitive to what He wants us to do. I know that when we put our faith in Him that miracles are possible. He loves us infinitely and has a special plan for each of us. He talks to us through prayer and blessings and will help guide us in all that we do. 

Love you all, the Lord loves you, and the church is true!

Sister Ewell

Ariadna, Kaylee, and Mia are granddaughters of a less active we teach.  Ariadna will be baptized this week.

Erika braided my hair like a Dominican

Service was clearing an overgrown field...with shovels

and machetes

Erika and Deyvi and their family

Hanging out at the Fagersten's house

 

Paola and Estrella acting as missionaries (they even contacted one of their neighbors!)

Don't leave Hermana Ruiz!

Bye Hermana Ruiz

Mondongo (cow intestine)

Eating mondongo

Family picture

Crazy family

Flower girls!