hermana rhondeau

not the best quality, but the only picture I have of my companion. we were teaching Hna Yajaira, who is wearing my comps glasses, and who was answering all of our questions in English. She is the cutest.

dearest family,

This week we felt like we went on vacation, because 1) we made about six trips to the hospital, and 2) we were ordered three days of rest, which meant we really didn't work at all this week. Moral of the story: not working made me realize how much I love working. On the plus side, we got to take taxi rides on the freeway (who knew Merida has a freeway?). I liked this part — traveling across a foreign country with low, cloudy skies and heavy raindrops, and yet not feeling quite so foreign to this part of the world anymore. I love it here; the colors, the faces, the words, the language, the kindness, the humility, the buildings, the hands that made these buildings. It has become a home away from home, and one that I hope to keep and hold forever. 

With only two days (kind of) of working this week, there isn't a lot to report. Only that we got to eat IHOP and Dairy Queen and pizza — we thought each of these food options were really good ideas, until we actually followed through with these great plans and ended up feeling all the worse after. I guess we have become a little too accustomed to Mexican food/Mexican culture, because we felt super out of place when we went to the mall right next to the hospital that made us feel like we were in America. We didn't like feeling like we were in America. Besides our food adventures, we ended up finding ways to entertain ourselves while confined to our little jail cell (house), such as watching "The District" (1 AND 2), replying to all of our received text messages with scripture references (yes, it is possible), and starting to read the Book of Mormon in Spanish for the second time in order to prepare ourselves for when Elder Bednar comes to visit (in three weeks!). 

With the few lessons we had this week, I have started to think a lot about the law of sacrifice — how much we are really willing to give up in order to do God's will and be His true disciples. There are so many people here that are willing to give up things of the world in order to fulfill the laws of heaven and obtain those eternal blessings from God. We taught Hno Tony the Word of Wisdom last week — something that we were a little nervous to teach because he has friends that he knows are not good influences, but who have always been his friends and who he continues to choose to spend time with (sidenote: everyone should just choose good friends that make you want to do the right thing and be the right person). In our following lesson with him, we asked him how everything was going with the Word of Wisdom and he casually answered that he hasn't been drinking for the past week and a half. He told us that every time his friends start drinking, he drinks apple juice, and with that response we loved him a little more and awed at his faithfulness and strength and also about the fact that he wasn't embarrassed to drink apple juice in front of his friends. He is starting to leave the things of the worlds to follow the ways of God. 

There are so many people here that do that — choose their Heavenly Father over everything else. This land really is full of people with believing blood; people that believe in something greater than themselves and want to talk about it, too. They are willing to sacrifice and live that law of sacrifice. The girl that didn't eat for two days in order to have enough money to travel to enter the temple; the family that wakes up early for church every morning so that they can pass by for a person that wants to believe in God and go to church to show it; the couple that pays their tithing even when they don't have enough to buy food — each of these faces and these stories are lined with markings of sacrifice and faith. How grateful I am to be in a place with a people that is teaching me more than I could ever teach them.

Wishing you a bright week/CANT WAIT TO TALK TO YOU IN SIX DAYS! 

love always,

Hermana Rhondeau 

a picture of a sign that we pass by every sunday, because every sunday people sell and buy cochinita here. we don't know why, but it is so Yucatecan and we love it.