Hello Family!!
All is well, I arrived safely in TN. Well my first week here has been great and a little crazy! So to start off, I landed in TN on Monday afternoon, our flight was delyed in Detroit and a nice man, who used to be one of President McKee's mission counselors, happened to be on our same flight to TN. When we arrived in TN the McKee family was at the airport and we talked with them for a little at the airport and found out that the man we were traveling with is a 70 and was flying back from General Conference. We then grabbed all of our bags and loaded up in the cars, we had 21 people in our traveling group. We then went to the mission home and had dinner. After dinner we had interviews with Sister McKee and President McKee. They are both AMAZING people and I love them and their family already. We then spent the night at the mission home and at neighbors homes that night.
The next morning we went to the Church and got our companion assignments. We all sat in the gym and we got a letter from the President that has our mission area and companion's name on it and we opened the letter and read it in front of everyone, it was like reopening my mission call (haha). So my area is Lebanon and my companion is Hermana Knect (connect). She has been on her mission for 6 weeks and knows just as much Spanish as I do (haha), so we will be doing our training together. We are supposed to be trained for 12 weeks, but she will be finishing her 6 weeks training with me. We are also opening an area. The last time Lebanon had Sister missionaries was 14 years ago. We have no idea about the area, we don't know where the Latinos live in this area and this area has not had a baptism for a really long time. We are here to work some milagros, haha.
We are assigned to an English Ward but there is a Spanish group in the ward of about 50 people and we are here to make the group a Branch and hopefully a Ward soon! The dynamics of it all is a little confusing because the English Ward has been waiting for sister missionaries for a really long time and they have a lot of work for us to do in English, BUT we are Spanish Missionaries and we are here to create a Branch. The ward doesn't want the group to become a branch because if it becomes a branch we will take away from their funds and we all know how that goes. So we are not really backed by the Ward in those efforts. But the Ward has been so so so nice at welcoming us and loving us and setting up our apartment. They are all really awesome.
Hermana Knect and I have met some really nice Latino families this week and we have started to teach them with the little Spanish we know. God has blessed us so much and put a lot of Latino people in our path. All the people think we are really crazy, haha. We were on Hobbs street the other day and we found a group of really nice Guatemalen faimlies living together that we are starting to teach. On our way walking, two black guys drove up next to us and were talking with us and questioning who we are and stuff. It was a little scetch. They were talking to me saying, "what are you white girls doin here in da hood?" We told Lamar what our church is and invited him to church, he then asked how many black people go to your church? It was just really funny and they were your typical black guys in the hood gangsters, haha.
Later that week we were trackting and we decided to walk into some random church and talked to the Pastor. So we go into the Church and he gives us a tour and shows us their Sanctuary, the Sanctuary was crazy! It has this huge light show thing and drums and crazy music and it is like you are in a big concert about Jesus (haha). Anyway, I asked if we could sit in on their group meeting and the guy said yes and invited us to stay for their dinner. Then his wife showed up and said we couldn't stay because it was a leadership meeting and the husband asked his wife if we could at least come back for dinner and the wife said no. So we left and if was funny. But we plan to go back on their regular meeting hours on Wednesday and go talk to them some more. We are trying to break down the negative mentatily they have about Mormons and let them know that we are nice normal people and then some of them might start letting us into their homes and then maybe they will let us start teaching them. We are trying to befriend a lot of people right now!
I miss you, so I am keeping you all in my prayers! Oh and my comp is from California and she goes to BYU she is 19 and I like her a lot!
Love,
Hermana Ayre
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