Hermana Ho: Nothing's Ever What It Seems

Hey guys! First of all, a big shoutout to mom! Happy belated birthday! Sorry that I'm all the way out here on another island and can't celebrate it with you in person, but I was thinking about you! Thanks for being a great mom and for always looking out for me. Not only are you my mom but you are also my best friend who has done a TON for me! Thanks for all of the times you listened and guided me and helped me walk through this life. I love you so much and hope that you had a great birthday! This week or next week, I will be sending home a package to all of you. This is going to be something new, and the mission pays for this kind of thing, so don't worry. But you're all gonnna have to tell me if you got everything in one piece :D I'm excited for you to get it!

Not too many exciting things went on this week. Well, in other words, I should say, nothing new happened this week. Everything is an adventure, but sometimes I forget that somethings that might surprise you guys are just the norm for me for now. And Alana, thanks for your prayers. I've actually, surprisingly not gotten sunburnt. Just once or twice throughout my entire mission and that was only a little bit. And I'm glad you are feeling better! I hope it wasn't something super bad. It could be some kinda bacteria that's in your body, so make sure you drink lots of water to drain it all out.

And Alliyah, to answer some of your questions, first of all, yes, my personal progress helped me. You know, you may not think about it until later, but as I look back, I think that it's one of the best things you can do to prepare yourself for later in life. Personal progress was the basics and the foundation of my own testimony. It helped me learn about the basics of the church and the first principles and ordinances of the gospel for myself and throughout college and up until this point in my mission, has maybe been the key to my testimony. A testimony isn't a huge thing, but when you look at it, it's definitely the foundation of my things. There's the scripture that says "By small and simple things are great things come to pass" and Personal Progress is definitely that small thing :) Also, it helps when you are trying to help the young women in the misison do their personal progress because you have your own experiences that you can share with them. And sweet ode by the way! I think it'll be great! Thinking of going into writing in your career?

And dad, yes, the power outage is normal here. Here we call electricity "light" or "luz" in spanish. Usually we have luz in the morning until 10am, then it come back on at 12ish sometimes, then goes, then come back at like 3 or 4 and stays on for the rest of the night. It was worse in our other house though. But in Hato Mayor, it was perfect :D like everything was in Hato Mayor :D And I'm working on smiling more. It's super hard though ...

Well, there really wasn't much that went down this week so I think I'll talk a little about the pics that I'll send. Thank you all for your emails, pics, and love! I'm so glad to be here in the mish and there really are so many miracles that happen here. I'll caption all the pics so you can get a glimpse into the adventure I'm taking right now. Sorry if I repeat some of them. Love you all!

Love, aloha, y amor,

Hermana Ho

So we lost water last week and found out it came. The only thing was that the bomba/water pump (the orange thing) wasn't pumping it to the roof where we store our water. Then there wasn't any light, So we had to collect the water like this and fill up some buckets. Finally, when we had light, we took water bucket by bucket from this thing and hauled it up to the roof. yes, true manual labor. Good thing was had power cord or whatever dad calls it! :D

And yes, this is our washing machine, mom. Just fill it up with water, let it turn for a bit, then you have to hand rinse the clothes and put it in the little spinner on the right, which spins out all the water

Don't know if you can see the difference between the new shoe and the old one ... but one has a hole and the other doesn't!

This is normal in the DR. Some dude riding on the back of a motorcycle, carrying this big glass window or something. Just another day in the mission life.

This is a guagua, or a public bus. On a busy day, you will see these babies packed to the max, people standing and sitting on top of each other, stuffed all the way up to the door.

The simple joys in life. The hamburger is what we call a chimi and is soooo delish! It's full of nice good stuff and is great to eat at the end of the day. Luckily we have a clean chimi place near our house.