Week 20: Welcome to Coronado...not in Kansas anymore

Hola familia!

This place is gigantic! And cold! I never thought I would say that I¨m cold here in Costa Rica...but here in Coronado we´re in the mountains and it´s cold in the evenings and getting out of bed is freezing. Yesterday I had my first hot shower here in Costa Rica....apparantly right now the water heater is broken, so we´ve got cold water, but when the members we live with fix it, bingo, we´ll have hot water. Yesterday the members we live with let us use their shower so that´s how it came to pass my first hot shower here in Costa Rica ;) haha. anyway, on to important things....

Yesterday and Saturday we had the wonderful opportunity to listen to General Conference--I hope you all had the opportunity to really listen and find ways to put into practice those things that they taught us. Of course, we listened to all of the conference in Spanish....I missed hearing the real voices of our beloved prophet and apostles, but it was still amazing. And really tuanis that 4 talks were in other languages...what did yall think of that? when the speaker started speaking in chinese, spanish, or portuguese? haha. I loved the two talks that were in spanish because we got to listen to the real voices of those two speakers, but the rest were translated over.

So Ojo de Agua is a lot different from where I am now. Pretty much every one here in Coronado has a car. and the houses are mansions compared to what I´m used to in Ojo de Agua...It´s city, so people don´t greet each other like we always did in Ojo de Agua. Apparently this area has been really low in numbers, lessons, new investigators, and baptisms....yay me, haha. I don´t know the area still because my companion hardly knows the area as well, so this will definitely be a learning experience as we learn the area together and look for new investigators (because we barely have anyone...). We are going to rely alot on faith, and being obedient so that we can see miracles here in Coronado (because we desperately need some). Today we had a great activity that the Sister Training Leaders put together for all the sisters in our zone, and we talked a lot about having faith and working hard and being obedient and talking with everyone, so that we could witness miracles in our areas and have baptism--- how to have faith and really endure and be postiive even when it seems like we´re not having success, because if we still work hard, and are obedient, the miracles will come, we just have to be patient and really believe that they´ll come. Hermana Cobourn is one of our especialistas (sister training leaders) and she is awesome. She is in her 19th month because she extended her mission for another month and she was in my first ward at BYU.

My new companion is Hermana Canales; she is from Honduras. she is 19 years old. She has almost 3 months in the mission (just barely finished her training), and she is fun-loving and loves to talk. I hope that I can lead by example how to work hard and that I can learn lots from her and that together we can be successful tools in the Lord´s hands here in Coronado.

I hope that I can get to know this area well enough to be a better help for my companion to know where we should go so that we use our time more effectively. This week should be a week filled with talking to everyone, looking for nuevos, and praying fervantly to be led in the right direction, so that we can find those who are ready to accept the gospel and enter the waters of baptism.
I love being a missionary!

Con mucho amor,
Hermana Flake