Dear Family,

Roysel was baptized this week! I cried when he was baptized. I have been working with him for so long and have had this amazing blessing to see him change as he accepted and applied the gospel in his life. He has such an enormous testimony of the gospel and I know he will never fall away. He is stationed very securely upon the rock of our Salvador.

This is something that I have seen at home and over and over again on my mission. People lack conversion. They arent continually trying to convert themselves to the gospel. That is how we fall away. That is why people dont go to church or read their scriptures or say their prayers. They arent converted. They dont understand the gospel or the Atonement and they dont understand how to apply it to their lives. I hope that every single one of you are not only doing the things that you should, but that you are active in the gospel, that you seek for it and notice it in your everyday lives. God made the earth and all things that are in it. There is evidence in every step that we take that the gospel is true, but we have to recognize it in order to gain a testimony about it. I am getting preachy, sorry, I just feel like we as members may be lacking and I hope that it isnt one of you.

This week we had a video conference with Elder Russell M Nelson. It was broadcasted from Honduras to, I am pretty sure, all of Central America. It was so great to recieve council from one of the Apostles. He talked a lot about the temple and (even though we shouldnt think about it because we are missionaries) how our ultimate goal should be to marry in the temple. He shared a lot about how we should love our investigators and how we should work with the members. He gave us some topics to study deeply, and told us that these things are things that we need to know to be prepared to teach and to be prepared to meet God. It was really awesome. He also mentioned how we shouldnt immerse ourselves completely in our mission language, but that we should also teach our native tongue to our companions and expound our knowledge about our own language as well as the language we are learning... so, yall can give a big "thank you" to Elder Nelson because he is the only reason I am writing this in English. 

Last, but certainly not least, I need to give a birthday shoutout to Britney. Sorry sis that this is the second time that I wont be there for your birthday... but you gotta know how much I love you. I cant believe you are going to drive... please be careful.. like seriously, be careful. I love you so much. I hope your birthday is amazing and that you enjoy every minute. I hope you know that you are in my prayers. I hope that you will feel how much I love you, how much your family loves you, and how much your Savior loves you on this special day. 

This week was very spirit filled, and I am very grateful for it. Thank you for your support and your prayers. They really help. I love all of you so much and never forget who loves you the most, our Savior Jesus Christ. 

With love, Hermana Eardley

P.S. sorry for the lack of photos... you will be getting some soon but I have to buy a cable first.

Learn Spanish

Dear Family,

Esta semana fue increible. Hicimos bastante. Voy a contarles todo... ó voy a tratar... ya no tengo tanto tiempo.

Primeramente! ¡Soy legal! Pueden creer? Me fui a migraciones esta semana y recibí mi carnet... aun que el foto es HORRIBLE estoy tan feliz porque soy legal aquí in Panamá... Wohoo! 

Martes, vimos el presidente de los hombres jovenes y él nos dijo que esa noche tenía una noche de hogar con los hombres jovenes y que nuestra investigador, Roysel, va a estar tambien. Nos invitó a pasar y compartir un mensaje con todos porque él tiene un video que nos dijo va a ayudar a Roysel (él tiene problemas con la ley de castidad)... Estabamos bien nerviosa. No sabíamos como a hablar sobre la ley de castidad con todo los hombres jovenes.. bueno, sí sabemos, pero, no estabamos preparados. Hicimos una oración antes de llegar a la casa de él y cuando entramos todos nos veían... cantamos, oramos, y depues vemos el video. Ni habla sobre la ley de castidad, habla sobre hablando con el obisbo sobre sus pecados y el proceso del arrepentimiento. FACÍL. Fue bueno todo.

Roysel va a bautisarse este Sabado! Estamos muy muy muy felices por él! Por favor pongale en sus oraciones esta semana. Él lo necesita. 

Empezamos clases de inglés. Es bien divertido a enseñar inglés y me ayuda con mi español tambien! 

We had a lot happen this week, but I dont have a lot of time. Sorry. I love yall so much and I hope your week is spectacular. You are in my prayers and my thoughts. Thank you so much for everything that you do for me! 

Con amor, Hermana Eardley

P.S. This message is in spanish for your benefit. Parents and sisters: learn spanish. :)


Translation via translator app.  You will have to make sense of it yourself. . .but at least its not in Spanish.

This week was incredible.  We did enough.  Im going to ? all. . . or I will try to. . .I don't have much time.  

First, I am legal!  Can you believe?  I went to migration this week and received my card. . .The photo is horrible. . .I am so happy because I'm legal here in Panama'.  Wohoo!

Tuesday saw the president of the young men and he told us that night was a night of home with young men and that our researcher Roysel will be also.  He invited us pass and I shared a message with everyone because the has a video that he said will help Roysel (He has problems with the law of chastity) . . .We were nervous.  We didn't know and talk about the law of chastity with all young men. . . Well, if we know but we were not prepared.  We said a prayer before arriving at the house of the and when we enter all we saw. . .we sing, pray and then see the video.  Or talk about the law of chastity, talk about speakiing with the bishop on his sins and the process of repentance.  EASY.  It was good to all. 

Roysel goes to bautisarse this Saturday!  We are very very happy by the!  Please put in your prayers this week.  He does not need.

We began English classes.  Well funny to teach English and I help with my spanish also.

The Scriptures are amazing!

Dear Family,

I will never get to a point when I have learned everything. The scriptures are so complicated and full of significance. It amazes me how we read the stories, learn the message that is sprinkled on top, but we never ask what more we can learn from this passage of scripture. For example, how many sons did Lehi have? Lamon, Lemuel, Sam, Nefi, Jacob, and Joseph. How many rebelled? 2. 2/6. 1/3. 1/3rd rebelled... how many people rebelled against Gods plan and followed Satan? The scriptures tell us everything we need to know. It makes me so sad how sometimes we read them without studying them. Dont get me wrong, the messages sprinkled on top are wonderful, and it is wonderful to read the scriptures, but why dont we have this intense desire to learn? How is it that we can be happy with primary school answers our whole life? We read the scriptures, and we think we know what they are saying, so we accept it and move on. That is not how it should be. I would like to challenge you to understand the scriptures more deeply. 

We had an amazing Stake Conference with Elder Alonso! He is amazing and I love the way he explains the gospel. For him, everything is focussed on the Atonement. He talked to us about the Sabbath Day on Saturday. He said, "Those who dont partake of the sacrament on Sunday dont have the spirit. You can pray, you can study the scriptures, but if you dont take the sacrament, you dont have the spirit". I love how direct he is! On Sunday he talked to us about the temple and family history work. Go to the temple. Do family history work. Keep your recommed. Never let it expire and always stay worthy to enter. He said, "I have this theory, its not doctrine, but its a theory, when Christ comes, where do you think he is going to go? To the chapel? NO, that isnt his house. He is going to go to his house, the temple. And what happens if he comes and you dont have a recommend to enter? The bishop isnt going to be there filling out recommends, he is going to take his family to the temple. If you dont have the recommend when he comes, your out of luck". Please. Go to the temple. 

During the conference he called all the missionaries up and said, "now we are going to sing like we practiced..." We didnt practice. We sang "I am a Child of God" and afterward he talked about how we wake up, happy, every morning at 6:30, exercize, study personally, study with our companion, study language, and we leave. During the day we are rejected, ignorned, and lied to, then, we go home, plan for the next day, kneel in prayer thanking God for the day, and it starts all over again. Then, like a cut to the heart, he asked everyone in that conference what they are doing for us. Do they reject us? Ignore us? Lie to us? or do they support us? I almost cried because we havent recieved support from our members here, and our area is really hard. We dont have many investigators. Contacting doesnt work for anything. Its really hard.

This week was really amazing. I loved it. I dont have a lot of time to write this week, I am sorry, but I want yall to know that I love you and you are in my prayers. I hope yall have a great week!

With all my love, 

Hermana Eardley

I would love to get some e-mails

Dear Family, 

This week was super great, but, I am not going to tell yall about it. If you would like to know something, you have to ask me. It seems that is the only way I will hear from yall.

Have a great week.

Sincerely, Hermana Eardley

Transfers and Pioneer Day

Dear Family,

So, we had transfers... I didnt, but Hermana Villanueva got transfered to Arraijan. We seriously cried for 2 days. Our members cried. Our investigators didn't, but they were sad. She was the best companion that I have had in the mission and I seriously love her with all my heart. We got along so well. We taught together so well. We helped eachother and just understood eachother perfectly... I think yall get the picture. Granted, there were things she did that I didnt like, and I did things she didnt like, but we were able to get over it really fast. I will seriously miss her. 

My new companion is Hermana Garcia from Guatemala. Yeah, I get another Guatemalteca.. I was super nervous when I heard she was from Guatemala because I didnt get along with Hermana Ramirez very well... my Trnew companion is like a little kid. Seriously. I am not kidding. I feel like her mother. She thinks the simplest things are SO interesting. When we go to members houses, she plays with the kids. She is super sweet and innocent. She is a good missionary too. She isnt shy and she is direct like me when she teaches. The Guatemala culture is still prominent in her way of being, and I thank the Lord everyday that he didnt send me there, but she isnt super prideful like others that I have met. She does have a tendency to interrupt me during the lessons and I dont like that at all and we are going to work on it. She has 6 months in the mission, and this is her second area. She was in Tocumen before and that area is very different than Chorrera. She has an amazing memory which I envy a little bit, but thats because I get my memory skills from my mom... right mom? Nah, just kidding, sort of. I have a feeling that we are going to get along this transfer.. and I am sure that we are going to have a lot of success. Wish me luck.

This week we had an activity for Pioneer Day. Everyone dressed up as pioneers and it was just SO CUTE! (I didnt take photos because I was busy helping with the activity (We had a play and I was in it) and I regret it just as much as yall do). It seriously was the closest I have felt to home since I got to Panamá. I felt like I was back in time with my ancestors... it was really cool. A member made us Pioneer costumes and everything! Everyone said I looked the most like a Pioneer, but thats just because I am white (or at least that is what they think... but they dont see my tan lines). 

I was thinking this week about how much God loves us. Everything He has given us, and how much I owe him for my blessings that I have recieved. I have an amazing family that loves and supports me, and I them, I have the gospel in my life and even the blessing to have had it since birth, I have this wonderful opportunity to serve my brothers and sisters in the beautiful country of Panamá, and most importantly, I have His love, and my Saviors love, and the promise that I will live with them for eternity. I have the Atonement so that I can be forgiven of my sins. I started reflecting on it all... every tree, rock, person is all Gods, but he gave us everything he had. I owe him everything, and I will never be able to pay it. Can yall believe that people have started telling me, "When do you go home?" "February" "Oh yeah your done"!!! Can you believe it? My point is it doesnt get to me, because I know that once a missionary, always a missionary. My life literally belongs to my Heavenly Father and I know that I have to give it all. I want to give it all. I love my Heavenly Father more than anything. 

I love yall so much! I hope that yall can feel how much I love you even though I am a little far away. 

Have a great week! 

Love, Hermana Eardley

Ups and Downs

Dear family,

This week was really up and down for us. I have to be honest it definitely wasnt one of the funnest weeks of my mission. It started out really bad... Tuesday started off normal. We had a good lesson with a less active at 11, then our lunch cancelled so we went and visited an investigator. While we were waiting for her to come back with her Book of Mormon, I was looking out the window and saw a little boy (7yrs) get hit by a car. Everyone started screaming and running to help. Thats the thing that sucks about Panamá, there arent ambulances or even a number for emergencies... if you dont have a way to get to the hospital, you die. "Luckily" the car that hit him was a taxi. His grandma and him got in and headed to the hospital. In the moment he was completely unrespoinsive, but for everyone to know, we passed by the next day and he is going to be okay.

After that we were feeling a little down, so we decided to go visit our super positive investigator Roysel who was going to be baptized this last week... in that lesson, I dont know how it came up, but he confessed to us that he has some major problems with the law of chastity... and that he cant be baptized. So, that sucked. Granted, we are working with him and we have put a new baptism date and he is improving immensely. But, it did suck. After that we decided to go visit our most positive family that we were teaching... can yall guess what happened? We sat down, said the prayer, and then the hermana looked at us and told us that she wasnt going to change churches and neither was her husband and that they were sorry for making us think that they would... 

After that we had dinner... dinner was pretty good.

Then we decided we werent going to try our chances with anymore investigators that day... we were a little scared, so we went and visited a less active family... right, because, if something goes wrong, the worst thing that happens is they remain less active... thats not great, but we couldnt visit anyone else... we were just about to throw in the towell for the day. Anyways, we went and visited this less active family and we started talking about the Sacrament. I asked the hermano what taking the Sacrament means to him and he told me, "Voy a decir la verdad. Yo no sé que es la santa cena porque yo no he asistido en mucho tiempo porque no puedo leer." It turns out a member offended him asking him to read a scripture and thats why he doesnt go. ---side note: I dont believe in that. People have given me every excuse in the book about why they dont go to church. "So and so offended me" "I am working" "I dont have time" etc. etc. etc. It is all lies. I have come to the conclusion that people who dont go to church dont go for ONE REASON. They dont understand the Atonement. --- we talked to him for a little bit, but then he just said, "esta bien si vienen un otro día y podemos hablar sobre este con mas calma? pueden venir viernes para la cena?" We agreed. Obviously I am about to skip to Friday to finish my story... So we showed up for dinner on Friday expecting to sit down, have a nice meal, and talk. We get there and he is watching sports. They invite us in and we try to chit-chat with him, but he kept watching sports. When dinner was ready we waiting for everyone to start filing into the kitchen and no one moved... then they told us, "allí esta hermanas. Comen" what? so we walk into the kitchen and there are only two plates.. we sit down and everybody leaves... NOT JOKING. THEY JUST LEFT US THERE. ALONE. Afterwards we went and shared a message with them and waited for them to MAYBE say something about the topic that was supposed to be discussed, but they said nothing. So, we said a prayer and left... worst meal I have ever had, and the food was pretty dang good. 

Well, if you cant tell, our week was a little hard. That was our days... they seriously were all like that until Thursday... We have this member named Patricia Rios. She is amazing and her family is like my family here in the mission. I love her so much! I cant wait for you guys to meat her... even though you wont be able to understand anything she says, which is a real bummer because the stories she tells are one in a million amazing. Anyways, I am getting off topic. Her family makes tortillas out of corn for a business. They are really good and definitely dont exist in the USA. Thursday we passed by her house for a minute and she told us she was headed out to make tortillas at her parents house... so we left to go do weekly planning... we walked into the house and we were just feeling so down and a little depressed because nothing had worked out in the week, so we called our DL and asked permission to leave the area to do a service project, then we called hermana Paty and asked her if we could help make tortillas.. That was the funnest thing we have done in a long time. We had to knead corn into dough and it was so hard. We were dirty, sweating, our arms hurt, and it was just so great. I think it was needed because we were able to just get rid of a ton of stress and we both felt a lot better afterwards. 

Our first and only good day this week was Saturday. A member gave us the reference of one of her best friends and all last transfer we were working with the member so that she could prepare her friend to recieve the missionaries. Two weeks ago she said that her friend excepted and that we could go visit her. We went with the member the first time and it was really good. We talked about our expectations and she excepted our purpose. We had an appointment with her on Saturday, but we got there about 15 minutes early and decided to go try to contact this less active member that lives close by (we have been trying to find her for almost 3 months now and she is never home), we got to the house and they WERE HOME! Before we even introduced ourselves she invited us in and we talked for a couple minutes. She said her son had gotten injured and long story short she had decided that it was time for her to go to church again, and they we showed up! The best part, they actually did go to church! All of them! and her husband and daughter arent members. It was so awesome! Our lesson with the member´s friend (Ines) went really well too. She excepted the Restoration quite easily but has the hang up that she needs to learn everything before she accepts a baptism date. 

All in all our week was... I dont really know. This week is transfer week so we will see what happens, but I dont want to get transfered. I hope I dont get transfered. 

At one point during the week my companion told me that this was really hard, and I knew she was feeling even lower than I was, so I told her to ask me if I was happy. She laughed and we kept walking. Then I told her that I was serious and to ask me if I was happy. "Are you happy?" "yes." "why?" then I told her about a talk from Elder Holland. He was talking to mission presidents saying that missionaries were going to ask, "why is it so hard" and that his conclusion is because it was never easy for Him. I told her that when we do our best, but are still rejected, we should be proud because we are standing side by side with the best missionary that has ever lived. I understand why it needs to be hard. We have to feel a portion of what He felt. We have to experience it, there is no other way. I am proud to be a missionary. I know that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. I dont have regrets. This week was really hard, and I have prayed every night thanking God that I was able to experience every moment of it. We need to understand, to the best of our ability, what the Savior went through. Its a price I am more than willing to pay.

I love you all and hope that your week will be wonderful! You are in my prayers!

Love, Hermana Eardley

Dear Family,

My appologies, this letter is going to be a little short.

This week was pretty great. We got a lot of stuff done and we made some progress with a lot of our investigators. 

I had to buy another journal this week because I finished my last one... Sorry, but this one is completely in spanish. I decided to write the whole thing in spanish first to practice, second, because I feel cool, and third, it gives me a really great reason to not forget my spanish when I get home... 

Roysel has his baptism coming up in two weeks and we are all super excited! On Sunday, he didnt show up to church so after sacrament we asked the young men where he was and they said that his family had a party the night before and that he stayed up late and was sleeping... so we grabbed two of the young men, walked to his house as fast as we could (he lives about 20 minutes from the chapel and we walked there in 10...), we told his mom to wake him up, she did, twice, he got up the second time, came to the door, and I just looked at him and said, "where is your shirt?" he stared at me for a second and was like, "give me a second" 10 minutes later he comes back showered and in a white shirt and tie ready to go... then he just said, "it wasnt worth it to try to give you an excuse".... I felt like a boss. 

We have an investigator named Johanna and she is great! We thought that our recent convert Katherine would get along really well with her so we brought her to our appointment with Johanna... when we were walking to her house Kathy started to ask us what she was like and then said, "she has two kids?" yes. "she is my cousin" what? "yeah she lives right here" oh no.. our investigator lives in the next street. "oh, it cant be her" (we get the the house, yell BUENAS, and she comes to the door. "oh, yeah thats my cousin.. I didnt know she lived her" WHAT? It was so weird... but it made our lesson that much cooler. 

I have had a huge testimony builder this week about obedience. The Savior has said "If you love me, keep my commandments" and he is serious. It is all about trusting in the Lord. I have learned that I cannot do anything without his help, and I need to be obedient to his commandments to show that I trust him. We had so many conflicts this week and when we decided that it didnt matter what happened, we were going to follow the rules, and it was a miracle from heaven that everything turned out the way it was supposed to. I know God wants to bless us. He can help us more than we can help ourselves, but for some reason its hard for us to put that kind of trust in him. That is what faith is, trust. When we do things his way, it turns out the way he wants it to, and there isnt anything better.

I love yall so much and hope you have a wonderful week! Talk to you next week!

Love, Hermana Eardley