My Last Trip To the Costa Rica Temple and Preparing for General Conference

Hey everyone! Happy wednesday!

I have to be honest, having a P-Day Wednesday wiped me out! I'm pretty darn tired but today was incredible!! We woke up at 3 (yeah ouch) and went to the temple with our Zone!! I was ecstatic!! I needed the temple and that spirit that only the temple holds. In the mission, we get to go every 6 months. It was my last time, my last chance to go to the Costa Rica Temple before I return home. The Costa Rica Temple will always have a huge piece of my heart as I have seen those who are special to me here enter♥ I was able to receive really amazing revelation today. I want to be better and to continue to progress. The temple helped me to remember my goals, and really why I am here. You can never stop learning!!

After the temple, all of the hermanas (from Cartago and also Toyopan) went to President Hayes' house for lunch. It was really special. This was something that Hermana Hayes has been wanting to do for a long time and I'm so glad that she did it!!  We never do things in the mission just for hermanas, so YAY!! We were able to go to their house to talk and to have lunch. Hermana Hayes made the best taco soup....and we ate vegetables (I miss eating vegetables)!! I was in heaven! I ate so much I'm still stuffed (6 hours later). I love the hermanas in the mission. I really do. Maybe at times, it's not easy to like everyone, we are all so different; but I truly love these girls! I'm thankful that we are all here serving together. 

This past week was a wild ride!! Hahah, seriously! I felt that we were running from cita to cita but that's always fun! The worst is when you feel like there is nothing to do! Boredom is a missionary's worst nightmare!

We had a baptism! Diandra got baptized. It was a miracle. I love this 10 year old and her family. We are working on getting them back to church but for now the girls are keeping strong in going BY THEMSELVES! That's faith!! Diandra and her older sister Dariana go to church together by themselves each Sunday because they like going. They know that it's right. The baptism was so spiritual. I love seeing baptismal ordinances. I love it! I'm a big baby so the tears always come but I am always so proud of the people who are willing to make covenants with the Lord. I am reminded of my own baptism 12 years ago. Maybe I didn't understand everything about the gospel but I knew that baptism was the right thing to do:) I knew that Christ was baptized by someone holding the Priesthood Authority of God and that I needed to be to. (Thanks papa for baptizing me!) That day changed my life forever and I am forever grateful♥

So this weekend is General Conference and I am soooo beyond excited! It's my last conference session in Spanish! I absolutely loved Women's Conference this past weekend. I have to be honest (as I always am), normally I don't like Women's Conference. They normally talk about charity and service. I love both of those topics but I have always been wishing for something a little bit stronger. This time they did it!! Sister Bonnie Oscarson hit it right on!! We are living in a spiritually dangerous world! We need to be prepared and we need to help prepare others. Also, President Uchtdorf...the best!! Seriously, his talk spoke straight to me. Faith is hard, it truly is but we need to constantly be striving to have it. 

I am so thankful for the opportunities I have had to actually attend General Conference in Salt Lake City, to sit in the presence of our General Authorities and our Prophet. I hope that we are all preparing for General Conference. I invite you to have a question. Have a doubt. Have something to be focused on. The spirit with teach us if we let it! I testify that President Thomas S. Monson is the Lord's chosen prophet and that the apostles are also called of God. I honor and sustain them. I'm looking forward to this weekend!! 

I love you all so much! I look forward to your emails every week and even though I can't reply sometimes (sorry!) I think of you all so often! Thanks for your prayers. Lets have a great week :)

Love, Hermana Zerilli

I Guess You Could Say "It Was The Best of Times It Was The Worst of Times" LOL

Hey everyone,

It was a good first week of changes!!! Hermana Martinez and I were able to get going, visiting new areas and areas that we previously haven't worked in!

First off, I want to mention just how sore we were Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after that crazy hard hike last Monday! Seriously, that hike killed us haha!. 

We were able to go to Orosi Wednesday!! There we visited Brenda and got to working a little bit more. At Brenda's we ate spaghetti and brownies and talked about prayer. She's having a few troubles with her sister back in the United States. She kind of criticizes her for her beliefs in the church, and she wants to be able to say a prayer with her sister when she goes to visit her, without being criticized. In my time in Costa Rica, I have seen and heard very many different prayers. My mind has really been opened to the different ways that someone can pray! We know from the scriptures that as long as we pray to our Heavenly Father or God in the name of Jesus Christ, our prayer will get to Heaven. We taught Brenda that! She knows, and as long as she sticks to her testimony, no one can tell her that she is wrong:)

I FELT LIKE I WAS HOME...DAD, IT WAS ITALIAN FOOD AND A SALAD!!

Also, we went to Santiago Friday. Santiago is about an hour away from our area. We have to take a bus that goes on a windy road the entire way. The worst is when you have to take it standing up, haha. We got to Santiago and it was beautiful!! I seriously love this area. It's really far from the church and so we and the past missionaries have been working to have a Branch built there. That's the vision that we all have! We were able to visit members that live there, Eduarda and Coca. They have a huge orchard of limes, cas, and gunabana. They gave us some to take home. 

Also, we went and visited a reference that the elders had for us. It's a young mom named Maria. It turns out, she is not able to get married to her husband because he is divorced and the church they go to prohibits marriage if you are divorced! WHAT! We were so shocked!! We were able to have a great lesson about families with her. She wants to get married and knows that is what God wants too. She said "sometimes it's your own church that keeps you from doing the right thing." THAT CAN'T BE TRUE!! What?! I am excited to teach her the gospel and help her to get married! I know that the scripture is true that says those who prohibit marriage are not of God. Our Heavenly Father wants us to be as united, happy, families. It is part of His plan that we are married!

Recently, our ward has really had the mission spirit. All of the youth are signing up to go teach with us during the week!! We are so excited about it! I am seeing big things in the future with the missionaries and members working together. 

Today Rocio and Alejandro went on another walk (hike) with us to a river! It was great! I got a little burned but it was really pretty. I took a bunch of pictures....which I am now saving on a flash drive:(

Oh and I will be writing Wednesday next week because we get to go to the Temple and that's going to be our P-day!!! ahhh I need the Temple seriously!! So it will probably be later on Wednesday.

I love you all and wish you the best week!! Keep on keepin it real :)

Love Hermana Zerilli♥

*An additiona from Taylor's Mom...While my sweet daughter always has a smile on her face and makes every attempt to push any sadness out of her life...It sounds like she did have some struggles this past week, just thought I would share a few...

"Mom I had a rougher week personally. I was all over the place. It was sad I laughed all through it.
I'm fine but like I had a raging headache and was soooo sore from Last Monday's hike for 4 days! Then I was better and my Spanish was like all bad. Mom I said peenus tree!!! Like some member was asking what kind of plants and stuff they have in Arizona and Elder Tibbs looked at me and was like what's the word for pine...and I thought peeenayyy like it's written and I knew the word was pino not pine!! I said arbol de peeenay.,...and then stopped because English and Spanish just do not mix!! everyone started cracking up!! The word is pino! Pine not peenus!! 

The worst thing ever happened I bawled for a long time...I deleted all of my pictures on my camera. all of them! I was trying to get the review button to be normal and somehow ended up on format and wanted to leave and TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT BECAUSE YOU KNOW I WOULD NEVER WANT TO DELETE MY PICS. IT FORMATTED AND IT ALL WAS GONE IN 2 SECONDS. A RECENT CONVERT TRIED TO SEE IF HE COULD GET THEM BACK AND HE COULDN'T. I'M DEVASTATED AND ASKING PICTURES FROM EVERYONE. IT KILLS ME..I HAD 3000 PICTURES. LIKE WHYYY. I CAN'T WRAP MY HEAD AROUND WHAT I'VE DONE. IT HURTS. Please ask around to know if anyone might be able to restore my the photos from my SD card. I have put it away and won't be using it. I guess you could say 'it was the best of times, it was the worst of times' LOL"

Making papusas...again!! 

My companions from El Savador=papusas, my companion from Mexico=gorditas, Hahah!

Happy Costa Rica Independence Day!!

Hey everyone!! 

This week went really well!! It was another week of new lessons and chances for improvement!

You all were able to hear about P-day last week but Tuesday was really interesting! Tuesdays we have our district meetings normally. We were at the bus stop waiting to get on and go to our meeting when Elder Hansen called me telling me to turn around. Him and Elder Vasquez were there and were able to drive us to the meeting which they attended also. Hahaha, we have gotten way to used to the mission car! Our meeting went really well. The main topic was the planning that we do as missionaries and the importance of planning well. We talked about goals also. These 2 topics ended up reoccurring during the week! 

After the meeting, we were able to do a visit with Ester (one of the young women in the ward). Hermana Martinez and I love her family. They are so great! Her friend is actually Alexia, our investigator, so we were able to have a great lesson with her. Unfortunately, her mom couldn't listen to us that day but we shared the message of Joseph smith, The First Vision, and the Book Of Mormon. It was a lesson like no other! We have always felt that Alexia has been prepared to receive the gospel but she continues to surprise us. We started to talk about Jospeh Smith and she mentioned how she had seen 2 of the church movies about him. She started getting excited asking questions like "is this the part when the angel gives him the plates?" when we hadn't even mentioned the first vision. We laughed and told her that that part was later haha. Then I began to quote the first vision "vi una columna de luz...." and she started to say it with me!!! I was like "wait. what?!" She comes to church every week, and because Ester is in the mission prep class, Alexia goes too and she wants to serve a mission. In that class, they are teaching The First Vision. Us 4 said The First Vision together! That never happens! Our investigators never have The First Vision memorized! 

At the end of the lesson, Alexia told us about mean comments that a girl in her religion class in high school has been making to her in regards to investigating the church when she is Catholic. I felt really bad, I understand what its like to receive hurtful comments from others about the church. We shared with her a few scriptures that she can show this girl and she felt more confident. These are my personal favorites. Many people know that one of my BIGGEST pet peeves is people who judge others, especially when they don't understand!! These scriptures also appear in Mateo...

3 Nephi 14: 1-3  “And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words he turned again to the multitude, and did open his mouth unto them again, saying: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

We visited other people with Ester but then it started getting late. We knew that I had my last doctor’s appointment the next day and that it was probably best to sleep in San Francisco again. Well, we were cutting it really tight. The bus passes 7:30 and it’s every hour. It was about 7:20 when we were running to our house to change into pajama like clothing to sleep in and to fill our backpacks with the things we needed for the next day WITH Ester. Her mom was coming to our house to pick her up. The second she got there we took off running to the bus stop around the corner. As we were running, we saw the bus come zooming down. It stopped and we saw people getting off. That’s when my companion took off sprinting like she was going for the gold in the Olympics. I couldn’t run I was dying laughing! She started waving her hands in the air screaming "STOP STOP STOP!" Yes...in English! She literally said the word "Stop." I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. I was thinking "does she understand that she’s screaming English in a Spanish speaking country" and "since when does she speak English?" hahahaha, By the grace of God some guy stopped the bus as it was preparing to leave. We got on sweating, out of breath and laughing. We threw the money at the chauffeur not even worrying about the change and fell into our seats. It was probably one of the funniest and most blood rushing experiences of my entire mission! When we got to San Jose everyone said "Cartagitos!" to us as we passed them because we were both in our Cartago jerseys (like from the zone activity last p-day) gym shorts and hot pink Crocs. I am a big supporter of Crocs now! Costa Rica has converted me, haha. We ate McDonalds (I miss salads, ok) and crashed from all of the travel!

My Doctor appointment went well. I am okay!! I am really happy. I’m not going to lie, having the ball still there under my jaw bothering me made me a little nervous but the Doctor reassured me that I’m good and that I just need to be patient with my body and let it heal itself. I’m ready to let this all be in the past!!

So since all of the Latins have 2 names...the hospital thought that I did too. Hahaha they were like MICHELLE?

Friday I had to go to leadership counsel at the mission office. I have really enjoyed every time that I have gone. I love being around all of the other leaders and learning from them. Not going to lie, sometimes I feel so inadequate haha, Like they are all so good!!! This meeting was great. We talked about self reliance and the importance of making goals for being more self-reliant. We have to be more self reliant before we can help others be self reliant and it needs to happen!!! We made decisions and clarified rules. Something that I really enjoyed though was how Hermana Hayes taught us about the importance of LOVE♥ It’s something so simple but it can change everything in the mission! Our relationship with our zones, our companions, the members, our investigators, EVERYONE! What did Christ teach us? He taught us how to love! I think this lesson will never get old or lose its importance. We have to love, sincerely. You can’t fake it! EVERYONE JUST WANTS TO BE LOVED! I came back to Paraiso better than I left. I have made a lot of goals for this upcoming week and for these next few months. I want to keep progressing and being a better leader.

Leadership Counsel with Hermana Moon

With Elder Shumway

With Hermana Gividen

Today was the first day of cambios and luckily none of us had any!! Whooo cambio number 2 with Hermana Martinez!! Today, to celebrate we went on a GIANT hike to a waterfall in a part of our area named Orosi. We went with a brother from the ward named Oscar. Ok, so this hike was insane..the hardest hike I have ever done! Yes mom, I used sunscreen and bug spray. Let me just tell you, it was mud and tree branches. We also saw a few rocks here and there. I slid down half way on my stomach I’m sure. Elder Hansgen just followed behind me laughing the entire way! By the time we got down to the bottom, I was sweaty and covered in mud. But wow! It was beyond worth it. We hiked up a raging river and saw the most beautiful waterfall!!! I took in the sight of it and just thought how blessed I am to be in such a beautiful country. Seriously, it’s not every day that someone sees something that we did today. So the hard part was getting back up the hike. I did not want to go any further..I was so dead haha. I basically climbed back up on my stomach too. There was no other way to do it. I’m serious! Hold on a branch and pull up haha. We got back to civilization with it began pouring down rain. So what did we do? We finished it off with soccer!! Muddy soccer. Hahaha! I know that I will be sore tomorrow but again. It was way worth it :)

Love you all so much and hope that you have a great week! I’m looking forward to this new week. New opportunities! Let’s have a great one!

Love Hermana Zerilli

PS Happy Birthday Papa Dobson, I was thinking about you today as I was killing myself on the hike! Wish you could have been there!

My favorite fruit from Costa Rica. They are called Mamones chinos...My companion and I can eat a kilo in about 15 minutes haha!

 September 15th is Independence of Costa Rica! They had lights in Cartago and we did a special flag ceremony Sunday