Sister Jenna Ludlam: 14.5 months of service: DONE! So worth it!

Hi Family!

I am sitting with you right now, but I wanted to write one last letter home.

Ay, mi madre! Lots has happened since I wrote less than a week ago. I have felt all the emotions. We have been quarantined ever since Monday, and it was actually fun. I got all the time I

Midnight: welcome home sign on garage

wanted to get caught up in reading Liahona's, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, etc. We also had tea parties with pink milk and painted our nails and designed our dream houses and made cookies-- all the desperatos (it means "crazy things" in Dominican) a missionary can get away with to entertain ourselves without offending the Spirit :)

Food Storage

On Tuesday, they extended the quarantine another day, and then Thursday afternoon they told us it would be another 3 weeks. That evening, we got a call from the mission president that all American missionaries were being sent home the next day!! It was so shocking and I cried. I missed my family, but it was so impossible to comprehend that my days as a full-time missionary were over *snap* just like that. They let me call home and break the news.

Friday morning all missionaries were given a "jail-break" of 2.5 hours to buy whatever we needed to survive and I used that time to buy last minute souvenirs. It was weird to be outside and see what the coronavirus had made of Las Caobas. It was desolate but chaos at the same time.

Hermana Salazar

Then I got home and said a fast goodbye to Hermana Salazar, Wall, and White, and got in a taxi and went to the airport all alone-- without being able to say goodbye to anyone else!-- and flew to the JFK airport in New York. I was surprised at how smooth everything went! There were no lines and my flight even landed early! Only Mom was allowed inside the airport, but I met the family outside. It was beautiful and joyous. I called my other siblings on the hour drive home.

Being home is weird and wonderful, but not weirdly wonderful. It's really bittersweet, and I miss the Dominican Republic so much. It kept a big piece of my heart. I'm so grateful for everything the mission and the Dominican people have done for me. Those 14.5 months were worth every sacrifice and tear and sweat drop and blister.

It hurts to have to take my plaque off, but I know my calling as a missionary will really never end. I know with all my heart that this is truly the Lord's church-- the only true and living church on the whole earth, and I am SO BLESSED to know it, and to be able to share this incredible message with the Dominicans, and the New Jerseyians, and all the people I'll ever live with. The gathering of Israel is happening. It is the single most important thing happening in the world, and I testify of that. You get to choose if you want to be a part of it, and I recommend you do, because you get blessed triple-fold whatever you give.

I could go on and on, but I'll close with an enormous thank-you to Mom and Dad for always being there and for supporting me 110%. Thanks to friends and fam for faithfully writing me! Thank you, Book of Mormon and President Nelson and other inspired leaders! Thanks companions! And thank you DR-- you guys are heavy with your pampara encendida, ya tu sabe. Cuidense!

Hablamos,
Hermana Ludlam