Ok, I'll just start with my schedule. We wake up at
6:30 every morning, pray, and get ready for the day. We either have
personal study as a district or breakfast by 7. Then we have personal
study at various times throughout the day, about 3 hours of classroom
language study, lunch and dinner thrown in there somewhere, and like
three hours of progressing investigator, which is interesting haha. On
our third day here we had to teach an entire 20 min lesson to an
investigator completely in spanish. It was crazy. I have kind of
gathered is probably actually a member of the church, but its kind of
hard to believe. But yeah, so every day we go in and talk to Carlos and
teach him for 20 min in spanish. Its pretty rough, cause we dont speak
any english. But thanks to spanish 3, we make it through haha. I can
tell what hes saying pretty much all the time, but its kind of hard
sometimes.
My room is a small dorm room, nothing like new heritage haha.
There's a tiny front area with a table, no kitchen, one bathroom, three
rooms with two beds each, except only two of the rooms are occupied.
You can see a lot of Mexico City through the window and its way cool.
You can see the favelas going up all the mountains all around you and
the crazy streets outside the wall.
My companion is Elder Haws. Hes from Utah, plays basketball, and
is awesome. They did a really good job at picking companions for
everyone. I can see it in my companionship and in everyone elses.
My
trip went smoothly. After I got thru security (by the way, they took
my toothpaste which was lame. I have some now tho), I sat by the gate
and slowly more and more missionaries arrived. I think there were like
12 of us or something. So it helped a lot that there were a bunch of
people there. We filled out the forms all good, got on the plane, and
had a great flight. We were separate on the flight, but it was no
problem. The flight was so cool. It was perfectly clear, and I was in
the front so I could see everything out the window. The mountains are
huge and like giant ridges here in Mexico, and the DF is HUGE. When we
actually got over it, I couldn't see the ground anywhere. Its so tightly
packed for miles and miles. Its super cool tho, all the houses are
kind of multi colored and there's a lot of cool things to see. We landed
and went thru immigration and customs incredibly smoothly. I couldn't
really believe it actually. Probably because there were so many of us.
They didn't x-ray my bags or anything. Just had my show my passport and
push a button, for some reason. But after like an hour of waiting at
the airport with a CCM worker, we got on the bus and drove thru Mexico
City which was kind of awesome. Everybody drives like a million miles
an hour and the streets are half as big as in the US. Everybody's
honking and there are random dogs and people in the middle of the road and
construction work going on just in the middle of the street with traffic
just going around. Its super crazy. It was like that all the way
until we pulled into the CCM, which is almost as beautiful as the
temple. They have huge stone security walls all the way around the
complex, which is good, because we hear gunshots and cannons ALL the
time! The cannons are like a tribute to saints from the churches or
something? Im not sure. Its crazy out there, but perfectly peaceful in
here. I love it tho. Its super exciting to live in Mexico.
The CCM is great. The food is so good, and the weather is great. Im running out of time here, so Ill wrap it up. I'm so excited to be here and it is so great. I'm focused, trying to work
hard, and am learning lots. Elder Holland gave a great devotional form
Provo that we watched on Sunday. If you can find it somewhere, watch it
because its amazing. But he basically said that our first convert
needs to be us. I have also learned that I need to honor the names I
wear on my badge.
Wish I had more time, but I love you and hope you all have a great week!
This week has been great, and as I have only a little bit of time, this email is going to be a little random.
