Okay, 6 AM flights are not very much fun especially when you don’t sleep very well the night before and you are way too nervous to sleep on the plane. So this whole day just blew my mind. I was walking towards my gate in SLC to catch the actually flight to Mexico when I see this giant horde of missionaries. Literally, the entire plane was filled with missionaries going to the Mexican MTC. Someone told us that 180 missionaries arrived today. The MTC/CCM is weird for me. I have been here less than 24 hours and we have had a devotional and lots of language study. From what I could see of the city, is huge and very poor.
OH MAN, I know nothing, or at least nothing about Spanish. This has been the longest day of my life. They keep the schedule so packed full of overwhelming material that there is no time to FEEL anything. That’s fine though because it keeps me busy and distracted. The District Leaders were called and thankfully I dodged that bullet. The food here is surprisingly bland and bleh. P-day is on Friday and feels like it is forever away. We were told that we have to skip this Friday and wait until next Friday for a real p-day. We were told to prepare a talk in Spanish for this Sunday and some random missionaries will be selected from the group. Tomorrow we give our first lesson in Spanish. Dad was right about how the time flies but but drags on simultaneously.
Well I officially suck at Spanish. It is crazy how much they expect you to learn here. We taught our first lesson today in Spanish and I am pretty sure that I didn’t make any sense at all. My companion is well, odd. He tests my patience. This one Elder had a moment while teaching his lesson where he just put his notebook down and started speaking Spanish without any hesitation. Gift of tongues right there. I need to have more faith in the gift of tongues, actually I need more faith, period.
August 26, 2016
Okay, my district is pretty good. The one Elder that I mentioned above has incredible faith. he is learning Spanish so fast and he loves the gospel so much. It is humbling. I a still a little annoyed with a few things. There are some missionaries who have had great trials in their lives. One of them has just his mom for support. His father and brothers have all left the church. It is humbling to see missionaries make sacrifices to be here. I don’t seem to have suffered nearly as hard of trials as them . I have a log way to grow before I am worthy for blessings as great as the gift of tongues.
August 27, 2016
It feels like I have been here weeks and weeks. Spanish sucks for me. I don’t feel like I can speak a complete sentence yet. Conjugations shouldn’t be hard because I did it for French, but for some reason, they are killing me. I realize that I have only been here for 4 days and I nee3d to be more patient. Never mind, I am done be patient, I don’t want to learn this language. I’m joking, We taught our third lesson today and we did pretty much the whole plan of salvation. It took us at least a half an hour, but we survived. I went into the lesson with most of it written in English except a few really hard Spanish words. So I pretty much translated my part of the lesson into Spanish. It was super choppy but improved at the end. Our teacher told us that 8 days from now we have to give up speaking any English. I am going to die when English dies! Elder R. broke his finger and refuses to get it checked out. I told him that I knew it was broken and he ought to get it splinted. Tomorrow is Sunday and I am so happy, in fact I have never been so happy for Sunday to come.
August 28, 2016
Okay, well that wasn’t the day of rest that I thought it would be. The food was good and the Spirit was strong. There was a lot of teaching about worthiness and obedience and repentance. I realize know what all my missionary siblings told me about the intense feelings of guilt in the CCM. There is a huge call to repentance here and it makes you microscopically analyze your life. My district struggles with inappropriate laughter which is distracting and often drives the Spirit away.
August 29, 2016
Well, this is harder even than I thought it would be and I was well prepared by my siblings. I can barely communicate and I understand even less. We are supposed to know 300 words and 70 phrases by the end of this week. I know that as hard as we are working and as much as we are trying to learn, that e still won’t know anything when we hit the field in 6 weeks. It is hard to stay focused. Really I think about how much I want to do laundry way too much. 11 days without laundry and only 12 pairs of underwear. Thanks Mom, for insisting that every pair was purchased and clean.
August 30, 2016
Days are going by faster now. Sometimes I can share what I want to say in the lessons, though in reality I know that its s very broken and childish language. I can pray in Spanish now so that is good. We had another devotional tonight for the new arrivals and that means that we aren’t the new guys anymore which is great!
August 31, 2016
Today was VERY difficult for me. I was so tired all day and my patience with my companion was a complete zero. I feel like I made no progress in the language today. But, I did pass off the invitation to be baptized and the Joseph Smith History in Spanish so that is good I guess. Our lesson was just okay today. Tomorrow we don’t teach and on Friday is our p-day and a trip to the temple. Finally, I get to do my laundry! The food here continues to not agree with me but whatever. There are actually rocks in the food. We found another group to play volleyball with so that’s pretty okay. The CCM is really a lot like what little I know of High School. It gets old hanging out with a bunch of 18 years olds all the time. They quote movies and shows all the time and do dumb stuff that does not invite the Spirit. It’s all good though, just not what I am used to. I will just press forward.
Sept. 1, 2016
Another long day today, but tomorrow is P-day and I am so excited for that. I need a refresher and I miss the temple. There is really not much to say or write about. There is volleyball everyday now and that is fun. I feel like I am hitting a fatigue wall, but maybe p-day will help me.
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