Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The CCM is awesome.  It is like 3 or 4 times the size of the Provo MTC but there are a lot less people.  It hasn't really been too hot here.  It is cool and kind of foggy/misty in the mornings.  Then in the afternoon it heats up and then around 5 or 6 the storm clouds roll in and it rains hard.  It keeps that up for basically the whole night.  One highlight at the end of the first day I was called as the district leader.  They said it lasts for the whole six weeks I am here, so I am excited about that.  We have I think the biggest district here, 12 people in our district and we are all going to the same mission.  The days are going by a lot faster now that we have all gotten to know each other and are friends.  I love my whole district.  

The food here is not that great.  There will be meals that are pretty good but then the next is not very good.  They have a lot of fruit so when the meal isn't good, I just snack on that.  I am really missing the cannon center right now haha.  My companion is Elder Jones.  He just graduated from high school and he is from Chicago.  We also have Elder Tonga in our district and he is cousins with Howard Pututau from Cottonwood that played basketball so we have had fun with that.   Hermana Amis and I are in the same district so that's cool.   There are a bunch of people here from BYU that I recognize but none that I was close with minus Hermana Mortensen, Elder Peery and Hermana Amis.  

The Spanish is going good.  Slowly but surely.  We taught our first investigator our second full day here in complete Spanish.  It was stressful and we went first out of everybody but it went pretty well even though we had to read like everything.  We have taught him three lessons so far and our next one is tomorrow.  Each lesson my Spanish gets better and it gets less stressful.  I can understand it a lot better than I can speak or write it.  For Sundays, all of us have to prepare a five minute talk and in Sacrament reading they choose people randomly to come up and give their talk in Spanish.  The first Sunday I didn't get chosen so that's good haha, but it was hard to understand people.  I could pick out bits and pieces of talks but nowhere close to all of it so I just have to do a lot of studying.  

That's about it.  We just study every day and are in class so it is definitely tiring but so fulfilling going to bed at night knowing that you worked your hardest and tried your best.  Oh, on Sunday they broadcasted a devotional from the Provo MTC and Elder Richard G Scott was speaking.  He spoke to missionaries learning a new language and I needed to hear it.  Parts of it felt like they were directed at me, it was one of the best talks that I have heard.