So. This past week was pretty awesome in a lot of ways. I'll try to go in order, but no promises. Here. We. Go.
Thursday 4/9/15
Pretty average. 12 hours of classes, spanish, study time, and fundamentals. It is crazy how fast-paced everything is here. There is no break except for p-day and gym time. Anyway. We got to be good friends with a lot of people, namely four Hermanas who adopted us as their children. They were probably my 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th favorite mothers that I've ever had. They are, in no particular order, Hermanas Ortiz, Butterfield, Chantry, and Henderson. They were pretty cool, had a lot of advice and were leaving in 3 days. I have pictures with our district and them in the batch for this week. Next. We made friends with many latinos that we went to the temple with. They were our buddies and hung out with us and chatted all of the time. The only issue with being friends with latinos here is that every two weeks, they leave and another batch comes in, so this new batch that got in today is the final one for me. I'll make more friends and then they'll leave again... Oh well.
Fridayyyyyy
My companions and I lived another normal day until the evening, when I received a package from my momma :) Then everything was different. On our way back, a group of about 6 Latinas asked us in spanish for help with a vending machine. I think that that instance may have been the first, and probably the last time I will ever have helped someone with a vending machine. Anyway. We went back to the casa and had a feast of IBC root beer (translated as cervezas de raiz) and then subsequently ate death by chocolate cake (see pictures). It was wonderful, but the cake was so rich that we could not consume it in it's full glory.
Saturdayyyy
So. BIRTHDAY. Thank you all for the birthday wishes, those that I could see and those that I could not. It started off with gifts from my district and happy birthday wishes from my teachers, which was awesome. Then we had TRC which is something like Teaching Resource Center, or a place where we can be paired with investigators, less active members, or active members of the church. It just so happened that we got paired with a husband and wife. They had a lot of good advice for us and helped us with our spanish. Lunch came around and I shared my cake with many people. Some of my latino friends, americano friends, and workers at the CCM got to partake in the pastel de muerte por chocolate. I even ended up on instagram haha with one of my buddies. He is a chef here at the CCM and is a pretty cool guy. I talk with him every day and he wanted to share me to his following apparently. I guess I'm just that cool. ha. ha. ha. I had all of my favorite people who were leaving sign my transfer journal.
Sunday. Day of the tie trade, meeting with Pres. Torgeson and departure.
Today many of my friends left for the field, to have success in bringing the children of god closer to him. They will be successful, guaranteed. Anyway. I traded for some sweet corbatas and made some pretty sweet deals. One of the counselors in our branch is a pretty cool guy. He works at the United States embassy, for an "agency"in the united states. Yeah. pretty sweet. We had a devotional and it was good.
Monday
AWESOME. Received about one dozen donuts from a confidential source and shared them with my district. It was quite literally in every way a sweet treat for my birthday. Today there was NOBODY here. AT ALL. We had everything to ourselves and it was sweet. But anyway, nothing else notable happened except we were able to teach Israel one of our best lessons ever. It was incredible.
Tuesday.
I was chosen to be on a panel of 4 missionaries that got to speak in spanish to a member of the 70 in front of everybody at the devotional that evening. It was crazy. I was preparing all day, and then we had GYM/Service Project. GYM was fun, but Service project was awesome. Here at the CCM, everybody drinks ONLY bottled water. This requires office-style water coolers and five-gallon water jugs. Everywhere. This means that for service project, we hand delivered 80 water jugs all the way across campus. FUNNNN. It was crazy. They didn't really tell us what to do or how to do it, but we just got up there and I only answered two questions completely wrong. It was especially bad because they chose four americanos to answer the questions in front of many, many latinos. They were chuckling at our spanish. I felt pretty silly haha. Anyway, our district sustained an injury following the devotional.
As for today, we didn't do very much before emails, but we took some illegal photographs from the roof, but it was okay because the door was open and we didn't know, and also Elder Denhalter wanted to take a picture looking like he was trying to escape from the wall. Silly.
Random and miscellaneous facts: In one of our first lessons, we were trying to teach about the restoration of the gospel through the prophet Joseph Smith. The way it happened was that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph smith. En Espanol, it goes like "Yo sé que Dios, nuestro Padre Celestial y Jesucristo aperecer a José Smith." but, instead of using the verb "aperecer" or to appear, we used the verb "apedrear" which means to stone or to kill with rocks. So in essence we were bearing testimony that God and Jesus stoned Joseph Smith with large rocks in the Sacred Grove. Pretty embarrassing...
Here's another one: the other companionship in our district was trying to share a scripture with the investigator, but instead of sharing 1 Nephi 3:7, which says in essence I will go and do the things the Lord commands, they shared 3 Nephi 3:7 which is part of a story where wicked brotherhoods commanded others to join them in their wickedness. Look it up to know for real, but it was really funny hahaha.
Spiritual thought for the week: The sabbath day is a holy day, and it isn't ours. Give it completely to Heavenly Father. He gave us everything.
I'll update you in a week
Peace to the Out
