wow!!! what a rollercoaster ride this has been! I have loved every minute of it! The first day that we got to mexico, they loaded all of us onto a bus and drove us to the ccm. it was a lloonngg hot bus ride through the heart of mexico city. the city is sooo beautiful!! I love is so much! we dont really see much of it in the ccm, but we hear everything! there is alwasy something going on and noises coming from everywhere.
we also found out who our companions are. my companion is hermana limb. she is actually from meridian! pretty crazy! she is so nice and sooo smart. her spanish is phenomenal and i have so much to learn from her. she is always so in tune with the spirit. and she has such a happy personality. the rest of that first Wednesday we just unpacked and got settled into our casas (houses).
The second day was really good, but super long. we had a bunch of meetings and devotionals. we went through all of the mission rules and how our new life a a missionary would be. the second day was more like how every day is. our schedule has been this for the past week. wake up at 6. go study spanish at 7. breakfast at 745. gym time for 45 minutes. and then have class until about 315. at 315 we go teach our investigator. then study until 8. at 8 we go do TALL which is pretty much an online spanish class. then we head back to our casa at 930 and lights out at 1030. thats just about what every day has been so far and it is so awesome!
our investigator is Jorge. he is a student here in mexico and is studying to be an electrical engineer. he doesnt have any family here, so he feels alone a lot of the time. the scary thing is that we are giving him lessons completely IN SPANISH!!!! It is sooo hard. so much of me wants to get to know jorge so well and help him with everything, but there is that language barrier, so it makes it really difficult. my second full day here in the ccm we taught him our first lesson. (remember.... allll in spanish. and this is my second day, so i really dont know anything) that first lesson was sooo hard. the second lesson that we had with him was amazing. honestly when jorge talks, i have no idea what he is saying 95% of the time. but in that second lesson the spirit was sooo strong. I had no idea what we were talking about, but i had a strong feeling that i needed to bare my testimony about joseph smith. so in my broken and really bad spanish i bore my testimony in spanish for the first time. being me... i cried, but jorge looked like he was feeling the spirit! it was so strong in that lesson. our third lesson i understood so much more of what he was saying, and he opened up a lot to hermana limb and i. that was so awesome! he also told us that he had been praying at night and said that he felt good when he prayed!! i was so happy for him. the power of prayer is real! it is what helps us get through everyday here in the ccm. i dont think i have every prayed this much, but it is amazing! i really do love prayer. i am getting better at praying in spanish, but it is still pretty rough.
i have had a lot of people ask me how the food here is. somedays it is really good, and others it is alright. and then there i days when i have no idea what i am eating, but i am hungry, so i just eat it! haha Im pretty sure that one day i ate somones dog or hampster or somthing.... it was nasty.
my district is absolutely amazing!! i love them all soo much! we are district 8A. there are 6 hermanas and 2 elders. which is super rare in the ccm. another fun fact about our district is that no to missionaries in our district are going to the same mission. which is also super rare! haha there is me, hermana limb, hermana smith, hermana prince, hermana ogden, hermana sorenson, elder reis, and elder nielson. some fun facts about them. elder reis is from hawaii and his brother was in the district videos. hermana ogden was in the same orchestra at byu as lauren and emily!! crazy! (Lauren and Em, her name is Emily odgen and she said she was second chair in the viola section) hermana limb lived in lithuania for 5 months. elder neilson is a computer genius. and hermana smith and i decided that we are twins that were separated at birth!! hermana smith is the best! her and i are so much alike it is almost scary!
it is so amazing to be here with a whole bunch of missionaries! (fun fact. the ccm has 90 acres of land and there are only 400 missionaries here.) Everyone has such strong testimonies and the atmosphere here is saturated with the spirit and joy. going through that first week was really hard, because all of your classes are completely in spanish. (my tachers name is hermana lozano and she is amazing, but she doesnt speak much english.) that first week was so mentally exhausting, but everyone told me just to make it to sunday and it will get better. let me tell you, sunday was one of the most spiritual days i have had ever. we had relief society with all of the hermanas and the spirit was so strong. we had sacrament meeting with our district afterwards. sacrament here is all in spanish. our branch presidents name is presidente martinue (i think thats how you spell it...) so i didnt know what he was saying when he was making announcements in sacrament, but all of a sudden i hear him call my name. he wanted me to bare my testimony in spanish!! ahhhh!!! it was so scary, but even though my spanish was not even close to perfect, the gift of tongues really worked and i was able to bare my testimony, fairly confidently. all the talks in sacrament were so amazing. after sacrament we had a devotional. we watched a video by elder holland. it was so inspiring. even though i had listened to the talk before (Jeff showed it to me. thanks jeff!!) it was still super inspiring. i understood what people meant by just make it to sunday. it was the best. i cant wait for next sunday!!
being here is really the best thing ever. yes i miss home a lot, and i miss all of you soo much! but i know that this is where i need to be right now, and there is no wehre better that i could be! i know that god loves each and everyone of us individually. i know that he cares about the little details of our lifes. i was studying one day and i came across alma 34. if you have time to read the whole chapter read it! if you dont have time, read it anyways! if you dont have a book of mormon that you can read it from, get one! it is such a good chapter, and i know that everything in it is true. i think it is now my favorite chapter in the book of mormon. i know that the book of mormon is the word of god and that it can help us through any trial in our lives. it has helped me so much already. i know that the spirit testifies of christ and of the truthfullness of the message missionaries share. the ccm is amazing and i am so excited to see what this next week holds!!!
Adios everyone! it was so good to hear from those of you who wrote me! im sorry that i couldnt respond to all of you individually, but know that i love you and more importantly that god loves you.
Hermana Hilton!!!
ps. just as a note, pdays in the ccm are tuesdays :)
