12/18/2014 - Week #1
Hola mi familia!
I really hope everyone has missed me as much as I have missed them! I get pretty homesick every now and then... My district is super awesome! 7 of us are going to Tuxtla Gutierrez and 2 are going to Merida! We also have 2 sisters and 1 is going to Merida and the other is going to Puebla Mexico. Nuestro Maestro se llama Hermano Garza! El es muy comico y muy inteligente. He is going to leave us a week early because he is getting married! He is only 22 and he speaks only a little bit of English. We try and speak as much spanish as we can down here but we pray partially in spanish and in english. The MTC or CCM is really pretty nice! If you know what the dorms kind of look like at BYU-I then thats what our casas look like, but the buildings are all pretty new and its really super beautiful here! The food is pretty good! Haven't had too much issue with getting used to it, they tell us that you have to moderate your daily bean intake to take care of problems. Ill let your imagine take care of that! I am in a tri-companionship! My companions are Elder Giles and Elder Kitras. We seem to know the most spanish out of anyone in our district. Our third day we started teaching an Investigator! Since then we have taught her 5 times and have committed her to baptism, coming to church on sunday, and recommending her family to the missionaries. It was really awesome practice even though we wont be teaching her again and she actually just turned out to be a member in disguise haha... I found Baily's letter the very first night we were here! It was pretty helpful and I met some people who knew him. Hermana Messinger is here and she used to be my roommates girlfriends roommate at BYU-I. It took as all morning today to figure out how to get the dryers to work efficiently haha, the gas lines leak so you have to turn them on and off all the time when you arent using them. We have this online program called TALL which we are going to be doing in between emails so we are going to stay as long as we can! Our district is available to call on Christmas at 12:15p.m. our time which is 10.15am your time. We are leaving el CCM on January 19th. I got a package from mom yesterday!!! It had a note, 2 dr. peppers, 2 7-ups, a bag of chips and a thing of salsa, and some trail mix! I also found the stocking and decorations in my suitcase... no wonder I weighed a good 5 more pounds than I thought!~haha You should all be able to find the CCM address online, but after three weeks you will have to send something to my mission home, which I also dont have with me right now. I have learned so much in the past week! I am a lot better at spanish than I realized. Our teacher wanted us to share how our prayers have improved just in this first week in el CCM in spanish so Im going to do my best. Despues de mi primera dia en el CCM, mis oraciones son mejor. Oro con mas diligencia y el espiritu. Ayudame que nos memorizar el objectivo Domingo. Oro por el don de lenguas todas mis dias y es muy beuno para mi español! Thats all I got for now haha I am going to send this off and then try and get a few pictures out! I love you all so much! One of the things I like to say to myself when I get down is "I am a factor in the war against Satan."
Elder Gillingwater
Fun Moments of the Week:
1. The food is really good here! Most of the time.
2. Elder Kauvaca got a beans stain in a very peculiar spot on his pants...
3. Our zone did a comical introduction on Friday and it was really nice to have some relief from all the meetings we had for our first four days.
4. Our district is really quite awesome! everyone gets along so well.
5. I am really pretty good at speaking Spanish and teaching by the spirit
