First week in the Mexico City MTC

Hey yall! wow...what a week. i dont even know where to start. i have absolutely loved my experience at the CCM (mtc) thus far! the first few days were really long, but now they are going by much faster!

I´ll start with some background on the mtc. So it used to be a school, called benemérito de las americas. it was a church run school, and boy is it BEAUTIFUL.

All the girls in my district (and class). theyre all pretty funny and we get along well.  

The giant "B" on the hill is for benemérito (the school).

The land was bought by the church in the 50s and they graduated the last class in may. when the general authorites came down to announce that it would be turned into an mtc the people were kind of sad but very supportive. they said it the school was going to graduate from a school to an mtc now. my mtc president is so cool. he kinda looks like the old guy from UP (the pixar movie) but he served under elder Holland in chile. he used to be one of the 70 but got too old so they kicked him out. his great great grandfather is Parley P. Pratt and apparently that Call relative we have used to be his counselor. so hes pretty cool. my branch president was in the second class to graduate from the school back in the day, which is also pretty cool. hes definitely stoked to be working with us now. we are the third group of americans to come down to this mtc, and were only at like 400 people in the whole mtc. they are going to keep adding until its up to 1200 i think. the food is alright, but pretty typical cafeteria food. it rains here EVERY DAY at around 4-6 oclock. and it rains hard. (theres a picture of me in ankle deep water outside our house, pretty par for the course).

 

Now onto my life. well, its quite the place. we are learning so much i feel like my brain is melting. both spanish and the gospel. i am SO glad i was already able to speak *some* spanish. which, by the way everyone tells me my spanish sounds like im from the dominican republic, as well as portugal. like where did that come from? even some of the native dominicans asked if i was half dominican or something. we learned to pray and bear our testimony within the first two days and now i pray better in spanish than i do in english! sometimes i cant remember english words and my syntax sounds spanish. 

Thursday night we had our first meeting as a branch. its two districts now, but it will be 5 by the time we leave.

And guess who got called as the sister trainer...ME. i know right. although there was only 3 sets of sisters in our branch, and one of the sets doesnt speak any spanish so im not all that special. 

my zone/branch...too bad im talking-awkwardly squating because im way taller than all the other sisters...

and elders..

I had to go to leadership meeting on sunday with the branch president, zone leader, district leaders and executive secretarys. were getting a new group of americans in today so i might acutally start using my calling more. all of the sisters here are really close since there arent that many of us right now. theres only 3 sets in my branch and 2 in the other one. maybe 10 sets tops in my whole generation. My companions name is sister Giles. shes from Provo and shes super nice, but were definitely very different people.

We get along really well (with the exception of me talking too much sometimes) and have had really good success in teaching our investigator. they have the teachers role play as investigators and you have to teach them for 30-45 minutes every day. so far we got her to pray in front of us and daily, read some chapters out of the book of mormon and a *soft* baptismal commitment. i know its only role play, and shes a pretty easy investigator, but it makes you think more about lesson planning, doctrine and language skills. my teacher is from texas and served in argentina, but hes pretty cookie cutter BYU student. in my district theres 4 girls and 9 boys.

my district

Almost all of the boys are going to mcallin (spelling?) texas, and the other two are going to new mexico and chile. 2 of the sisters are going to chile as well, and ones going to iowa. one of my roomates is going to my same mission, but i think were the only ones in our generation. generation is people who came in the same week as you by the way. 

Today we went to the temple which was really cool. we did it all in spanish and the room was about a billion degrees, but it was still a good experience. the temple is really pretty but there isnt really a good spot  to get a picture, hence all the half-pictures.

So far everything has been really good. im definitely more tired than ive been in my whole life, and it has been a lot of work but im still having a great time. even waking up at 6 am every day! i also write in my journal every day, which ive never done before. and we pray ALL THE TIME. i love it here, but im also super stoked to get to ecuador. like i said before, everything here is super chill, and we dont really have anyone watching over us. its all just kinda whatever you wanna do or honor system. on sunday we had a devotional we watched by elder holland. i think it was from april 2012. or maybe march..whatever. anyways it was the most intense devotional ive ever seen. he was so passionate both in being stern about working hard and in his love for us. i think its called your first convert has to be yourself....or something like that. now that we have more of a schedule things are alot easier. i look forward to gym time and bed time more than i ever have in my life. its just nice to do something else other than just sit around. its kind of like a long car trip, your tired of sitting but your also exhausted at the same time. thats pretty much all for now.