Golden Opportunities in the MCA: The CCM (MTC in Spanish) is NUTS!

Hello once again FAMILY! I love you all! the CCM (MTC in Spanish) is NUTS!

Its pretty here :) also.. didnt realize this picture was so huge haha. i will have to change my settings.

When we flew into mexico city we literally could not see the end of it. it just goes on and on forever. all these crazy colorful houses stacked on top of eachother with no plan or pattern. it was intense. plus everything was in spanish on the plane and on the ground! which was a surprise for me for some reason! immediately throuwn into the language. madness. but it was good :) luckily the plane didnt crash, i dont think i would have know how to find the exits or use those newfangled spanish oxygen masks, let alone unbuckle my seat belt! ;) it was good. the dallas airport was huge! like crazy huge! we had to ride one of the trams like i heard about! madness. sorry. i know its super jumbled but im just really excited and happy to be writing! there so much to say. anyways, we got in and got our bags, one elder didnt... but we got that figured out and he got it on thursday so it wasnt a problem at all. got our bags and went and met with 2 more plus the seven that had been on our plane, loaded up one of the big vans like the salt lake express has and headed out through mexico city. THE ROADS HERE ARE HORRIBLE! people dont use lanes, dont use blinkers, dont follow road signs, and the cops dont enforce it! i thought we were gonna die so many times! it was awful! but, we lived. then we got to write a letter and i went to my house (farthest house in the ENTIRE place) and met my knew companion. Yes BYU fans, my new companion is Elder Tanner Mangum, Former Eagle Idaho quarter back, Elite 11 quarterback, and future starter for BYU football. kinda awesome :) i was afraid he would be a jerk, like many quarterbacks i have heard of have been.......... but hes not. hes so fantastic. Amazing leader, hard worker, great at spanish, has the spirit, up beat, social. all around a great example. hes a great guy, i respect him a LOT. we get along really well! we moved out of our room with the 2 crazy elders and into an empty room in the house. [we were in a room with crazy elders. the first night they just played the "youre prettier" game, then the second night they fought like crazy. so we found an excuse to move to an empty room in the same house] it rocks. We have had fake investigators here and ours was named Carlos. the first lesson (friday, 2 days after we arrived) Elder Mangum took almost all of it because he knew the spanish. so i sat very lost except when i randomly understood and bore testimony. that was crazy cool. liked that a lot. anyways. he took most of lesson 1. but in the fifth lesson i took half of everything that was said, i bore testimony, prayed and game a short lesson blurb thing on the word of wisdom (la palabra de sabiduría). every lesson i got a little better, and in 5 days i worked up to the point that i was able to understand 95% if what carlos was saying and even know how to give a lesson, with much studying. (the lesson vocab is hard because you dont use it as much). i think thats incredible. el don de lenguas es real. (the gift of tongues is real). plus when we teach it feals totally real. when he finally agreed to pray, (he wouldnt for a long time) it felt SO GOOD! it felt like we were changing this guys life! it was so great! when we taught lesson number 5 we gave him the law of chastity and the word of wisdom, he has a girlfried and they dont currently keep the word of wisdom, we were not prepared for that! but some how we made it through and once he realized that it was only to stop until AFTER marriage but then it could resume... he was good. so we set a date to be baptized and he agreed. yes, it did rock. sadly... we only get five lessons at a time with each investigator so we are done teaching Carlos. we will get a new one... or 2... soon. YAY!

soooo every one talks about how good the food is at the MTC and here at the CCM that is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE! its so bad. we have had half cooked pizza, every morning we have had either pancakes or waffles but they are SUUUUPER dry, and the only syrup is chocolate or strawberry syrup for icecream. which doesnt even tast like it does at home, its CRAZY sugary. luckily yesterday i found out that we have this lime yogurt that has the consistency of milk... not quite but probably like .75 milk.25 yogurt. super runny. so i dump that on my pancakes with sugar chocolate syrup and call it good. its survivable then. most of the time we barely even have any protein. and we almost always run out of drinks. plus were getting up to 800 from almost 600 in 2 weeks. i dont know how we are going to do this. one thing we do have a lot of is bread. i have so much bread. we all have so much bread. we eat losts of cereal and lots of bread. like 3 or 4 mini loaves a meal. we are probably going to die, but were still hungry so we fill up with bread! mucho pan. lunch is usually the best meal of the day. we just barely had the best meal i have had here during lunch. we had fried spicy chicken breasts and some potatoes! plus at lunch we always have beans and tortillas! so that good!

oops.... didnt mean to do that. sent it before i was done. its just crazy here, i love it though. im so excited to get out into the field and teach people for real! im so excited! life is great! i think about home mostly around meal times... but its not bad, its not like painful. just thinking about it. wondering how everyone is doing and how its all going. at night i basically just write in my journal pray with comp pray by myself and sleep. then wake up at 630 wondering how the heck 8 hours could have passed so quickly. my first day here was the longest day of my entire life. it was about as long as my entire last week home. literally. but it keeps getting better and better. always improving. i am super happy. i think i will upload a few random pics now too. also... we have a hermana in our district (that we do everything with... i very much llove my district) but hermana francis is... crazy flirty. we all just try to avoid her. luckily Elder Mangum is the man of choice so i dont even have to worry about it too much. its way easier for me than for him. if she ever says something too much i just start talking about Lexa and she goes away haha. oh Elder Mangum is the DL also. which he should be. and i love our branch president! His name is hermano Alvorado, hes got this awesome smile and he always shakes your hand then gives you a heart hug, or a hug that puts your hearts together. he just makes you feel awesome, and his spanish is super broken but its ok :) we all understand spanish pretty well even if we cant speak it very weel. our teachers never ever speak english, un less you say qúe signifíca then a spanish word, they give you a definition or english word back. its called SYL or speak your language, they plan for us to be totally immersed as much as possible so we learn faster. i think it works very well. mas fotografos. nos vemos en una semana!