August 13, 2013 - Week 1!

Hola mi familia bonita!

 

Well, I can hardly believe I have been here for a week. I can´t really remember what it was like being home! This might not be very long because I am still adjusting the keyboard and the clock timer at the top of the screen is making me really anxious, but I´ll try to share a little bit of my wonderful experience here so far. The CCM (Centro de Capacitacio Misional Mexico) is absolutely beautiful! It´s like this Pleasantville community in the middle of a farely run down part of Mexico City. There are palm trees and flowers everywhere, so it really is a nice place to be. Anyway, there we arrived at the CCm late Tuesday night and got sent to our casas. I live in casa 18, cuarto 4 with my FANTASTIC companera, Hermana Thaxton, and two other sisters, Hermana Smalley and Hermana Sargent. Us four live in one  room of the casa that has bunk beds and a bathroom. There are 3 other rooms in the casa. The rest of the hermanas are Latina, so it´s always pretty tricky trying to communicate with them, but we´ve prayed with them a couple nights. There´s only so many times I can ask them Donde vives? y Donde a servir tu mision?. I feel so blessed to be with my hermanas in our room because we have formed a little family and I haven´t been homesick at all. After all my tears on Monday, I am sure that comes as a surprise. We find lots of little bugs in our room and there´s currently a beetle-looking insect outside of our door that has been there since we arrived. I don´t have the heart to kill him, so we just let him be.

 

Hermana Thaxton is also going to El Salvador and Belize, along with 2 other elders in our district! Es fantastico! Our district is made of 4 hermanas and, now, 6 elders. We used to have 8, but two of them were practically fluent in Spanish, so they were sent away from us beginners. Our regular schedule is wake up at 6, be in the classrom for personal study at 7, breakfast at 7:45, back for study at 8:15, language study until 9:15, then our maestro comes in for our language lesson for a few hours. Oh oh oh! Mi maestro is Hermana Castellanos! He served with Marshal and Sandra in the Torreon mission! He doesn´t think he speaks very good English, but I am extremely impressed by how well the teachers and other leaders speak English! He´s great. We then have more study time, lunch at 12:45, language work on the computer for an hour, language study in the classroom, then we teach our progressing investigator! We then have more study time, dinner, language, planning, then gymtime, and we are supposed to be asleep by 10:30. I used to think I was somewhat busy, but literally every minute we are doing something. I LOVE IT HERE. We are in the same classroom all day for the next 6 weeks, so it feels like our little home. Our distict is really quirky and just love them all so much. Hermana Castellanos will sometimes let us play pictionary and charades, which just really made me think of Dad and how passionate he gets whenever it´s his turn to act out something. i had to act out the First Vision, so hopefully I portrayed with as much enthusiasm and heart as you would´ve, Papa.

 

Carlos Ivan Martinez! Our fïrst investigator! I was led to believe he was an actual man from here in Mexico City learning about the Gospel, but he´s just a teacher acting, thank goodness. I am not sure I would have done much good if he was a real one. We decided to teach him about eternal families and Heavenly Father´s love... in Spanish of course. The first day we learned how to pray in Spanish and basic Gospel vocabulary. It´s amazing how much we are learning here in such a short time because most of our time is devoted to the language. It´s nice to be here where everyone is learning the same language. We started preparing for our lesson on Thursday, then weattempted to teach the poor brother on Friday! It was a blast. I love when we get to teach. I keep wanting to hug him whenever we go to teach him, so I always have to remind myself that we aren´t allowed to. (Dad, I am also working on creating a more firm handshake for myself so you won´t be ashamed of my dead fish-like grip.) Also, it took a day to remember my name is no longer Ally. That name is dead for the next 18 months and I couldn´t be happier to be Hermana Haynie! We first got to know him and learn about his family, then went into the lesson. He laughed a lot with us and made the lesson a really wonderful experience. I was able to talk a lot of the lesson, which I know had nothing to do with my own ability. I am working on the language harder than I ever worked in school and the Lord is helping me when it comes to the lesson, just like we are promised He would do. it really is amazing. These verbs and vocabulary that I haven´t used since Spanish 2 in high school will come back to me, and I am sure I am butchering the structure of the sentence, but Carlos was able to understand.  We can also bear our testimonies in Spanish, very simply of course, so we were able to do that at the end. I love my companera! She is so enthusiastic about the gospel and has such a strong testimony. I am so thankful I get to be with her for the next six weeks! She is from Salt Lake City and is 19 too. She wants to be a nurse and she worked at an old folk´s home, so she always has funny things to tell us about her days there.

 

We had the msot wonderful experience on Saturday. We were supposed to teach Carlos again, (he kindly was going to let us come back), but he was sick, so just a couple hours before they told us we would be teaching Martin. We had to create a new lesson because the one we had planned was a continuation of our previous one. We always pray before we do any sort of studying or planning, so we prayed as a companionship and asked Heavenly Father to help us know what to say to Martin. We sat there for almost 20 minutes trying to figure out different ideas and put together a lesson, but it really was just an absolute mess. We were both getting discouraged and I was feeling really inadequate because we could not think of anything or how to say it in Spanish, then all of a sudden the direction we were supposed to go in came pouring out of us! It was incredible. We taught him about the Holy Ghost and the Book of Mormon. Yesterday we taught Carlos about the restoration, which went pretty well. He prayed at the end and even committed to being baptized! (He might have to say yes to all of us, but we were ecstatic.) That lesson got tricky at one point because he asked what the resurrection was, so I practically had to act it out for him. He was laughing at me, but after he said he understood. Whew.

 

As a district at the start and end of each day we pray together and sing a hymn. Spanish hymns always make me cry. I don´t why we sing them in English at all. They are absolutely beautiful in Spanish. Oh, Sunday was the best day! Hermana Pratt, the MTC President´s wife, taugh relief society about faith and how we can obtain great faith like the Brother of Jared. We then had sacrament with our zone. It´s about 45 people I think. We all have to prepare a talk in Spanish for Sundays and they just call on people when it´s time for the speakers, so it´s a surpirse for everyone. I said the opening prayer, but I dodged the talking bullet. We were able to watch a devotional by Elder Ballard and then watch the ´To This End was I born´ video and the video about John Tanner. Elder Ballard talked about the trust that the Lord has always put his greatest trust in young people and we must represent Him as if he were with us right now. It was so nice to be able to have a day solely for the Gospel and not have to worry about Spanish.

 

A scitpure I read earlier this week that has brightened my days is from a talk you gave me Dad, Ánd Moses said unto the people, fear ye not, stand still,and see the salvation of the Lord... The Lord shall fight for you.¨´ I know without a doubt in my mind that the Lord is fighting for each one of us when we keep the promises we have made to him. AH 47 SECONDS LEFT. I love you all with my whole  heart!

 

Love,

Hermana Haynie