Hola de el CCM--Week 4

These are everywhere. 

You're supposed to go there in an emergency ??

Hola!

What a week it has been. I can hardly believe that my time here in the CCM is almost done. It feels like I just got here. Classes are still going well. My Spanish is coming along. The hard part is figuring out how to conjugate everything. Spanish just uses different conjugations on the end of their verbs for EVERYTHING. Example: In English when we talk about the future we say "I will...." but in Spanish you just tack a weird ending onto the verb. It's a little weird. Not hard to do, but it's hard to remember all the conjugations. (There's also two ways of past tense that are really weird too, but whatever).

We found out this week that Hermano G's wife is pregnant. Congrats to them. Also, Hermano T is no longer helping to teach us. He is now a full teacher, and he teaches his own district. 

We had TRC last Saturday and it was really weird. Muy extraño. We actually taught our lesson over Skype. We were supposed to skype someone in Mexico, but, the connection wouldn't work, so we ended up skyping this white girl in Utah. It was really strange! I guess she was an RM that served Spanish speaking. We shared with her the story of how the Brother of Jared  received answers, and how sometimes we have to work to receive revelation. It was good, just a little weird.

Sundays and P-days are still by far the best days of the week. This last Sunday, Presidente Suaste taught priesthood meeting. He talked about how those who hold priesthood keys are like light switches, and priesthood holders are like light bulbs: emanating light to other's lives through priesthood service. Elder S taught our district meeting (which btw, I get to teach this Sunday), and he taught about perspective. He had us put a rock in our shoe, and a piece of candy in our mouth and had us walk around. Despite the candy, all anyone could focus on was the rock, because it was uncomfortable. He also shared six examples of people who overcame their personal disabilities to become great including: Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, George Washington, Tom Cruise, James Earl Jones, and Walt Disney. It was a pretty cool lesson. Attitude and perspective are muy importante.  

Sacrament meeting was good. During the afternoon we had a class with the MTC president, Pres. Tenorio. He talked about specific prayers. It was kind of crazy. He shared the story in Genesis 24 of how the servant of Abraham said a specific prayer to find a wife for Isaac. He also shared some of his own experiences. For instance, when he was traveling to a city for a church conference, he was supposed to stay at this hotel, but the reservation had fallen through. There was absolutely no room. He talked to the clerk at 1:00 and said that he would go to lunch, and come back and at 3:15 someone would call from Veracruz to cancel their reservation. President Tenorio said a prayer that it would happen. He came back into the hotel at about 3:12 and the clerk waved his finger at him and said, "Nobody has called yet!" President Tenorio smiled and said, "Just wait! It is not 3:15 yet." Sure enough at exactly 3:15, someone called. Tenorio walked up to the desk, as the clerk said, "Uh huh...from Veracruz?...You want to cancel the reservation?...ok." It happened, and Tenorio had a place to stay. Crazy! 

Later we watched a talk by Elder Holland that was very similar to his other talk about loving Christ and becoming preach my gospel missionaries. He also talked about how past dispensations had hope for us, because they knew that we would not fail in this great work. It was very powerful. After that, we got to watch a movie about the Book of Mormon called "How Rare a Possession." It told the Parley P Pratt story, as well as the story of an Italian man who had to wait for such a long time to be baptized. It was pretty good. It made me think of how sometimes we take things for granted, like our access to the gospel and to the Book of Mormon.

Our lessons have been getting better and better. Elder B and I are really starting to understand what it means to teach by the spirit.We had a lesson with Nesha, and the spirit was just present the whole time. We taught about change, repentance, and the Atonement. it was awesome. Then when we taught Adrían, we had a great experience. His "wife" was there, and we had planned to read 2 Ne 31 with them, to explain the importance of baptism. However, his wife started saying how she didn't like all the rules of the church, and so we just set our lesson plans down, and taught about obedience, and why God gives us commandments. It was so cool! We just taught by the spirit. I'm starting to feel the Holy Ghost in greater abundance as I teach, and it is awesome. 

We also, have two new investigators. We are now teaching each other, so one companionship teaches another missionary who is playing the role of an investigator. We are teaching Chandler (aka Elder D) and Travis (Elder W). We had our first lesson with Chandler on Tuesday, and we taught about Joseph Smith and we invited him to read the Book of Mormon. He has muchas problemas in his life, but he said that when we were talking, he felt a ton of peace. It was good. We have our first lesson with Travis on Saturday.

We got to have some devotionals the last few days. On Tuesday night, we were visited by Elder Toris, who is an area 70. He and his wife spoke, while their son translated into English. He talked about how we can never forget who we are as representatives of Jesus Christ.

I'll finish with the best. Yesterday afternoon, we had a fabulous opportunity. Elder D. Todd Christofferson visited the CCM yesterday, and it was incredible. They said that because of scheduling, an apostle only comes to the CCM about every 28 years. I found that hard to believe, but they said it is very rare to have an apostle visit here. During the devotional, President and Sister Valanzuela of the area presidency bore their testimonies.  Elder and Sister Christofferson  both spoke about charity, and how when we have charity and virtuous thoughts, our confidence is strong in the presence of God. Elder Christofferson didn't share much of a talk, he mostly did a Q&A session. He really had some wise words of counsel for us. It’s great, because usually in his conference talks he seems very serious, but yesterday, he was cracking jokes, and he seemed like a real person. However, when he talked about the atonement, it was very powerful. He just has so much love for the savior. I want to be like that. The spirit was strong during the whole meeting. What an experience.

I hope all is well at home. 

Love,
Elder Mitchell

A mural in the Joseph Smith building

 With his companion Elder B

With his district

In front of his casa

With the Elders in his district at the temple

Hola from the CCM--Week 3

Hola,

I can't believe my CCM experience is already half-way over! Crazy! Anyways, things are going well at the CCM. It's becoming easier and easier to teach in Spanish. I'm learning new words every day. Some of the grammar is hard, but I can still kinda get my point across during lessons.

Speaking of which, we have been teaching two investigators a week for the last couple of weeks: Adrían (Hermano G) and Nesha (Hermana A). Our lesson on Friday afternoon was probably the hardest experience so far at the CCM. Nesha has big word of wisdom problems, so we were going to try and teach her about the word of wisdom (she actually steals alcohol from the liquor store where she works). When we got there to teach her she was drunk, and was actually drinking during our lesson. We started out explaining how to pray, and when I gave the opening prayer, she leaned over to Elder B and asked "Can I repeat what he's saying?" Then when we stared explaining about the word of wisdom, she just wasn't having it. She didn't want to listen to us, was shutting down everything we tried to say. Then she gave us the ultimatum: "If you can show me one scripture in the Bible that says not to drink wine, I will stop. I won’t drink again." My mind blanked. I was confounded. For all my study of the Gospel, for all my knowledge of the scriptures, I did not know a scripture. It was humbling. It was incredible learning experience. After our lesson, I got a distinct impression during our class. Hermana A mentioned that we need to trust in God. Up until this point, Elder B and I had been using scripted out lessons, because we didn't feel like we could speak well enough. But I felt very distinctly that we need to stop using scripts. So now we write up our lesson plans, think about what we want to teach, and then we just go in and try our best to speak by the Spirit. Our lessons have improved so much since then.

On Saturday, we experienced TRC for the first time. Instead of teaching our teachers, we teach real people. And you don't know until you get in the room with them if they are members, less actives, or real investigators. Needless to say, we were a little nervous. We ended up teaching a member, Eric. He is very active in the church, but his Dad and brother have been less actives for 20 years. We didn't really know what to share with him, so we shared a message about the restoration, and tried to explain that just as the church had been restored, his family could be as well. We encouraged him to keep sharing gospel messages with his Dad, and to just keep inviting. Also on Saturdays, we do a service project during our gym time. This last week, we got to sweep some of the areas around the Thomas S Monson building. We got to talk to the janitor a bit, he knew some English. It was fun to talk with him, and after we were done sweeping, he called us his "homies." The dude was pretty cool.

Sunday is by far the best day of the week here. Literal gifts from heaven. During priesthood, we studied the encounter in Moses 1 between Moses and Satan. We talked about how we are literal sons of God. Pretty cool lesson. Elder B ended up getting picked to speak in Sacrament meeting this week, and he gave a good talk on service. Presidente S also spoke about experiences from his mission, and about how our attitude as a missionary is super important. After lunch, we had a class with the MTC President, Pres. Tenorio. He talked about a lot of things, but he also showed us his conference address from 2007 when he was a member of the 70. It was kinda weird, and he looked pretty different. It's a good talk if you want to look it up. Octaviano Tenorio, 2007. During Devotional, we listened to a talk by Elder Bednar about 5 things that a PMG missionary needs to do and understand. But then, during our weekly Sunday night movie, we got to watch "The Testaments"!! Such an awesome movie. I always feel the spirit during the atonement/Crucifixion scenes, as well as when the Lord heals Helam, the dad. Powerful film.

We resumed our lessons with Adrian on Monday. Adrian is our nice investigator. He will do anything we want him too, but his wife just isn't on board with him joining the church. We asked him to invite his wife to our next lesson with him, and he said he would, so we'll see how that goes...Also on Monday, we had Zone FHE, and one of the departing Hermanas shared a powerful poem about how we are all stuck in holes, and we need to take stones and sticks to build a ladder to get out. But, our ladder will never reach high enough, and that is when Christ lowers his rope to us to pull us out. And once we are free from our pit, we need to feed his sheep, and tell others to build their ladders, calling down to other holes to have hope. It was really good.

On Tuesday, we had a bit of redemption. We taught Nesha again in the afternoon. We wanted to make this lesson really good after our last lesson with her. So, at the start of the lesson, I straight up told her, "We cannot teach you while you are drunk. It is impossible for you to learn from our message if you are going to be drunk when we come. You cannot feel the spirit." She looked a little surprised, and then she agreed. We proceeded to reteach her about the Word of Wisdom, and about having faith that God will provide a way for her. At the end of our lesson, she told us about her strong desire to change, and then we were able to commit her to baptism. Afterwards, Hermana A said that our lesson was "perfecto." (YES!). She also congratulated us on the progress we had made since our first lesson with Jaqueline. She was impressed at how we had decided to not use scripts anymore. Our lessons keep getting better, but there is always room to improve. 

Let me conclude with what happened this Thursday morning. We had the awesome opportunity to attend the open house of the newly refurbished Mexico City temple! We loaded up on the buses, and sang hymns as we got to leave the gates of the CCM. I was once again reminded of how crazy Mexico City traffic is. They're crazy here. We got to look in the new visitor center, and I ran into a friend from BYU, Hermana J. It was so exciting to see her! I was walking down a hallway, and I hear from behind me, " Hey! Elder Mitchell!" We only got to talk for a minute but it was good to see someone from BYU.

The temple was amazing. The Mexican architecture and artwork is incredible. The temple is the largest temple outside of the US, and is one of 5 temples where the angel Moroni is holding the gold plates (just some fun facts). It's a huge temple. They have escalators. Yeah. ESCALATORS. INSIDE the temple. and not just one set, they got a lot of them. It was an awesome experience. 

We'll see how the second half goes here at the CCM. Hope all is well!

Love,

Elder Mitchell

Hola from the CCM--Week 2

Hola!

I can't believe I've been here in the CCM for two whole weeks now! Sometimes it feels way longer than that. After my first week, I felt like I was getting the hang of stuff, but then, last Friday, everything got cranked up a notch. "Jaqueline" is actually not Jaqueline (gasp!) but is now actually our teacher in the afternoon. Her real name is Hermana A. So in the morning, we get taught by Hermano G and Hermano T (G's assistant), and then Hermana A teaches us in the afternoon. Hermana A is pretty much the complete opposite of Hermano G. She's really really strict, and she makes us do these insane assignments. It's definitely hard. When other teachers found out that she was our teacher, they said, "Oh...I'm sorry." But, she supposed to be one of the best teachers in the CCM and her students always leave being able to speak really really good Spanish, So, we'll see. I've been blessed to have experienced teachers. Along with Hermana A, Hermano G is actually the teacher who teaches and trains and hires all the teachers here at the CCM. He doesn't actually teach often; we are the first district that he's taught in over a year. But we are learning a ton from our teachers.

The first two days of being taught by Hermana A were pretty hard, so I needed Sunday to be a good day. And it was! Presidente S, our branch pres, is totally awesome! During priesthood, he gave this awesome lesson about the symbolism of olives, and what Olives meant for the people of Palestine. He also talked about how "Gethsemane" means "olive press." To make an olive usable, it has to be pressed to remove the bitterness, just as Christ, was pressed to remove the bitterness of the world.  When we use consecrated olive oil to heal others, it represents the blood of Jesus Christ. Awesome lesson! District meeting and Sacrament meeting went really well too. 

On Sunday, I probably had the weirdest and best meals that I've had so far here. At lunch, I had pork tenderloin with walnut sauce (Yeah. WALNUT. Like, there were bit of diced nuts still in the sauce, super weird.) But then at dinner, they had this mesquite chicken, that was pretty much like pulled pork...except it was chicken....and there was no BBQ sauce, but it was really good! I ended up going back for thirds. They also had mashed potatoes! It was the first time I've had them since leaving! 

The devotional on Sunday was super good. We watched an old talk from Elder Holland, and it was super powerful. The spirit was working on me, I can tell you that. He talked about a lot of stuff, but just spoke in a way that only he can. He just talks with sooo much power. He started by saying that we need to become Preach my Gospel missionaries, and that we need to be better missionaries than he ever was (hearing that from an apostle was just like, wow). He told the story of a missionary in 1928, who knocked on a door of a woman who had just lost her young child. The local priest had told the woman that her child was in Hell because the child was not baptized. Instead of just going off into some preplanned lesson, this wise missionary opened to Moroni 8, and told this woman where her child was. We teach people, not lessons. 

He also told the story of how Peter became the great apostle that he was:
After Christ was resurrected, and appeared to the apostles, they apostles didn't really know what to do. So, what does Peter do? He goes fishing! They fished all night but didn't catch anything, Christ, waiting at the shore for them, told them to cast their nets on the right side, and when they did, they could not even haul in the catch for the amount of fish in their nets. From here I´ll try to paraphrase Holland: 

On the shore, Christ asked Peter, "Do you love me?" Peter answered " Yea, you know I love thee." Christ said, "Feed my sheep." Christ asked him again and Peter said a similar response. Then Christ asked a third time, and by now Peter (who's not fond of threes right now) is getting nervous. Peter says, "Yes Lord, I do love thee." Christ said, "Then Peter, Feed. My. Sheep.  This was not temporary, when I called you to my work it was for FOREVER. You cannot go back to your old nets and just return to the way things used to be." It was in that moment that the sweet, humble, ignorant, ear-slicing Peter left those things, and became the Legendary Apostle that he was destined to be.

It is the same with us. Our missions don't end after two years, they are for forever. We cannot go back to the way things were, and if we ever were to fall away from the church, it would break the heart of God.

Now just imagine Elder Holland saying that and yeah...it was awesome.

Anyways, Monday came. Remember how I said everything got cranked up a notch? Well, now since we have two teachers, we have double the amount of assignments, double the lessons, and now, double the investigators. We are now teaching both Adrían y Nesha. Our lessons with them have gone pretty well so far. We've taught them both about the restoration, and I'm starting to get better at not having to use a script. Spanish is still hard, but I'm beginning to understand more and more of what the investigators are saying, and how to respond to them. Let me tell you a funny story: yesterday, we were teaching Adrian, (aka Hermano G) and we invited him to go to church. But then, he asked us where the church was. We had no idea what to tell him! We didn't know where the church is in Mexico City! So, I ended up telling him he could google it. It was pretty funny.

Gym time has been pretty good. We've played some b-ball (and yes, I take off my glasses for gym time). Elder B (my companion) can't whistle, and I can't dunk, so Elder B has vowed to get me to dunk a basketball if I can get him to whistle. Also, I got to play some Ultimate Frisbee this week! I was so pumped. I haven't played since April, and it was just so much fun. I had probably had the best throw of my life too. I was being guarded, but I got him to shake enough to give me a tiny window to throw in. I saw one of our guys running to the endzone, so I flicked the disk about 50 or 60 yards down the field, and it ever just curved so slightly to hit him perfectly, and Elder Stout caught it for the score (ironic, because it wasn't Josh Stout, different Stout). It was awesome.

Classes are going well. The days are going by and I'm learning a lot. I've been able to memorize the First vision, My purpose, Moroni 10:5, and Abraham 3:25, all in Spanish. I hope all is well at home. Here comes week three!

Love you all,
Elder Mitchell

Life at the CCM--Week 1

Hola everyone!

I have officially made it over a week here at the CCM (Spanish for MTC, pronounced say-say-emay). Wow, there is so much to tell, hopefully I have enough time. Well, today is P-day, and we didn't get p-day last week, so I have plenty to say. The flight to Mexico was interesting. On the plane from PDX to Salt Lake I actually sat next to a couple who was flying to a wedding for his LDS sister. So we got to talk about the church a bit. There are missionary opportunities everywhere!

 In Salt Lake I met up with about 30 or so other missionaries. I was pretty tired so I mostly just slept on the plane. Getting through immigration was fine, but none of us knew where to go after we picked up our luggage. Eventually the greeter found us, and we were able to get loaded on the buses. Mexico City driving is insane!! There's no such thing as "right of way" you just kinda go when you want. Plus people will just stand in the street trying to sell stuff when the cars are stopped. Yet, we made it safely.

We had some meetings, and unpacked, got situated. If it weren't for the palm trees, you would totally think that the CCM is in the US. But then you look at the mountains and you're like, "oh yeah, I'm in Mexico!" Also, there’s soooo many mosquitos here! They’re only out during the night, but they are very prevalent.

The first day or two was reaaaallly sloooow.... felt like a week between Thursday and Friday. Lots of meetings. I got to see some friends from BYU here. Robert, who I used to play Ultimate a lot with, and Sara, who I used to home teach. They both left for the field on Monday.

My companion is Elder B, from St. George Utah. He's a good guy. He works real hard, is diligent, and wants to be as obedient as he can. He's also super athletic! He played Soccer in high school and his team won State 3 times! HE CAN ALSO DUNK! Yeah. He's pretty good at basketball too. He's sworn to get me good at basketball before we leave the CCM.

We live in Casas (houses) on the south part of the campus. In our room, there are two other Elders: Elder Ah and Elder An. Ah is going to Mississippi, and An is actually from Sherwood! They're both pretty cool, but we only see them during the morning and at night. On Thursday (30th) we met our CCM district. We have ten people. Along with Elder B and I, there's 4 Elders going to Salt Lake South: Elders C, B, S, and O (the DL). We have one Elder going to Eugene Oregon: Elder D. Then we have Elder W, who will be going to Nashville with Elder B and me. And then there's the Hermanas: Hermana P (going to Las Vegas, and who is actually from Tennessee), and Hermana W (going to Ecuador, but speaks fluent German). Our district is super close already; it kinda feels like a family.

Our teacher is Hermano G. He's an excellent teacher, and he really cares about us a lot. Occasionally we got taught by Hermano R as well, and he is an excellent teacher as well. The first few days were long, a ton of meetings. But now we are getting into the flow of things here. We didn't have hot water for the first few days. That was fun. But, we got it now. Just makes you appreciate it more. The food has been good, I've been well fed. There’s always something for me to eat at every meal if I don't like what they're serving. I've had all sorts of different kinds of pork and chicken. They also serve lots of weird stuff. I will try to explain more about the food here next week but it's good! BTW, Elder C will eat anything. They have a store here as well with all sorts of stuff. I found Mexican chips-a-hoy called chokis.

Friday was interesting. We had only been in the CCM for 2 days, and Hermano G started class telling us, "Today you will teach your first investigator, Jaqueline." I was thinking, "What, how!! We don't know any Spanish!!" We spent the afternoon trying to translate our lesson from English to Spanish. It was rough. Our lesson went ok, but we couldn't understand anything she said to us. We tried to teach her about the Restoration, but it was very difficult. However, the next few lessons would get better...

A typical day kinda goes like this: wake up, get ready, personal study in our classroom, breakfast, then Language class with Hermano G, then we study the Book of Mormon or other things as a class, then gym time (we usually play basketball), and then lunch. After lunch we have some additional study time, and then we spend an hour on TALL. TALL is a language software program that’s designed to help us learn grammar easier, but my account currently won't work (Hermano G is working to fix that). I've been able to get stuff done on guest accounts so far. After TALL, we spend the rest of the afternoon prepping to teach Jaqueline. After that, we have our lesson with her, and then dinner, and then we spend the rest of the night studying.

Sunday was awesome. Our branch Presidency is super awesome. Presidente S and Presidente A are such good teachers. Presidente A taught us about the oath and covenant on Sunday, but he also taught us how the Gospel is proclaimed by the weak. Sometimes as missionaries we need to be made weak before we can teach. I know that's why Nate was sent to Russia, and why I've been sent to learn Spanish. We had fast Sunday this last week, and I actually bore my testimony (IN SPANISH!! WHAT?!). We had an awesome Devotional that night. We watched an old talk by Elder Bednar about the character of Christ. It was brutally honest, and I loved it :) Oh! And in a week or so we are going to be visited by D. Todd Christofferson!! Sunday was awesome. I just felt the spirit all day.

Our lessons with Jaqueline progressively got better. Our third lesson was great. During the second lesson, she said she felt something in her heart, but we didn’t know how to explain to her that it was the spirit!! So we dedicated our whole third lesson to the Holy Ghost. It was awesome! The spirit was there, and I actually understood about 75 percent of what she said to us! Our 4th lesson was hard. We tried to teach her about the Plan of salvation, but it was just so much to cover! Our 5th lesson was excellent though (bounce-back). We taught her about the Gospel, and when I bore my testimony, the Spirit was just super powerful. It was an incredible experience.

Spanish has been really hard to learn, but every day it gets better. I've learned that if you want the gift of tongues, you have to work like everything depends on you, and pray like it depends on Him. It's really hard but, "es possible."

Something I'm coming to realize is that every day is a spiritual experience. I can think of distinct experiences in my youth when I felt the Spirit. Here I'm learning that we can, and should, feel the spirit every single day. It just keeps getting better and better here.

I will try to send pics sometime, but I don’t think the computers here have SD card slots. At least, I haven’t found them. Sorry about the typos, I'm trying to type fast! Wish that I could write more but my time is just about up!

La Iglesia es Verdadera! Yo se es! (The church is true! Yes it is!) Love you all!

Elder Mitchell