District Goal of Eating 100 Nutella Sandwiches :)

¡Hola Mama! I’m doing great! I have struggles every now and then but for the most part and most of the time I’m doing really good! Yeah it was awesome to get 6 more names done. I wasn’t able to grab them though because we didn’t have time to wait. Yeah today marks 1 month! It’s kinda crazy but kinda cool at the same time. I have 23 months left! I like to go by weeks though because at the end of the week it feels like it went by super fast. Only 99 weeks left! I don’t know a whole lot about when I’m leaving the CCM yet. I heard the A.P.s might come pick us up in the afternoon and then we might get to call home. The day we do leave here we will stay that night in the mission home. I’m not totally sure though but yeah it’s not super far from here at all.

Yeah I got an email from Shawn saying he got transferred and that he’s a ZL now. That’s okay, I will still give Elder Goddard stuff to take down. I’m glad to hear things are going good at home! I hadn’t read dad’s email before I read yours about Koda so I was kinda confused but then I went and read it so I’m good now! That’s good they are finally cutting them off. I will definitely pray for him too!

Thanks for those thoughts Mama! This isn’t my spiritual thought but I wanted to share that my mission has been rough and I knew it would be. I feel like coming out a lot older is helping me too. I know if I would have come out when I was 18, I would most likely be falling apart and breaking down. I feel the spirit and Heavenly Father here helping me not worry and keeping me lifted up. As long as I am obedient, I know I will continue to receive this help. I always joke with other missionaries here saying I am 24 so I’m tough and I do what I want (just joking when I say I do what I want) but I know because of what I have been through and coming out later, it feels easier for me; but it’s only easy because of help from God. My Spanish is coming slowly but I have made pretty good progress from not having taken Spanish classes in the past.

Devotionals here are pretty awesome! On Sundays they get broadcast from the Provo MTC and other times the Presidency here teaches it or they bring up a video from past devotionals from Apostles! On Sunday we watched a devotional from Elder Holland titled Feed My Sheep from January 2011. You should definitely look it up and watch it! In the video he talks about missionary work and some of the things missionaries don’t do and do. He talks about the apostles and what they did after Jesus died before He came back and talked to them and asked Peter 3 times if he loved him. And if he does then Peter needs to feed his sheep. He then related that to us missionaries, that what we are doing is something we can’t go back from, at least until after our mission. But even then, what we are all doing is a life long journey. I have another thought I wanted to share with you but it’s in my other notebook that I forgot to bring so I will bring it again later and tell you!

Oh one other story for you haha. So a couple weeks ago we decided we wanted to have a district goal of eating 100 Nutella sandwiches in a day here during our meals. Last week Elder Davis told his mom to send him Nutella that we could use so we wouldn’t have to use and deprive other missionaries of Nutella here. She sent him 4 containers of Nutella! Monday was the day we decided to do it. The sandwiches we made were just with one piece of bread with Nutella folded in half. During breakfast we knocked out 51 sandwiches! Although that sounds good, it was not easy. My comp decided he was only going to eat 3 and one of the Hermanas only ate 2 so we had to pick up the slack during lunch and dinner. We did achieve our goal of 100 sandwiches, in fact we made it to 104! Elder Davis ate a total of 18 sandwiches, Elder Martin got 14, I got 14, my comp Elder Wilhelmsen only got 5, Elder Goddard ate freaking 20, Elder Christopherson ate 16, Hermana Ballard only ate 2 but her companion Hermana Larsen ate 15! We were all so glad when we were finished and were able to eat normal food haha.

Spiritual thought: The other thought I wanted to share is from another devotional Sunday that Elder Gary E. Stevenson and his wife spoke at. His wife said it doesn’t matter if you say you will go and do. The Lord needs you to say I went and I did. I really liked that a lot. Elder Stevenson talked about PMG (Preach My Gospel) and what an awesome tool it is for us. It is an awesome talk!

Today we went and lifted in the morning and then cleaned up our room and got ready and studied for a bit. After I wrote you, we all went and got haircuts then played volleyball and basketball then went to the Tienda and got some stuff and went back to the casa and took a nap. Then we came back to write some more emails. Yeah I do hope I get to call home or send an email or something. I’m pretty sure they will let us know this next week.

¡Te amo!

Before haircut...

And after the haircut!

I drew this during a devotional so I would stay awake haha

You can't see it very well in the picture but the sky was really
red and pink. I don't know why!

A scripture case I got at the temple!

Cool leather cover I got for my small Spanish hymn book.

Life is Really Good in the Mexico CCM!

HOLA Mama! Life is going pretty well here at the CCM! And thank you. It’s a goal of mine to bear my testimony every fast Sunday this year and I didn’t want to break it so I decided to just go for it! It’s definitely possible because of help from the Lord.

This week was good. I haven’t had any experiences as good as the last one I told you about but things are still going really good. Tuesday was a rough day because our district decided to fast for a Hermana in the zone who was having a hard time, and we also decided we had to speak Spanish all day. We started fasting Monday after dinner and went until dinner Tuesday night. It was super rough. Because I was so hungry throughout the day and had no energy, my patience level was super low with all the teenage Elders in my district. Only speaking Spanish really wasn’t too bad. I had to think a lot more about what I was going to say; and in the end, I think it helped me to be more confident in my abilities to speak Spanish. I was trying to stay positive though because we were fasting for the Hermana who was having a hard time. Wanting to help her helped me get through the day, but it was still pretty rough till we ate dinner. (Side note, he found out after his first email to me that she is going home but she is going to try and come back after. I don’t know her name but will be praying for her!)

And yes I did get the second package you sent me, thank you so much! I got a picture with it before I started eating the stuff. Everyone loves the popcorn in it so thank you from them. That would have been nice if the guy would have told us that before we bought my stinking suit. Yes I did get my suit back and the alterations the person made help but only a little bit. :(

That’s so awesome to hear about your work Mama! I’m so glad that you were able to find this job! How long are you going to be in Austin for? And thank you for that thought. Every week I read my patriarchal blessing at least one time, sometimes 2 or 3, but reading that helps me to remember why I’m out here.

I will get back on later to send you more pictures because we are going to the temple again today at 11! This will be the last time we go during our time here in the CCM. I’m so glad the video worked! Our casa is really nice! And that’s awesome Shawn will help receive the new Elders!

For my spiritual thought, it comes from a devotional earlier this week we had. If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you always got. We are only limited as we limit ourselves, and we can do so much more than we think we can.

Love you Mama! I hope you have a great week too!

P.S. We got back from the temple not too long ago and it was really awesome. I gave all the elders in my district names to do from the names you gave me, so 6 more got done!

Last Saturday we had a big fiesta in our casa because all the
Latinos were leaving. This is all of the food we had!

In the visitor center with the Christ statue!

Angel Moroni on the temple holding the plates. Only
5 in the world are like this!

Chad and his companion Elder Wilhelmsen

An Amazing Experience in the CCM!!

Yeah the first week was the roughest but it’s going better now! Spanish is coming slowly but it is coming. I can say a basic prayer and bear my testimony in Spanish! We keep learning more and more each day though. It’s like being in school again but while being here I can feel Heavenly Father helping me not be overwhelmed by it all. It’s really an incredible feeling. I really do like the people in my district! We all get along super well. Yeah I was talking with him (the Elder that is going to Shawn's mission) about him going there and that would be cool if Shawn was his trainer.

Sundays are good but still busy. We have lots of study time, meetings and devotionals… 3 devotionals from afternoon into the evening. Fast and testimony was the same except for we have to bear our testimonies in Spanish, which I went up and did! The food is interesting to say the least. It’s like food back in high school where sometimes it’s good and sometimes it gives you serious stomach problems.

Yes I did get the package you sent, thank you so much you are the best! I shared the stuff you sent with everyone in my Casa. I was looking on that website a few days ago at everything they have and saw so many things I want like poptarts and candy and stuff haha. Also quick side note, the zip up hoodies I have aren’t technically allowed here and may not be in my mission. Occasionally there are sunny days but the weather here is weird and is cloudy, rainy and cold most of the time so I need a sweater of some kind. There are only 2 seasons here. Wet and dry and we are getting to the end of the wet season but during the dry season it gets super cold here at nights and then heats up during the day.

I have an experience I want to share with you. It was crazy that we had to teach an investigator already. I thought that was crazy until this week we had to start teaching 2! It’s hard but at the same time it’s going super good. In fact, yesterday my comp and I prepared to teach Karla (who is also our teacher Hermana Pérez); and in our lesson, we were going to start out by asking her if she has read the Book of Mormon we gave her and what she thought about it, then teach her about baptism/confirmation, eternal families, teach her how to pray and then ask her to be baptized but it didn’t go that way. Instead we spent the whole time (about 20 or so minutes) talking about the about the Book of Mormon, asking her questions, and answering the questions she had about it and bearing our testimonies too. Even though that’s all we taught about before we had to end, it went really well. After the lesson, Hermana Pérez sat us back down and told us that she has never felt the spirit so strongly during a lesson with the missionaries here in the CCM before and that it made her want to go out and serve a mission again. She also told us that during our lesson we conjugated everything we said perfectly (which I didn’t think we did because I just said what came to me) and that totally blew her mind. I seriously almost started crying because of everything she said and because of the reassuring feeling that the gift of tongues is truly possible and because of how strong the spirit was while we were teaching and then after when she told us that.

Yes I did write about that experience in my journal. I have written every day! I forgot to say before but I don’t really even know how to conjugate anything yet but that was seriously my favorite moment here in the CCM. Also everyone here calls me “abuelo”, which means grandpa and I call them my “hijos”, which means children. It’s kinda weird being with 18 year olds but it’s not bad haha.

I love you Mama

Classroom Time!

Snack Package has arrived!! This is what was left after
just a few days :).

Picture of glass that was broken by some elders messing around.
No it wasn't Chad, he just wanted a picture :).

Another picture Chad really likes there

His hero Captain Moroni!!

A Few More Pics I Missed

I totally missed seeing these in one of the emails he sent me... I'm so glad I went back to read his emails again. And here was part of that email too:

I forgot to tell you before, I have had a cold since stinking the second night I've been here. They have halls in la Tienda (the store) which we get 100 pesos to use each week and they carry over too, but I'm slowly getting better and mostly just have a stuffy nose now. I don't remember if I said this before but that's so awesome you got a job!!! Okay now I'm going to send pictures :)

Elder Davis, Martin, Christopherson, Goddard, Wilhelmsen,
Chad, Hermana Ballard, Larsen

Picture of Christ that he really likes there

Their Casa

A dead bug they found in their casa 😧

Yay for Pictures!!!!!!

Got an email with quite a few pictures from my Elder!!! Love him! What a beautiful temple too!!

Feels Like a Month has Gone by Already

¡Hola Mama! I’m sorry my first email when I got here was super short. I wanted to say more but didn’t want to get in trouble. And sorry for not emailing last week, I didn’t know that we wouldn’t be able to. Any who, my flight was good. I slept a little bit on the plane but not a lot. There was a ton of missionaries on my flight. After we got to the airport, we went to an area to wait for buses to come pick us up in groups of I think 26. Two buses came and picked up everyone except for me and 3 sister missionaries; and for some reason the guy who was organizing transportation, couldn’t find a shuttle for us for a long time so we sat and waited and talked in the airport for I swear 2 hours. Don’t worry, I got their emails haha.

Holy smokes though, traffic here is nuts! People here just kinda do what they want while driving. They hardly use blinkers, they run red lights, people (both adults and kids) try to sell things to you in the street while you are stopped at a light, they cut each other off to merge, yeah haha. It’s nuts but it’s cool too.

After we made it to the CCM we got our tags, and figured out who are comps are, got pizza for dinner and then went to a devotional, which they do every Tuesday. After the devotional we had to take our luggage to our casas and that freaking sucked. It was like a half mile away and my stuff is so heavy I had to keep stopping to rest because my arms were killing me. I fell behind because I kept stopping and no one offered to help me until I was like 100 feet away from my casa. I was so grateful to those elders who helped me that last bit.

That same night no one really knew what stuff we needed to get out of our bags and we didn’t want to unload it all since we would be leaving in 6 weeks. I just unloaded my biggest bag and a few things from my other bags and put them into a closet thing I have and put the rest of my luggage under my bed. The first couple of days I was feeling a little home sick and then was good until Conference because of the videos and pictures they were showing of Utah. Conference was super awesome though! I took lots of good noted and only fell asleep a few times haha. Thank you for working on my rubber band ball!

Because of how much stuff we did each day during my first week like going to orientations and starting Spanish classes, it felt like a month went by. On Thursday we had to start teaching a pretend investigator IN SPANISH! It’s been rough for me since I haven’t taken any Spanish but it’s also been good! I’ve learned a lot like how to say a basic prayer and bear my testimony and other stuff too. It feels like I’m being blasted in the face with a fire hose full of Spanish, but at the same time I’m not super overwhelmed and I know that is because of Padre Celestial! I have a lot to say but my mind is all over the place so if I don’t say something you want to know just ask. We are going to the temple today at 11 so I have till about 10:40 my time. I think I will be able to get back on later today after we get back to email again for a quick minute.

We got assigned to a district the second day we were here and one of my roommates got assigned to be the DL. So in my district there are 6 Elders and 2 Hermanas. Elder Davis, who is the DL, is from Mesa Arizona and he knows and has hung out with the Romney Family. His companion is Elder Martin from Pittsburgh and he only has 2 knuckles in some of his fingers. My companion is Elder Wilhelmsen from Idaho. Us 4 are all in the same room. The other elders are in a different room. Their names are Elder Christopherson from Fresno California, he has a stutter but he is awesome and actually doesn’t stutter when he sings! His companion is Elder Goddard from Alpine, Utah and he blew himself up when he was 14 so he has lots of burn marks on his body and he is also going to be serving in Osorno! I told him Shawn is there so I hope they meet! There’s one other elder who isn’t in my district that is going to Osorno too. His name is Elder Gillespie. The 2 hermanas in my district are from Utah as well and they are pretty cool. Hermana Ballard is from Riverton and Hermana Larsen is from Springville. Our casa has 5 rooms and we all get along great. Two of the rooms have Latinos in them and they are seriously so funny! We say a casa prayer every night together.

Before I forget to tell you, there are a couple of sites that you can go onto to send me letters and packages here in the CCM. One is DearElder.com and the other is missionarypackagemx.com. Also,  I love my golf pants and the other pants you got me. My suit pants though are so tight I kind of dread the days I have to wear it. A thread on the inside on the jacket sleeve came out too so I have to try and fix it.

Also will you send me pics from the night I got set apart with friends and family and ask Mikala to send me the ones of her and I too? Mine got deleted off my camera. I have taken some other pictures but I don’t have time to send them to you right now so I will definitely get back on later to send to the pics I have and a spiritual thought too. Also sorry for misspelled words and bad punctuation. I’m trying to type as fast as I can to reply to as many people as I can. Plus the keyboards here are a little different too haha. Anyways talk to you in a while.

P.S. please send me Shawn’s email

PPS my pday will be Friday next week

PPPS if you do send me packages here, as much as I would love it don’t send me lots of sugar. Send me food and snacks haha, I don’t want to get fat haha.

I love you Mama!!

Pictures courtesy of the Mexico MTC. This was their
group getting ready to watch conference.

Arrival Picture at the Mexico MTC

Just saw this picture on the Mexico MTC Facebook page. So good to see Chad there, 2nd row from the top on the left side of the picture!!!! Makes my heart happy :).