And so it begins...News from the Mexico MTC !! Mailing address corrected (send letters here until September 5 )

And so it begins. After 20 hours of travel (with no music or inflight movies mind you) from Okinawa to México City, I finally made it to the CCM (The Centre Capcitation Misional). It's so beautiful here! There's hills on either side with colourful house stacked half way up and at night they each have little lights sprinkled across. Anyways. I have my first companera! Her names Hermana Blankinship and she. is. amazing! We were made for eachother :´}
She's crazy and hyper and loves being here (as long as she can have her bread). Sidenote: Méxican bread. Yeah. It's a thing. An amazing thing. I also have two other casa campanera's, Hermana Phipps and Hermana Taylor. All of them are from Utah by the way. So that's always great when we introduce ourselves to new people and announce where we're from ;} But these Hermana´s are so amazing. So strong and wonderful to be around. And we all mesh perfectly. All day we find countless things to laugh about. But I can't say it's all laughing and joy and happiness. A lot of the times it is, I guess, but it is hard. It's overwhelming. And there's these moments when you look at your spanish books or listen to your teacher (who is only allowed to speak in spanish) or you're teaching your "investigator" (who doesn´t even know english) and you think.... this is a lot. You think, I'm not sure I can endure this for a year and a half more. But you know what, never before have I felt so humbled and so relient on Christ. It seems that every minute you're pleading for more help and understanding and patience. You deffinitely learn by fire here, but it's the greatest feeling. And I deffinitely have begun learning exactly how powerful prayer is. If you ask, you will receive.

So after 3 days of learning spanish, you're put with an "investigator" who only speaks spanish. You have to get to know them and teach them about the gospel.... for half an hour. After 3 days of spanish, I talked with a man about his family and his job and taught him how to pray and who Christ was, for half and hour. Entirely in spanish. I didn't do that. I read about the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues but I never KNEW it was real until I did that. And each day after that we continued to teach him and we taught him about the restoration of the Gospel of Christ and about the Atonement and repentance... all in spanish!! My companion and I walk out mezmorized.

Being here is like nothing else. I mean you have a companion that goes with you everywhere and you're always working with another person, but you also have the companionship of the Holy Ghost with you all the time. There's nothing to drive it away. No music. No television. No harsh language. No immodest clothing. No internet (other than email once a week). No world books or advertisements or anything. People walk around singing hymns or they sit out in the courtyard reading thier scriputres. You walk past these groves of trees and you see élders or Hermanas kneeling in prayer together. Where else in the world can you get 18-21 year old kids to do that?

It's incredible. I have such a testimony of the power of the Gospel and what it can do to people if they're willing to put forth the effort.

Anyways. Yes. It's unbelievable. I love it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world.