June 30: The Week of Wow

My new companion (Hermana Moran, from D.F., the capital of Mexico) is super amazing and loves my investigators and less-actives even though she doesn´t even know them. She is constantly thinking in how we can help them catch the vision our Heavenly Father has for us, his kids. That´s really all we need to know. If we can understand what it is that He wants for us, if we could imagine what we can become, if we can understand how great our lives will be if we follow the instruction manual, if we could see ourselves how He sees us, we would stop living below our potential, and we would live the Gospel. What good is a computer without Windows? Or a plate of cold pepperoni, dry flour, a plain teaspoon of salt, a couple plain tablespoons of yeast, some cheese, and cold tomato sauce? Not nearly as awesome as a pizza. We are the most amazing contraption in existence, but without the instruction manual or the recipe, we´re left to our own simplicity. She makes me really really happy because I want the best for them, and she has amazing ideas that have helped them see the vision this week.

I know I have not gotten a blog post out in a month, but this is Urgente (June 23)

I don´t really write anything on my calendar on my wall because what good would it do me? I´m never home haha. There is only word that I have written on my calendar since I got here: CAMBIOS. Transfers. I had to mentally prepare myself for the day Hermana Rueda could possibly leave me. That day has arrived. And she left me!

I´m stayin here, thank goodness because I think I just started to find out how to get to the grocery store (but i know the names of most of the members, nonmembers, and less-actives members; I may be cursed with directions but I´m good with names). I finished my 12 weeks of training in 8 weeks so that was pretty sweet! But then guess what?!?!?! President told me I´m going to train.

WHOA.

So today there are three other trainers working with me in my area and tomorrow, we go to collect out newbies!!!!! I am so excited!!!!! It´s going to be wayyy hard but great!! :)

 I have NEVER been so excited to walk into a Walmart in my life!!!! It is truly hard to express how great it is to go Walmart now.

May 19: Your Orientation

Hi! I feel like I´ve been getting questions like, What is my house like, What is my companion like, What is the food like, and lots of questions about my favorite: Mail. So today is an orientation for yáll, and sorry it´s late in coming!

1.       I´m in a county called Tlaqupaque, a neighborhood called Parques de Santa Cruz, a street called Avenida San Blas. I have no idea if google maps works, but that would be cool haha.

2.       The house. We live in a duplex. Free standing houses here basically do not exist. I think I´ve seen two or three and they´re super old (like colonial). Here´s some pictures:

The shower is behind the door.

Not all the houses and living situations are the same within the mission, mine´s super nice right now! One of the sisters who got here before me still doesn´t have a bed, and one of the sisters´ houses (we had splits so I got to see it) has dirty water. But you don´t drink the water, you buy it in those 5 gallon jugs. We´ve met many neighbors this way because they see us coming back from the shop carrying the giant thing and want to loan us their little cart/wagon to pull the jug.

3.       The food: You can see our tiny fridge (which has a freezer inside), which is more than big enough for the two of us! We only prepare breakfast, we eat around 3 with one of the members, and then we have a snack for dinner (like a big chunk of homemade bread that costs 4 pesos- $0.33). There´s food for sale everywhere you look for prices like that, so yeah… It´s a good thing I run every day. There´s fresh fruit for cheap everywhere too, we just wash it in bleach water and it´s mostly fine. I miss pizza but overall the food here is a dream come true.

4.       My companion: Is from Colombia, loves soccer and with long hair (everytime we see someone with long hair- and there are a lot more people here with really long hair than in the U.S. – she stops what she is saying or interrupts me if I am talking to say, ¨Look at her hair!!¨ Haha), has 10 months in the mission, is a convert, and is obsessed with Mexican food. They don´t have tortillas or chiles in Colombia! When I talk to her I feel like I know more Mexican stuff than she does, even though I just got here.

5.       The mission is organized like this:

My companion and I work in an Area.

There are two Areas in our ward—so, there are 4 missionaries in our ward.

There are several Areas in a District.

There are several Districts in a Zone.

There are several Zones in a Mission.

A Mission is a really big area. Haha. (¨Big¨ in the case of my Mission means that it is the whole state of Michoacan and part of the state of Jalisco.)

6.       Mail.  <3

Mail works like this: It gets delivered to the mission offices, where it waits until there is a zone conference (monthly), when the elders who works in the mission offices deliver everything (mail, supplies, visa stuff, etc) to the zone leaders. The zone leaders bring it to the meeting and give it to me. I don´t have a post office anywhere in my area, so when I send letters I give money to a missionary who has a post office in their area and ask them to send it for me.

7.       My schedule:

6:30 am Get up

6:45-7:15 Run

7:15-8:00 Shower, get ready, eat breakfast

8:00 Personal study

Study how to explain what we´re going to teach today, and how to help those we´re teaching

9:00 Companion study

Talk about the needs of those we´re teaching and how to help

10:00 Training

This is time to help me learn teaching skills or other things that are important

11:00 Spanish

12:00-9:00 Teaching appointments, with one hour for lunch

9:00-9:30 Plan for tomorrow

9:30-10:30 Get ready for bed and do some chores