Saturday, August 13, 2016

Final Week in the CCM!!

Final Week in CCM!!!  (August 4, 2016)

It has been an awesome week here in the CCM. It is going to be hard to say goodbye to my companion and my district this upcoming Tuesday, but I am very excited for the field. It will be nice to be able to put the things I have been learning to use. 

Last P-Day we challenged another district to a game of kickball. It was super fun, and even though we are´nt technically supposed to keep score, we all know that my district won. It was especially fun because it started dumping buckets on us again. The weather in Mexico is perfect jacket weather all the time, and then every afternoon it has a huge rainstorm that floods the roads a little bit. It was super fun to get soaked again, and the mountains are super pretty when the sky is grey and there is lots of fog.

Every Friday we do a service project somewhere in the CCM as a district. Last Friday we were assigned to work in El Comedor (The Cafeteria). We mopped the floors, and cleaned the tables. When we finished with that we still had a lot of time left, so the workers had me and 5 other Hermanas come help them prepare dinner. Looking ridiculous in our hair nets and gloves, our job was to cut open 800 bags of raw fish, and dump the fish into a big pot for dinner. If any of us had liked fish before, we certainly wouldn´t after that. The smell was awful, the fish were disgusting, and I never want to see another Talapia again in my life. It was fun to talk to the Hermanas though, and it was a good service. The only problem was that we had a large tray on the counter to catch all the fish juice. Another Hermana accidentally dropped one of the bags of Talapia on the tray, and a mixture of fish water and blood splashed all over me! It was all up my arm and on my pants and my shirt. It was super funny, but I had to take a twenty five minute shower after that to get rid of the smell!

Sunday was a super awesome day. One of my favorite parts was listening to a devotional recording of Richard G. Scott. He talked about how important it is that we turn to the Lord for everything, and how our prayers need to be a conversation with God. I loved that he said sometimes the prayers we offer when we are tired and would rather be in bed are the most heartfelt prayers. So, the times when we might not want to pray are the times we need to pray the most! It was a little ironic because President Call who was conducting our meeting here in the CCM had just finished explaining that even though Elder Scott had already passed away, we were going to listen to a recording of one of his addresses. The first thing Elder Scott said when the recording started was "I feel like I´ve died and gone to Heaven." (speaking about his opportunity to address missionaries) We all weren´t sure whether it was appropriate to laugh or not, but it was pretty funny. 

We were also able to watch the video The Restoration on Sunday night. That video always gets to me every time. It reminds me how important it is to have a testimony of the Restoration, because if you don´t have a testimony of that, you can´t have a true testimony of anything else in the church. This week we were teaching our investigator Mariano, and we had an experience along those lines. We have been teaching him for two weeks now, and we have taught him the Plan of Salvation, the Gospel of Christ, and a couple of commandments. For this lesson, we decided backtrack and assess his testimony of the Restoration. When we asked him if he believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and that he had truly had a vision of God and Christ, Mariano answered that he wasn´t sure. It was an awakening for us that we cannot gloss over the message of the Restoration, we have to have a firm foundation of that. It was awesome to be able to share more about the Joseph Smith story and bear testimony. Something I heard in one of our devotionals here was that "If you don´t have a testimony of the Restoration, kneel down, pray, and don´t stand up until you have one!"

On Tuesday we had our usual weekly devotional. Hermana Bowers in my district was conducting the choir, Hermana Hirschi (my companion) was playing the piano, so I ended up turning pages for her. I was pretty nervous, and I wasn´t even the one playing! It turned out really well though, the song was Praise to The Lord The Almighty. I loved the speaker, he was an Area Seventy, and he spoke about how being a missionary is a great blessing. Sometimes it is hard to think of it that way, but it truly is a blessing to be wearing the name of Jesus Christ on my tag everyday. After the devotional we had a district meeting to review the week and talk about the devotional. A couple of the Elders in my district shared some really cool experiences about how they completely turned their lives around in order to come on a mission. It was awesome. I really love my district, we have all become great friends.

Last night we had TRC again. This week Hermana Hirschi and I were able to teach a young woman named Valeria. She was one of the sweetest people I have ever met! She was baptized 10 months ago and her enthusiasm for the gospel is so cool. She shared with us that before she found the church she was always very sad. She lives a very hard life with her mother and her older brother who is mentally challenged. She has some amazing faith, and she shared with us that she is so excited to serve her mission in 2 years! We were also able to meet her grandmother last night. Her grandmother will be baptized on August 30th, this month, due to the missionary efforts of Valeria. Her faith was so inspiring, and I just loved her!

This morning we got all of the Hermanas in our zone together for a game of soccer. Even though most of us weren´t very good, it was a lot of fun. We are heading to the temple in about an hour and I am super excited! I just want to say that my experience here at the CCM has been a life changer. I have learned more than ever to rely on the Lord, and I know that He is always there for us. He DOES answer prayers, and He wants to help us, all we have to do is ask Him, and put our trust in Him. 

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