9/5/13 First Week at the MTC

NEW MTC address: 

Texas McAllen Mission

Carr. Tenayuca-Chalmita No. 828, Col. Zona Escolar, Deleg. G.A. Madero,

C.P. 07230, México, D.F.

México

 

I hope that works for you. Hopefully I can send pictures another time?

I think the first awesome experience happened the first real day . . . all of us newbies were in a class together leaning about , ¨ Conversion Orientation¨.  The purpose of this lesson was to teach us what a person has to feel in order to feel converted to the gospel.  A young woman to my knowlege, was a real investigator of the church, entered the room.  She was really surprized to see a huge group of missionaries, and said she was only expecting two.  We all asked her questions to get to know her situation and to know how she needs the gospel in her life.  Without much time at all we all felt sincere love for her, and asked inspired questions that invited a very strong spirit. She told of how she was a little bit angry at God because her father died in a car crash a couple of years ago.  Many of us bore testimony that peace can be found by turning to the Savior Jesus Christ.  Logan also was in this class, and bore a most powerful personal testimony of this.  She could feel our love and it was clear that her desire to know more rapidly grew.  It was so difficult to stop the discussion.  This experience was so wonderful because I remembered why I so badly want to go on a mission, to help people like Samantha. 

 

I LOVE MY COMPANION! Her name is Hermana Nielson. She likes to run, and she loves soccer.  She is so easy to work with and always tries with me to speak Spanish.  She is a great example and is always willing to work hard with me and obey as best we can.  Our love for soccer has given us some fantastic opportunities to have fun during gym time.  Qué divertido!  We get some awesome games with latinos and other districts, but they are more safe because there is no physical contact (as best we can).  A typical day is like this: breakfast, personal study, language and gospel study with district, lunch, additional study, gymn for an hour, learn more spanish in a computer lab, plan, teach our investigator, then get ready for bed, and every week we have a service project.  The teachers try to speak mostly spanish really slowly so we understand.  But if it is something they really need us to understand, then they try to talk in English.  Something that really really really really helps our spanish is speaking it ALL THE TIME.  We try, but it is hard, but we do the best we can.  I´m amazed at how much spanish I have learned in only one week. 

 

Teaching our first investigator . . . 

     Wow.  Catalina is so nice and friendly, but the most frustrating thing was not being able to understand her.  It´s like you take forever saying a simple sentence that you have to think so hard about, then she asks a question about what you mean, and then you don´t understand and you don´t even remember what you said exactly anyways . . . yeah. haha!  So it´s true, on the third day we tried to teach her about the plan of salvation, but halfway through I got so embarrassed that I started to cry.  Then I felt fine, but I just couldn´t stop.  I felt so bad!  But it´s okay!  Do you know how awesome it is that me and my companion spoke straight gospel spanish to an investigator for 45 minutes?!  When we taught Catalina again the next day, it went so much better.  We actually succeeded in teaching her about faith, the spirit, and prayer, and she prayed for us, and we felt the spirit and it was wonderful! 

 

Time to go!

Love,

Hermana Campbell