Mothzillas and Failed Attempts to be Impress Nuestro Maestros

¿Comó le va familia y amigos? [How is family and friends?]

Woohoo for the beginning of week 5! Alrighty, so where to begin? This past week has been a speeding bullet! I can´t believe it´s over!

Well I guess I will begin with saying yesterday we took on the challenge to speak solomente Español the whole day, and we plan to continue it the whole week pero es muy dificil! [but it is very difficult] (so hard). It truly is a humbling experience to try to speak it all the time. Haha, we heard a talk from Elder Christofferson yesterday explaining his first impression of Spanish when he was trying to learn it. He said, "Babies knew more Spanish than I did! DOGS knew more Spanish than I did!" Haha, that made me laugh so hard because I feel exactly the same, hearing it is one thing but speaking it? That is a whole ´nother challenge.

Me and Hermana Brough in Class

It seemeth me good to explain the title of this email before I dip too far into my very funny and extremely spiritual week. The bugs here are huge! They have these mosquito looking flies that they call mosquito hawks because they eat mosquitos but boy are they big! They are like the size of our heads! Also they have these moths that are big and brown and look like bats flying around. I don´t mind them I just thought they were birds at first.

As for trying to impress our teachers... yeah, that didn't blow over too well. Primero mi compañero [first my partner] told our teacher to "susurro sus ojos" which directly translates to "whisper your eyes". Haha but I guess that´s not any stranger than me saying "sientense sus ojos" which means "sit your eyes." Haha, so after much trial we finally figured out the right word but this was only the beginning of our failed attempts to teach our teachers.

Me and Hermano Osorio

So let me just start by saying that our teacher taught us how to give chapel tours this week. So from our lesson we drew the conclusion that we should give our investigators in el CCM tours of the chapel. Little did we know on the day that we decided to execute this idea that they were having orientation classes in the capilla. Entonces [then] here we are con nuestro [with our] investigator trying to give him a tour and all the while he´s like, "no no no!" We just thought he was confused as to where the chapel was, little did we know he didn't want us to go there. So we say ¡esta bien! [right!] and we walk him to the door of the chapel and we open it up and lo and behold they are having orientation. It was really embarrassing! All the other teachers were looking at us like we were some freak show! At this point the spirit had taken flight. And our teacher/investigator, not wanting to break character, asks who one of the teachers is. We tell him it´s a teacher and he tells the teacher flat out to his face, "Oh what a small teacher!". I about died on the inside! We quickly tried to recover our mistake by taking him back but by then the damage had been done. In the end though the other teachers were really impressed, so I guess it was okay.

Yup, there's a gold statue of a guy in a speedo just outside of the CCM!

BTW, I thought I´d throw this in here. I´m senior companion and a Hufflepuff according to the elders in our distrito. Sometimes they get so off topic! It´s madness trying to keep them on topic! We actually had to have a meeting with all the sisters to talk about how we could help the elders in our branch focus. However the whole ordeal turned into a girls camp testimony meeting. If you haven´t been to one that means that there were more tears shed than words said.

Our "Besties" left this week, we're so excited for them!
Good luck Hermana Whipple y Hermana Freeman!

I've learned a lot pertaining to the gospel this week, all simple truths about missionary work. It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord works in such simple ways. We listened to a talk given by Elder Holland this week. He talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon in teaching investigators and also how important it is to not come back the same missionary you came in as. His talk was like a slap in the face. But seriously, I hope that I come home a better person, and I hope that when I come home you will all be better people. I know several of you are on missions or considering missions, pero [but] I think this call is given to all people. Be better people than you were yesterday. I would like to invite you all to share the gospel where you're at. This work extends far beyond missionaries. This work is not soley intended for non-members or even for less active members. Reach out to ALL people, build each other up. We are the hope for the world, faithful members. I've changed my motto. My motto is now, " I can, I will and I wont give up!" My desire is that you would think likewise, because you can preach the gospel, you will be successful, and we wont give up until this work is through.

I love you all, I look forward to seeing you again in 17 months!

Con Amor de Mexico(with love from Mexico),

Hermana Mathis