A Day in the Life

Today is my p-day (preparation day) and the only day photos are allowed to be taken. A basic day here goes like this: wake up at 6, get ready by 6:45,study till 7:30,eat breakfast, study till 9 on our own again, then we do language study and Book of Mormon study and coaching with our teachers until noon. Lunch, work out, shower, back to the books or teach our investigators, more language, dinner,  TALL (language program online), then daily planning for tomorrow and more studying until 9:30. Go back to casa verde and change, more personal study and lights out at 10:30 and repeat. A quality 16 hr day every day, LOL. We get to mix it up with a service project on Mondays and church on Sundays and Tuesday is pday so we have part of the day to clean do laundry shop or take pics or whatever else we can come up with.

The food at breakfast is normally a no go so cereal usually reigns supreme. Lunch is the big meal of the day which sucks because we need to eat the majority then but we work out right after so there is kind of an art to it. ;) Dinner usually they try and give us a gringo food every once and a while to make us feel at home, like pizza Tuesdays or when they feed us burgers instead of Mexican food which is great - a burger never tasted so good! There is a mini soccer court in a cage called cage ball and we get to play the Latinos every day if we want - they are soooooo good!!! The two best feelings are: 1) getting passed to by them and being called hermano and not gringo and 2) scoring on a Latino keeper. LOL

My companion for the CCM is Elder Stewart and he is great. He was called as district leader (DL) and I’m the senior companion so we`re the district leaders and basically are in charge of each other pretty equally.  I love him. I got really lucky with him and my roommates and my district – they’re great. We have me and Elder Stewart rooming with Elder Shearer (queen B) and Elder Jacobson, who I love! Elder Swinehart (I wrestled him when I won free style state and he won a title this last year, he’s super cool but they won’t let us wrestle on p-day). His comp is Elder Child who is the funniest guy I’ve ever met. Elder Spencer who helps me out mad time on my Spanish and (my twin) Elder Nelson may just be the other funniest guy I’ve ever met - he is so fun! There’s also Hermanas Smith and Homer who have us do a challenge every day like a fashion walk or best tie or best first impression or best high kick etc. I’ve got the most wins right now at 2 no big deal. ;) We all know "hermanas are perfect" our branch president told us that.

So life in the district is pretty great! The first week was awful but now it’s all turning around and I’m learning a lot and God is helping us each out like crazy on speaking Spanish. I’ve been struggling with feeling inadequate as a missionary but this last weekend was General Conference - I hope everyone watched every session it was so wonderful!  I was really in the dumps about the language and struggling with lots of different things but what I got most from the conference was that one apostle said God qualifies those he calls and the spirit hit me hard with that and I knew that God was and is looking out for me and is right by my side in all of this as I obey. In Moroni 10 it says we must have both faith and hope so not just in ourselves but in God, so with that I have been living each day and it is going so much better! I love this place and all the people and couldn’t be happier!