4 weeks done only 2 left at the CCM

Hola Everyone!

This week has been a pretty full week of studying. So much to do all the time. I am so grateful for Hermana Dillman, Smith, and Hoj. They mean so much to me. Hermana Hoj and I had to sew another thing for the elders. We sewed buttons on Elder Fisher's suit jacket, but by his request we used purple thread hahahahaha! Too great. What a funny guy.

Sewing Elder Fisher's suit.

 

I have felt so overwhelmed with the love that I have felt from my Savior this week. So many amazing things have happened, and I am so grateful to be here.

As I have mentioned, I have two people I have been teaching, Kaya and Luis. I haven´t been able to teach Luis all week. It really has been unfortunate. He keeps canceling on me or changing the times. It is super frustrating. But I have taught Kaya. We had the most amazing experience with Kaya this week. She has refused to pray in front of us because she didn't realized how important it is to speak with her Father in Heaven but with the power of the spirit we were able to get her to pray. I felt so overwhelmed with the spirit of God as she prayed. I couldn´t imagine not being able to talk with the one person in my life that understands everything! I am so blessed to know that I have a Father in heaven that knows everything that I am going through. It is just amazing to me. I just cannot believe it.

I love the CCM. I could not imagine being anywhere else. A lot of my really close girl friends left this week for their missions. They were such inspirations to me. I can only hope to become as fluent in the language and as spiritual as they are. I just cannot imagine leaving this place yet. I am nowhere near ready. Mexico is so beautiful. I can only imagine how beautiful Ecuador will be.

Hermana Dillman, Smith, and Hoj

The Lord has chosen the people he feels will help me best in my life. I feel so blessed to know the other hermanas and to have the district I have. They mean the world to me. There are so many inspiring people in my district. But this week has really testified to me how the Lord knew what teachers to give me and to inspire me.

Yesterday I was having a really, really difficult time being positive and having patience. Honestly, I felt that this entire week has been a test of my humility. I really felt that I needed to talk with my teacher Hermana Christensen alone about what I was going through. She just listened to me and looked up at me and said some of the most comforting words. She said "Hermana Pack, did the Lord not call you at this time to this place to preach the word of God?" And I was like "Well... Ya..." And then she said "Don´t you think he knew what he was doing and that he had a plan for you?"

How true for all of us! This is so powerful. We all have Jesus Christ and God that we can turn to in our lives. He has a plan for every single one of us. That is so amazing! With faith in the Lord Jesus Christ we can accomplish all things. So true. Sometimes we just have to let go of our pride. I love the Savior, and I am so glad to be here. I wish you all the best week and I am thankful for every one of you!

 

Love,

Hermana Pack

 

 

VIVA MEXICO!!!!

Hola Everyone!!

This week has been amazing! Seriously amazing.

First off, I would like to say that we did commemorate 9/11 and in my district we sang every song about America that we knew haha! It was great.

This week was also Mexico´s Independence Day on Sunday. What is really cool about that is we were allowed to celebrate!! So cool! The missionaries that were actually from Mexico went CRAZY!

I wish I could send some of the crazy videos I took. President Pratt (the president of the CCM) really feels that we all should be a part of the Mexican culture while being here so he allowed us to stay out until midnight watching the address of the President of Mexico. It was super super super cool! Also, we all had to learn the Mexican national anthem. The only problem with the address was that it was in super fast Spanish. I understood none of it. But it was still really cool. On Saturday we were able to take a break from studying and watch a dance and show by some of the natives here in Mexico. It was amazing!! I loved it!!

Anyway, I have two investigators or people that I am teaching about the gospel and their names are Kaya and Luis. I love them, but sometimes I just want to shake them and tell them to listen!! They aren´t actual investigators they are teachers practicing with us but it is all so real. Kaya is amazing but just has no drive. It can be so difficult. This religion is full of commitment and unless you are willing to sacrifice you cannot come closer unto Christ! It just isn´t possible!

BY THE WAY!! I AM OFFICIALLY HALFWAY DONE WITH THE CCM!!! Crazy. That doesn´t even sound real. 6 weeks is just not enough!! I don´t feel ready at all! YIKES. This week the number one thing I have learned is how to teach by and with the Holy Spirit. Usually Hermana Dillman and I write out a good 90 percent of what we are going to teach before we go in and teach because we are both insecure about our Spanish but this week we tried to teach with only a small amount of notes and we didn´t even use them!!! It was crazy. Literally like an out of body experience. I cannot even begin to explain the amount of faith that was used and how many prayers were said. All I can say is this gospel is true! I love this gospel with all of my heart. I know this work is true. I know that the Savior lives and guides his church upon the earth still today. Prophets can receive revelation for this dispensation of time. I know that God is our Eternal Father and that he lives and loves each and every single one of us. I know that I can turn to him with any desire of my heart and he will heal me when I need it most. We should all realize and understand how close he is to us and how much he wants to see us succeed. I know this all to be true. I would not be here in Mexico doing all of this without his influence and the feelings I have felt in my life. I love you all and I am sorry that this is a rather short email but I wish you all the best!!

Adios!!

Hermana Pack

I love the CCM!

 

 

Hola Everyone!!

I am so excited to write about this week!! It has been leaps and bounds better than last week. I love the CCM. It is by far the most amazing place I have ever been! There is so much love on this campus. You can just feel it all around you. Spanish is still extremely difficult, but I am now to a point that I can understand a lot of what is being said to me! My biggest problem is being able to speak the language. I get better every single day though. I know that through obedience the Lord will provide a way for me to be able to communicate with those whom I teach. I have gained a lot for my district, or the people I am in class with. We have three Elder companionship's and one other Hermana companionship. I love them all so much! It really is amazing to me how diligent a room of 18 to 20 year olds can be studying without an instructor. We are all in this together and just want to become the best we can.

The weather here in Mexico City is amazing!! I love it.

Well it would be much more amazing if I had packed some warmer clothes. It is hard though because I won't need them in Ecuador. The morning can be so cold. The one thing that has really taken some time to getting used to is that it rains here every single day. Right around 6. It will rain from then all through the night. So you can imagine that everything is extremely green here. This past week the water had gotten so high in some parts of the streets that it reached to our ankles! But I have surprisingly started to like the rain.... Weird because I used to hate it!! Another difficult thing about the CCM is that none of the maintenance workers speak English. This week our water in our house was completely out for two days. So this meant that not only could we not shower or wash our hands, we could not flush the toilets either.... All I gotta say is YUCK. But because of all the water problems we are not allowed to do laundry this week. Awesome... Hopefully I have enough clothes haha.

Oh yeah!! Mom I would like to inform you that even though you thought I was bringing way too many clothes and stuff, I am probably the person who brought the least amount of stuff. So many girls brought the most random stuff. A lot of it is really not necessary! So no worries I brought the right amount of things. But to any girls coming to the CCM in Mexico do not plan of bringing yoga pants. You are not allowed to wear them outside your house. Also you will really want a raincoat!! Sometimes an umbrella just does not do the job.

 

I have really come to love the food here. Crazy because a lot of the time I have no idea what I am eating haha. Sometimes the food I eat looks so disgusting but it ends up being something amazing. Weird. They have so much fruit here! So many new kinds that I have never tried before. My favorite is this fruit called nashi. It is like a pear and an apple! The peel is not very good but the actual fruit is amazing!!

This week has flown by so quickly compared to last week. I know this is the right place for me to be and the right things for me to be doing in my life. I am so excited to share the message of our Heavenly Father. My overall goal of the next 18 months is to become the missionary that the Lord sees and wants me to be. I can only do this by fully committing myself to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have a quote that I have received from Hermana Pratt. I know that the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. He wants to see us succeed in all our doings. I have never felt the love of God so much as when I am reading his teachings and praying to him in need of comfort. I love every moment of my life here in the CCM and I am grateful to be here! I love you all and I appreciate all of the emails! I could not do this without all of your support and prayers. Well hopefully my typing is not too bad and my spelling is not too terrible. I am not able to check over my typing because I am running out of time. One hour just never seems to be enough!

 With Love,

Hermana Pack

 

It's been a long week......

Hola!!

From Mexico City! Seriously this place is gorgeous!! I love the MTC here. It is actually called the CCM. So if you're ever confused as to what I am talking about, now you know. haha! First off, I want to let you all know that I love you all and appreciate all of your prayers. This place has been amazing, yet extremely difficult, and I love the fact that I can know that you are praying for me. The first day at the MTC was one of the longest of my life. As you can see by the pictures I am attaching the place is pretty run down. There are houses upon houses upon houses!! SO many people. But the CCM is pretty excluded in the middle of the city and it is gorgeous here. So many pretty plants and palm trees :)

 

 

 

 

 The food here took a little adjusting too. I guess they just got new cooks and the food has been "amazing" since then. Lucky for me haha. They have the best tasting fruit!! A lot of the time I do not even know what I am eating. But that is a good thing. Mike, I don't think you would like a lot of the food I eat here, a lot of bread. haha! But this morning I had the best doughnut ever, filled with chocolate so that was awesome. But, I also ate crab mixed with corn and potaotes. hahaha very interesting. Yet still pretty good!

My companion's name is Hermana Dillman. Every girl here is an Hermana meaning sister. She has definately been a good learning opportunity for me. I am totally having to learn patience haha. Danielle, you would love her. She is just like you. She can be pretty fun and she loooooves Doctor Who! haha! Luckily everyone here is pretty much an American learning how to speak Spanish. This has been so helpful. I wish every moment of every day that I had taken Spanish in high school. But there must have been a reason that the Lord called me to speak Spanish. I just have yet to figure out why. haha! I have another set of Hermanas in my district and I absolutely love them. Hermana Hoj and Hermana Smith. They are literally the only way I stay sane throughout the day. On Saturday we were studying Spanish for 8 hours in our classroom. I thought my brain was going to explode.

So speaking of Spanish. So much to tell. Well, it is super super super super super hard! Like I can't even explain it. But I have amazing teachers and I know that I will be blessed in the language through my study of the gospel and by bringing myself closer to God. I have set more goals this week than I have like ever in my life.  I study, study, and study every moment of every day. I wish I had taken a picture of what my desk looks like on an average day haha. But I am only allowed to take pictures on P Day. So Tuesdays it is. I would like you all to know that I can offically say my prayers in Spanish and can say bits and pieces of some of my testimony. YAY!! You have no idea what kind of accomplishment this is. I pray more and more every day. I am slowly catching on to this whole Spanish thing. Hermana Dillman and I have even taught three lessons to an "investigator" of the church. Really he is just a teacher on campus who only speaks Spanish. Our first and second lesson were really rough and pretty discouraging. But our third we taught about the restoration of the gospel and the Book of Mormon. I have never felt a feeling as strong as I did in that classroom. Our investigator's name is Luis Valdez and he agreed to read the Book of Mormon. We couldn't have been more thrilled. We walked out of that room and just cried with true joy. There is no joy like the joy of bringing others closer to Christ. I don't think I had ever been so happy and joyous. We had four pages of notes and questions to ask him and we almost didn't go off of any of them. We went off what we could say and what the spirit guided us to say. It was amazing. I wasn't just teaching what I knew I was teaching what the spirit wanted Luis to hear. SO AMAZING. Wow just looking back on it just makes me smile. Yesterday was such a good day. But don't let me fool you if I had written a letter to you Friday or Saturday I would have been telling you that I wanted to come home. This is beyond hard. I am literally teaching people the words of Christ in another language. It sounds impossible but it is being done haha. Thank the heavens above that I still have 5 more weeks to study here. I am so nervous about going out to Ecuador. Crazy.

My companion is going to Ecuadaor as well, but she isn't in the same mission. She will be going to Ecuador Quito North. She is from Utah. Go figure. Everyone here is from Utah. In fact all the guys in my district call me Iowa or Des Moines haha. Too great. The people here are so amazing. It is so cool to hear everyone's story. It has also been cool to see each person in my district grow as much as I have. There is an Elder in my district who studied German in high school and we had a whole conversation in German the other day haha. Too bad German is not helping me at all here. AT ALL. in fact it makes things worse. I caught myself saying und instead of y the other day for the word and. SO annoying haha.

My teacher Hermana Christensen is amazing. I love her so much. She has been such an amazing example to me. She served in the San Diego Visitors Center speaking Spanish. She told me that each emotion on your mission is magnified. Crazy true. I have cried so much this past week. But you know what it has been all worth it. I truly love it here. The CCM is beyond amazing. The spirit is so strong and testifies so much. I love it.

This morning I was able to attend the Mexico City Temple. AHHHHHHH I know what you are thinking how did she know what was going on? It was all in Spanish? Yes it was. And to be quite honest with you it was spoken so quickly I just followed the flow and understood about 10 words hahahaha. Yikes. But it was still an amazing experience. Such a pretty temple. Not like any of the temples I have been able to attend yet. I loved it and that is where the pictures are from with my district. Well I offically have twelve more minutes to write. I still want to attach pictures. I love you all so much. Just remember that no matter what happens in life and no matter where you are at in your life you have someone in heaven looking down on you watching out for you. Our Heavenly Father loves us more than you could ever imagine. I am only getting to taste some of this now in my life. He knows all of you pains and sorrows. He has been through it all. The atonement of Jesus Christ is real and I am beyond grateful for it. Heavenly Father will bless all of us if we strive to come closer to him. I love the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I am so glad to have gotten to be a part of this gospel. Man I love it all!!

 

Remember keep the letters coming!! I love getting to feel like I know what is going on in the real world. I pray for you all every day more than once. haha. 

 

I love you all so much,

Hermana Pack