Starting off on a New Adventure

I have been here 6 days and am SO excited to tell you about all of it. 

Day one in the CCM: It was more of a rest and recover day. The plane flight went well, no layovers, only a delay in SLC because the wings of the plane froze, so they had to de-ice the plane. I had a nice chat with a Puerto Rican surgeon about the gospel and I was able to share my testimony with him. It was awesome. First 2 hours of being a missionary, and I´m already having opportunities to share the gospel. Our flight from Texas to Mexico was awesome. I sat next to an Elder who is going to NJ with me. His name is Elder Hammer. He is from Spanish Fork, UT and he is also in my district. When we got to the Mexico airport, I was picked up by CCM employees and taken directly to the CCM. I´m so glad that I arrived in Mexico during the day because the city is AMAZING. I LOVE MEXICO! I was so amazed with the culture even though I only got to see it through the bus window. Everything is colorful. EVERYTHING. All of the street posts are painted, EVERY wall is covered in graffitti, every house is a different color. It is truly amazing. Once inside the gates of the CCM, we were check for our immunizations, given our name tags, sent to dinner, and then given the rest of the night to unpack. Receiving my name tag was so awesome :) I´m a missionary!!!! Later that night my companion arrived. Her first flight was delayed, so she missed her second flight, making her miss her third flight as well. She had to travel all by herself, and she had all of that happen. She´s a trooper. I was so excited to meet her all day and when she finally walked in the doors of our house, I ran and gave her a hug. What an exciting day!

Mexico MTC (CCM)

Dia dos: Classes began. Our day starts at 6:30, we have classes in the morning, early afternoon, late afternoon and evening.....AND everything is in SPANISH. I love it. Second day in the CCM and EVERYTHING is in Spanish. I love this language! It was really hard to understand instructions and to try to express my feelings and communicate with anyone, but I survived ;) The very first thing we learned how to do was pray in Spanish. What a humbling experience to pray to our father in heaven (Padre Celestial), in a language that I hardly know. I know Heavenly Father is listening to my heart as well as my words and I am so grateful for that. After we learned how to pray, we were given a couple of hours to prepare a lesson.....TO TEACH AN INVESTIGATOR! What? Crazy you say? Yeah...that´s what I said to. haha. My companion, Hermana Warren, and I prayed as hard and as earnestly as we could (in Spanish) for the gift of tongues. Other missionaries were walking out of their lessons with their investigators testifying of the reality of the gift of tongues. Well, during the lesson, my companion and I were blessed with a gift....just not that particular gift. ;) Our lesson didn´t go as planned, and we could hardly understand what he was asking. We walked out with dampened spirits feeling a little frustrated. It was silly. We had been in the CCM for 2 days and were expecting to teach with perfect Spanish. As we walked out, I told this to my companion, we laughed a little, and started making goals to tackle the language. 

Mexico MTC (CCM)

Dia numero tres: Spanish is still hard. Crazy, right? ;) BUT this was the most amazing day of the week. Mi compañera and I taught our investigator the second lesson. We had our whole lesson written out in Español and were feeling really good about it. When we began teaching stings started to take a different course. Daniel, our investigator, began asking really deep questions about the atonement. Up until this point we had been reading our lesson word by word, but his questions forced us to rely on the Spirit. Prior to teaching Daniel, I prayed so hard to at least understand what he was trying to say. It worked. Prayer is real. It works miracles. I still wasn´t able to understand or speak perfectly, but I was able to understand and speak better than yesterday. On this day, Hermana Warren and I had a goal to talk to 5 Latinos. We have been told that talking to the natives is one of the best ways to learn the language. All throughout the day, we would pass Latinos and would shy away from the opportunity from talking to them because we didn´t feel confident in our Spanish. This made me sad. I couldn´t believe it. I had made a goal, and I wasn´t even trying to accomplish it! So, I told Heavenly Father that the next Latinos that we saw, we would talk to them. Well......not 10 minutes later, we were blessed with an opportunity. Hermana Warren and I were in our classroom studying for personal study time and a few Latino elders walked by and were standing directly in front of the window in the door. They peeked in, waved, and then turned to talk to each other. I looked at Hermana Warren and said, ¨These are the Latinos we are supposed to talk to.¨ We walked over to the door, opened it and introduced ourselves. Turns out, these elders didn´t know a word in English. Not. A. Word. haha We tried to ask them questions to get to know them better, but I guess our Español isn´t quite perfected ;) haha In return, they tried to get to know us better by asking us questions. It was hilarious! We laughed and had a really good time not quite understanding each other, but getting the jist of what each other was saying. We ended up talking to them for 40 minutes! ***TENDER MERCY ALERT*** by the time that we had to go, we could understand each other and communicate a lot better. Those elders, Elder Escobar and Elder Ibañez are now some of our dear friends. What an amazing day!!! I love this gospel!! 

Hermanas in my district

Day cuatro: Sunday. I love Sundays, but this Sunday seemed especially wonderful. All day long you are in church, or have personal study time, or are in devotionals. It´s wonderful! The devotional today was given by Elder Holland. My chest was burning with the Spirit throughout his whole talk. This devotional was a recording from a MTC devotional in 2012. One thing he said really stood out to me. He said, ¨When you go home from your mission, continue to be a missionary. Look like a missionary, act like a missionary. Don´t spend the first 5 minutes you are home trying to fit in with everyone else.¨ A mission changes people. It changes your investigators and it changes you. Be forever changed. 

Dia Cinco: Another wonderful day in the CCM. It´s beautiful here! I LOVE it. 

My first set of  Spanish Scriptures

Dia numero seis: Today. My first Pday. It has been wonderful. I am so happy here. I LOVE my companion. There is such a wonderful change that happens to people here in the CCM. Even if I were to come home right now, I would be forever changed like Elder Holland said. There is no way that I could go home and be the same person I was because of the experiences that I have been blessed with here. 

I´m out of time. I love you all. Honest and truly, I do.

I would say consider yourself hugged but since I´m a missionary.....consider yourself given a really heart felt handshake. 

Much love sent from Mexico to Utah,

Hermana Childs