Party in the CCM

 

 

I am on my last few days in Mexico! I can't believe how fast that went! 

 

We all love Mexico but lately we are getting really excited to go back to the states. We miss regular American food and all the first-world conveniences of living there. I'm so excited to get to Jersey and go to a Walmart and buy regular groceries and ice cream and stuff!! Also I have a ton of bug bites. I have one on my face and it looks nasty, but it's really just a bug bite. I'm happy bugs won't be as much of a problem when I get back to the US. 

 

Ever since Hermana Cordell left, her companion has been in a trio with Hermana Ivie and me. Teaching lessons with three of us instead of two of us is definitely different, but we are getting used to it. 

 

On Friday we tried to speak only Spanish all day, just to see how much we've improved. We made it until about lunchtime and then we kinda gave up haha. We can teach lessons and talk about the gospel in Spanish but we haven't learned many non-church words so it's really hard to just chat with each other in Spanish. 

 

There is a little store here and we each have been given a card with some pesos on it. So we go to the store a lot and get random stuff, usually candy. Mexico has some pretty good candy!

 

So in my branch here, they tell us all to write a 5 minute talk in Spanish on Saturday. Then in sacrament meeting on Sunday they call on about 6 or 7 of us to speak. So we never knkow if we are going to give a talk or not until just a few minutes beforehand. On Sunday I got called on to speak about Joseph Smith. It was super nerve-wracking because President and Sister Pratt (the presidents of the entire CCM) had decided to attend sacrament meeting that day in my branch, out of the 20 or so we have here. So I was pretty scared. I basically just told the Restoration Story in Spanish. After sacrament meeting President Pratt told me I did very well and that my Spanish is really good. 

 

Since this is our last week here, on Monday we took a nice picture together as a district where we were all matching. We decided to wear navy and coral, one of my favorite color combos! 

 

I get along with everyone in my district so well. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to them in a few days. We are all such good friends. 

 

Sometimes it's easy to forget that I'm on a mission. Sometimes I'm having so much fun being silly with the other girls that I feel like I'm at girls camp. I'm sure it will feel more real when I get to Jersey. 

 

I love you all!

 

xoxo Hermana Harris

More Pics

Me and Hermana Logan


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My district in front of the Mexico City Temple







The girls in front of the Jesus Christ statue at the visitor's center

The Dharma Initative

I've been gone for a month now! Wow! 

 

One of my very best friends Hermana Ellen Logan got here last Wednesday. When some of the new missionaries were arriving, I saw a girl walking in front of me who looked just like her from behind. I thought it was her so I started running down the street yelling "Ellen! Ellen!" and then the girl finally turns around and it's not Ellen . . . awkward! I didn't see the real Ellen until breakfast on Thursday. I went into the cafeteria and then I see her running at me saying "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die!" and then she gives me the biggest hug ever. It's so good having her here!

 

I got the cute note and picture from Dylan on Thursday! He is such a sweetie. 

 

This week Hermana Cordell, one of the girls in my district and my room, went home. About two weeks ago she started getting promptings that she needed to go home. She really didn't want to leave, but she received spiritual confirmation that she needed to go home and that God had a different plan for her. It was really hard to see her go because we all got so attached to her. She was by far the funniest person in my district and she always had us laughing so hard. She left on Monday. Now that she's gone, her companion, Hermana Egbert, is in a trio with Hermana Ivie and I. So now I have two companions and there are three of us teaching lessons instead of two!

 

My district is so hilarious. While Hermana Cordell was still here, she had a big stack of post-it notes and every time someone said something funny, she would write it down on a post-it note and put it in her missionary journal. By the time she left there were probably 200 post-its with funny quotes on them!

 

This morning we went to the Mexico City Temple! We couldn't go inside because it is being renovated right now. But we took a lot of pictures and they have a really nice visitor's center a lot like the one at Temple Square so we got to take a tour of that. They even have sister missionaries there giving tours. 

 

It kinda feels like the Dharma Initiative from Lost here. Just like the people in Dharma, we are in our own happy little bubble cut off from the outside world, and we live in cute colorful little houses. It's pretty funny!

 

We wake up at 6:30 and have to be at breakfast by 7. But in reality I'm usually not out of bed until 6:45 so I only have like 15 minutes to get ready. But I have gotten really good at getting ready quickly. I sleep with my hair in braids every night so in the morning all I have to do is take the braids out and then my hair is wavy. And now I only wear makeup on Sundays, because the rest of the days I just don't have the time or the energy.

 

My favorite time of the day is the hour we get for gym. I usually do intense bike workouts with Hermana Wade, but yesterday I played soccer with Hermana Baugh and a few other girls. 

 

I really love it here! Sometimes it feels like my time here is never going to end but then I remember I still have Jersey waiting for me! I'm so excited!

 

xoxo Hermana Harris

 

Me and Hermana Cordell

 

 

​The girls in my district

 

 

Our whole district the night before Hermana Cordell left

I Love It Here!

I am halfway done with my time in Mexico! I really love it here. It is seriously so beautiful. It rains all the time so everything is so lush and so green. All the Mexican people who work here (cafeteria workers, janitors, etc.) are super sweet. 

 

My Spanish is going well. I can pray and bear my testimony pretty much fluently now because I've said those phrases so many times since getting here. Teaching lessons is not fluent yet because the investigator will ask questions and sometimes I can't think of the right Spanish word for what I'm trying to say. But I am definitely improving constantly and I know that I will be even better 3 weeks from now when I get to Jersey. 

 

Hermana Maddi Baugh got here last week! And out of all the 20-something branches here she got put into mine! She isn't in my same class because only the people in my district are in my class. But she has the same meal schedule and gym time and Pday as me and we go to the same sacrament meeting so I've gotten to see her a lot! It's so great having a familiar face around. Hermana Ellen Logan should be getting here today and I am SO EXCITED.

 

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My favorite day of the week (besides Pday) is Sunday because we don't have any classes and we don't have to study Spanish. We go to church and then for the rest of the day we have a couple different devotionals and usually an area seventy will come speak to us. Then on Sunday nights we get to watch a church movie. This week we watched a movie called Mountain of the Lord about the construction of the Salt Lake City Temple. I always knew that it took 40 years to build, but I never really thought about it I guess. This movie really made me appreciate how much time and sacrifice went into building it. 

 

My district is so great. In my room there is me and Hermana Ivie, and then Hermana Cordell and Hermana Egbert who are going to Scottsdale Arizona. Hermana Cordell is one of the funniest people I've ever met. She has us all laughing constantly. The other two sisters in our district live across the hall from us. Hermana Wade and Hermana Magalei are going to Louisville Kentucky. We all get along super well and have so many laughs together. Then the six elders in my district are Elders Palmer, Timothy, Fairbanks, Jones, and Christensen (all going to Jersey with me) and then Elder Sims who is going to Vegas. I am so sad that Elder Sims is the only one not coming to Jersey with us  because he is so amazing in everything he does and we are all really going to miss  him. 

 

It rains pretty much every afternoon. In the morning when I leave the casa, it looks like it's gonna be a nice sunny day so I don't end up bringing my raincoat. But then every afternoon it POURS and I wish I did bring my raincoat. So I've learned by now that it's always a good idea to just take my raincoat with me. 

 

I LOVE THE CCM
 xoxo Hermana Harris

Here is a picture of Me and mi compañera, and some of the Hermanas in my branch.

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CCM (MTC) Pics

I think we have a mouse in our casa... I was going to eat this KitKat bar that had been sitting in a suitcase under my bed but then I find that something got to it before I did.

The hill with cute Mexican houses on it just outside

the walls of the CCM

My pink casa

I'm Pretty Much a Mexican

Hola!

The MTC is good. There are about a thousand missionaries here right now but within the next couple weeks we will be getting way more. The majority of the missionaries here are going stateside for their missions but there are a few people going to Chile or Panama or Nicaragua. 

The food is sometimes good and sometimes weird. Most of it is Mexican food of course. Sometimes we will get really good enchiladas and tacos and stuff like that. But sometimes they will serve us some strange meats and we're not brave enough to try it so we just eat from the salad bar instead. But they also have an area where you can get toast and put peanut butter and Nutella on it so that's always safe for when the rest of the food is questionable haha. 

I am getting more used to the schedule here. I wake up at 6:30 am Mexico City time, which is 4:30 California time. But I am used to it by now. 

The Spanish is coming along well. We spend a total of about 6 hours a day studying Spanish and we have been teaching lessons to fake investigators completely in Spanish since like the third day here. Since I took it for four years in high school I am the most experienced at Spanish in my district. During language study time everyone is asking me for help because they all know me now as "the girl who's good at Spanish." So yeah I'm pretty much a full-blown Mexican now. I'm sure that will make my friends happy.

So that intestinal virus from last week? Everyone had it even worse this week. My stomach hurt SO BAD all the time up until like Saturday. And I didn't even have it that bad. Hermana Cordell (one of my roommates) and Hermana Ivie (my companion) had it so bad that they had to take a day where they literally just lied in bed all day while the rest of us were in classes. They were in so much pain and we all felt so bad because there was nothing we could do to help. But now it's been like 3 days since any of us has had any stomach pain so we think the virus is pretty much gone!

Friday was Independence Day and it really made me miss America. Everyone wore red white and blue. And at lunch, all the Mexican people who work in the cafeteria set up red white and blue decorations and gave us a good classic American meal- burgers, waffle fries, corn on the cob, and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. All the Mexicans were wishing all the Americans a happy Fourth of July. It was so cute. And then at lunch we all sang the Star Spangled Banner and it was just such a great patriotic moment for us. It made me really glad I get to go back to the states for my mission because I love the USA!!

Last night we had a devotional broadcasted live from the Provo MTC of Elder Anderson speaking to the missionaries there. There was a choir of Provo missionaries in the broadcast and I saw David (now known as Elder Sandstrom) in the choir!

I love you all!

Mexico!

Well I am here in Mexico! The plane rides were super long and the whole process of getting here was the longest day of my life. At the Phoenix airport I found about 20 other missionaries who were all on my flight to Mexico. Once we arrived in Mexico we found the guys from the MTC who were sent to pick us up from the airport. They drove us to the MTC on a big bus. The drive there was interesting because we got a pretty good look at what Mexico City looks like and it's pretty ghetto not gonna lie. But then we got to the MTC and it is beautiful! There are big walls separating us from the city and it's our own beautiful little world in here. 

My companion is Hermana Ivie from Alpine Utah. She is going to Jersey too and she is great and really easy to get along with. The other missionaries in our district are great! 7 out of the 12 of us are going to Jersey. We all get along great and have so much fun together. It's hard to believe we've only known each other for a week because we are all such good friends already!

The schedule here is pretty intense. They have everything you do planned out to the minute, except on Pdays. It was really hard to get used to.

The first couple days were really long and difficult. I was exhausted and really missed home. Everyone here says that when you're new, you just have to make it to your first Sunday and it will get easier. That was definitely true because things started getting easier after Sunday when I got used to everything. 

I was expecting it to be hot here but it's not. It rains every single day. I wear my raincoat all the time. There's a hill next to the MTC and it has a bunch of cute Mexican houses on it. It's outside the walls of the MTC but we can see it because it's up on a hill. It's so cute! And when we look out the windows of the taller buildings we can see over the walls and into the outside world of the city surrounding us. We are seriously right in the middle of the ghetto. The neighborhood around us is really sketchy, the buildings are falling apart and there is graffiti everywhere. And sometimes we can hear gunshots coming from outside the walls. But like I said, we are totally safe inside the walls and it's beautiful in here. 

Oh and funny story! So when I got here there wasn't a pillow on my bed. I was confused because I don't remember them telling us to bring pillows and I thought they provided them here. And I saw all my roommates have pillows so I just assumed I was the only one dumb enough to not bring a pillow. I didn't tell any of them because I was embarrassed. So I just folded up a blanket and put it in a pillowcase and used it as a pillow for the first five nights. Then on Monday I found out that they actually do provide pillows here and that my bed was just the only one that a worker forgot to put a pillow on. Everyone laughed a lot when they found out I had been using a makeshift pillow for five nights. I have a real pillow now so no worries!

There's been an intestinal virus going around the past couple days. A lot of people here are sick and having stomach pains. My stomach hurt a lot yesterday but I feel better now. Last night they told us we're not allowed to shake hands with anybody anymore because they want us to stop spreading the virus.  

I hope all is going well at home! I love you all! Keep the emails coming!

XOXO Hermana Harris