Thank you all so much for your emails! It´s the highlight of my week and I´m really sorry if I couldn´t respond to all of them, they don´t give us very much time for anything, even on P-day!
I´m going to have to sit and try to remember everything that´s happened over this past week. Also mom, if you could email on Mondays or Sundays or whatever, just so I get your email before P-day (Tuesdays), I know you already did but they just wanted me to tell you that.
So after I emailed last time they let us sleep for ONE HOUR. how nice right? We were all half asleep for the rest of the day, and they had us jump right into learning spanish! They split all of us newbies up into two districts, there are four hermanas and 6 elderes in my district, and all of the elders are really neat, we had a district testimony meeting and they all started crying and gave super powerful testimonies...they´re like the brothers I never had (love you too Alex, Ethan and Eli). Sorry if I start spelling in spanish or forget a word and just use a spanish word...I feel like I´m already starting to lose my grip on english. Plus the keyboards are weird. I LOVE being on a good sleep schedule - 10:30 at night is lights out and 6:15 AM we get up. I NEVER used to get this much sleep!! :) I´m still exhausted, but it´s only mentally. We have classes all day to learn both spanish and the missionary lessons and everything at the same time! I have notes everywhere and it´s so confusing and hard! I thought I knew a little spanish before I came...I knew next to nothing. And they had us teaching an investigator solo en espanol on the second day! My companion is hermana colo. She´s from California and i love her tons! But she´s been having a hard time being away from her family and she cries ALL the time. It kind of takes a lot out of me trying to support her and everything. Not gonna lie but I only cried once on the plane when we left. I still think about you all the time and miss you but I know this is where I´m supposed to be. My companera does enough crying for the both of us. and she visits with President COx (he´s amazing, we all love him, he´s the CCM mission president here). The upside is that I´ve been able to just sit and visit with Hermana Cox (president´s wife) while Hermana Colo has been in meeting with him. President Province is great, in my interview he told me kind of how the medical advisory system works - he´s actually not over Honduras where I´ll be serving but when he found out I have my RN he was like ¨man, you sure you don´t want to switch your mission over to mine?!¨ The nurse here is Hermana Lowery and she said she´ll have to switch my schedule up so she can meet with me sometime to give me some nursing training, so there´s more time out of my schedule to learn Spanish. It is so demanding here, it would be so easy to just teach the gospel in English. It is super hard when we are trying to teach our investigators who don´t speak a lick of English and we know exactly what we want to say but we have no idea how to say it. We can be prepared and know what we want to say in Spanish, but then they ask questions that we don´t know how to answer in Spanish. Ugh it´s hard. they have us teaching all the time. And because Hermana Colo´s kind of struggling and been out of commission I have to basically plan and do everything. Oh well. I really do love her and want to help her. There are two other hermanas in our room, Hermana Moore from Utah and Hermana Fale from New Zealand, they are super sweet and we all already have such strong friendships. We´ve decided after the mission we are all visitng Hermana Fale in New Zealand, so just be warned Mom. The food here is pretty good actually some of it´s kind of weird, but my stomach has just been hurting all the time, probably stress but it´s okay, I can handle it. I just havn´t been eating as much but that´s okay because I also am not as active as I usually am. They give us 45 minutes of deportes after dinner and they actually have a nice gym and basketball court and volleyball net. I love playing volleyball but I can never play basketball because the hermanas aren´t allowed to play with the elders in basketball, only volleyball. And by the time me and hermana Colo get out there the elders are all already playing on the basketball courts. I don´t want to be rude and kick them off, but I really want to play! But it´s all good I just play volleyball which is fun and work out on the elliptical with hermana Colo. Oh I was going to tell you about how when we first arrived at the airport after customs we were all standing out side waiting for the bus to take us to the CCM, and this really creepy looking guy was fingering a pocketknife and just looking at us and our luggage (there was kind of a crowd there), then he stowed his knife and was just walking around us looking at our luggage. It was kind of funny but scary at the same time. I was in the back and one of the elders dropped back and said something to him and the guy just shrugged and walked slowly away. Oh, today we got to go to the Guatemala temple! It is literally a block away and we can see it out of the East side of the CCM windows! It´s a beautiful place and it really rejuvenated for the next week. I REALLY hope this gets easier because the first week was soooo hard. They make us sit with the Latina Hermanas at meal times and try to learn spanish from them (they don´t speak much english). We never get a break from spanish till 9:30 when we can go to our rooms for personal study. Oh so they finally figured out that I play the piano so now I usually never get to sing the hymns in spanish because I´m always playing the piano! I´m sorry I can´t write more they just don´t give us enough time!
I just know that this is where the Lord wants me to be and even though it´s super hard and it seems impossible to be ready to go out and speak spanish and preach the gospel in six weeks I know He will make it possible. Love you all so much!
<3 Hermana Erickson
No comments:
Post a Comment