Almost all the missionaries at the Atlanta airport.
my view from the plane when we were almost to chile, you can see the mountains and the ocean
One of what my desk looks like alllllll day long, so many books/dictionary/lesson manuals/etc.and notes that are always in use
The Santiago Temple where we get to go tomorrow.
I´ll start with the airport and try to tell you as much as I can in this short hour I have to write. Once I got to the terminal in the slc airport there was at least 30 missionaries going to Atlanta all together. There was just like a herd of us so that was cool getting to know all of them and talk about background stuff! The flight there was really fun because it was only 4 hours and I sat by a missionary going to Brazil and a college student and we were all able to have a good conversation for most the flight and it went by fast! Once we were at the Atlanta airport all the missionaries went to different terminals cause they were going to different places in the world but when we got to the terminal for Chile there was like 20 more missionaries all headed to Chile(there was like 13 of us from slc) and these kids were all from different parts of the country so we all ate and got to know each other! Then the flight wasn´t even fun. Then we got to Chile and wow..... It is absolutely beautiful!! There are soo many mountains every where and Santiago is HUGE there are so many buildings and people! It was a whole new world! Everything was in Spanish haha so that was funny cause none of us could read it! It was a little colder than I thought it would be but it feels pretty nice and this is the coldest part of the year it turns out.
So because there are so many missionaries here in Chile the MTC or the CCM as it is called in Spanish is too full so the church has this house like right outside downtown Chile that use to be a swiss embassy so it´s a massive house and fits like 40 or more of us! All we do there is sleep, eat breakfast, run, and get ready. Then we take two shuttle vans to the CCM which is like 5 minutes away and it is right next to the temple which we get to go do today!
My favorite part of the day is from when we wake up (at 6:45 which is soooo nice!) Until we eat lunch around 1. Everyone morning some of us go running and we can run wherever we want. So the first couple of days we ran with kids who have been here for awhile and kinda got a feel for the city but today my companion and I just ran deeper into the city and around a little bit then back! It is such a cool city with so many neat things to look at and experience. It will be muchas mejor (much better) when I can speak spanish because I am absolutely terrible at it. I know it´s only a couple of days in but it is HARD for me. Most the kids here took like 4 years of spanish and can remember most of it and use it somewhat decent. I can´t remember any of the verbs I once knew or anything. It is really frustrating because when I do know how to say something it takes me like a year to figure out how to say it and by the time I´ve figured it out, we are already way past that conversation.
We haven´t really had any learning classes either. We focus on learning the vocab for teaching lessons for the investigators (our teachers who pretend to be investigators) that we have. And yes, we are already teaching lessons to them in spanish, to three seperate investigators. And I can´t speak spanish. My companion is some sort of genius though, he knows spanish like the back of his hand almost. So he does most the teaching and then when I attempt to say something he just finishes my sentence for me because he hates how long I take. He got like a 34 on his ACT so my brain capacity doesn´t really match his with anything. I try to speak spanish as much as I can but whenever I am working through a sentence or something and trying to challenge myself to figure it out he just tells me the rest of it and I´m just like Elder! I wanted to figure that out, punk. And he just kinda looks at me. Don´t get me wrong though cause I really do like him! Haha
The CCM or MTC just consists of sitting in a white room from 10 am to 9:45 pm with no windows. The teachers all speak in spanish and we are supposed to answer in spanish. I hardly ever understand what they are saying or how to answer them! I mean it isn´t just strictly spanish but a lot of it is. It is really hard for me but the Lord has asked me to do it and he will provided a way so some how I will understand this language eventually! I can actually pray and testify ( a little) in spanish which is pretty cool!
Sunday was a really good day because it´s just the gospel and it gets you spiritually pumped for the next week cause you are so tired from the previous days so it was actually one of my favorite days! Then today we had two hours to do whatever we wanted so we wandered around the streets of Santiago and bought some snacks and a muffin from a cafe and just things like that!
Please keep letting me know how everything is! Don't let Drey forget about me and thank all the kids for the letters they gave me!
No comments:
Post a Comment