Como se llama Hermana: Week 3

Bill Nye The Science Guy

Y'all ready? Another great week in the CCM! Here´s the highlights:

1. LATINAS: All of my roommates went on to the big world and we got 4 new LATINO roommates! They are hilarious. I can´t understand a lot of what they say, but we make it work. They teach us Spanish, and we teach them English. Every night we play the ´´Como se dice...´´ (How do you say...?) game. One girl tries to teach us slang and the others tell us not to say the things she teaches us! Oh what fun. They are helping my spanish a lot! I showed them my calendar of family pics and they loved it! I learned how to say niece and cousins in spanish!

2. MI MAESTRO: I am convinced I have the best teacher at the CCM, Hermano Bejar. We had a stress class last week where we all brought our pillows into the classroom and screamed into our pillows hahahah. We had a great lesson on focus the next day with him. We were paired up with another companionship and told to teach them a lesson on anything. So we started and then two girls from our district started going around and saying really sad, mean, and discouraging things in our hears while we were teaching. They said things like, ´´You´re spanish is terrible! Why are you even here? No one is listening to you! They can´t understand what you´re saying... wouldn´t you rather be hanging out with your family?´´ It was EXTREMELY hard to focus. And although I know they were just acting, it brought all our spirits down a bit for that short time. After, we went back in the classrooom and had all ten of us teach him. We all were so focused on HIM and had nothing distracting us. It was amazing. The moral of the story? You can probably guess, but it was about being focused. When we are distracted by discouraging thoughts, temptation, or focusing too much on our own wants/needs, then we can´t get anything done. It was a cool lesson

Also, Hermano Bejar acts as a fake investigator for us to teach a few times a week. His fake name is Marcos. Yesterday, we were teaching him about the commandments and Word of Wisdom (drinking, smoking, coffee etc.) and we brought a ´´member´´ (really just an elder from our district). He bore his testimony about how he used to smoke 30 cigs a day... it was really funny because he´s a missionary actually... ha get it? (i´m starting to realize how things are a lot more funny here than they will be to you guys). Then I assigned Marcos a scripture to read before our next lesson and then realized he didn´t have scriptures so I just gave him mine, and said ´´for you!´´. He said, ´´Oh thank you!´´ and proceeded to find a pen and write his name in the front cover of my scriptures hahaha. We were all trying to refrain from busting up laughing. So I will forever remember Marcos, the fake investigator I had in the MTC.

3. SUNDAY. Obvi. Always the best day ever. It was stake conference... which means ALL OF PERU was watching a broadcast from SLC. Elder Scott and Bednar spoke! Scott gave an amazing talk on treating women well and helping women realize their divine nature and individual worth. I loved it. It reminded me a lot of the experiences I had in Africa with the horrible treatment of women. I know I will see that a lot in Peru. It made me think a lot about one of the reasons I wanted to serve a mission. I know that the gospel is the only thing that can truly make me happy and change lives. ´´The gospel can change behavior better than the study of behavior can change behavior´´... A paraphrased quote from Preach my Gospel. Then we watched a MTC devo from Holland. Oh wow. Always a good day when you hear from Holland. He is such a powerful speaker... sometimes a little startling, but dang good. He talked about the mission changing our lives. I think I have tried to ingrane in my brain that the mission is not for me, but for the people I will serve, when in reality, it is for me too. I should expect to change. I should WANT to change and go home not wanting to just quickly go back to ´´normal´´. He said ´´Don´t EVER EVER EVER go back to what you were before.´´ I really loved that message. He said everyone expects us missionaries to be perfect and work really really really hard... ¨don´t let us down´´, he said. No pressure, right? These messages just made me realize even more why I want to be here and how excited I am to see the changes in other people´s life as well as y life.

The Dear Elder thing takes at least 3 weeks to get here, so not a good way to go. Spread the word. Our mail box is pretty empty. But It might be better to mail letters to my cusco mission home bc I don´t know how long it will take.

I haven´t recieved any letters from Tiger yet. Hm. Just sayin.

Bill Nye the science guy is on dancing with the stars Yeah, I totally know all the hot gossip.

Love you all SOOO MUCH!

Con Amor,

Hermana Nelson