Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Jumping in the rain.

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A Mexican torrential downpour.

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Me and Brian Del Rosario from OCMCO. I love seeing friends here!

My Garden of Eden


Another lovely week here at the CCM!
 I'm growing more in love with Mexico as the days go by. The food continues to be awesome. We had tamales this week, huevos rancheros, puff pastries, flan on top of chocolate cake which apparently is called chocoflan. That cake changed my life. Probably one of the most delicious things I´ve ever had. I love trying all this new food. I also forgot to mention last week that my companionship was called to be our Zone Sister Trainer Leaders. It seems like an intense job except for the fact that we have four sisters to watch over, two of which our leaving today for the field. So we are watching over a grand total of two! sisters. However we might get more today, we're not sure.
I've alwso been making a lot of fun new friends! We especially love talking to the natives that are here. Probably some of the most hillarious english I have ever heard. While in the clinic one day waiting for one of our companions to talk to the doctor, Hermana Baumgart and I started to talk to some Mexican elders that were there. We talked in spanish and I asked them how their english was coming along (they all learn a little bit while here) and one of them said "meh uh guh te thu bahrwoom?" I look really confused so he said "puedo usar al baño?" He was trying to say may I go to the bathroom! I had to hold back my laughter as I tried to teach him the right way to phonetically say it. It wasn't much of a success, but it was way fun. My spanish is acctually coming along fairly well, and they told us they could acctually understand us. Yes!
I've also started to play a ton of soccer recently, and I'm getting to the point were if I kick it, it will mostly go where I want it to go. Hooray! I'm really starting to love it. I even headed it the other day (in the right direction I might add) and I was told it looked cool. It better have looked cool, because it really hurt (but of course I didn't tell anyone that).
So last time I mentioned our investigator Rogelio, well our lessons progressed and we told him that for him to be baptized he needed to be married. We told him to talk to his girlfriend and report back to us. He did and he said the soonest he could get married was a week but his pregnant girldfriend wanted a week and a half. I had been expecting a few months! So I said, what if we give you two weeks? He thought that was funny and said "dos para uno!" like a salesman, muy gracioso. We all laughed and I challenged him to be married in two weeks and baptized on October the 10th. He said yes. My feelings that day were off the charts. I couldn't hold my happiness in. If this is the feeling and more i'll get when teaching an investigator I can not wait to get out in the mission feild. Also, Rogelio became our new Maestro, and yesterday he told us that Rogelio was a realy person with a real family whom he had taught on his mission. He showed us pictures of there wedding and their baptism and it made me want to cry.
Yes this work is amazing, but it is hard work. I'm excited for Chile to become my Garden of Eden. Last Sunday in Releif Soceity the Mission President's wife spoke to us about being thrust into the lone and dreary world many times in our life, but having those experiences become our Garden of Eden. The first week here, after leaving my garden of a home, it felt like a wilderness and it was scary. But now as I am growing more comfortable and happy, the CCM has become my new Garden of Eden. However when I leave I will again be thrust into the wilderness, to learn and to grow more. This is God's plan for us. He sent us down ways and paths that we don't want to follow or seem hard, but it will be for our good and our experience, and we will grow the way he wants us to grow. She also likened this to a fruit tree. Heavenly Father will cut us down and purge us (we were purged of our worldy and material things when coming here) so we can grow the correct way. Also, when a tree is purged of lesser fruits, more of the tree's energy can go into making the better fruits bigger. It is the same with our spiritual lives. When we purge the distractions, we can send our energy to the most important place, the gospel. And our fruit of faith and knowledge and testimony will grow to sizes we never knew they could.
I love mexico, I love missionary work, I love my savior and I love God!
I love you all!
Hermana Richardson

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Viva Mexico


Hello Family and Friends!
This has been the most exhilerating and exhausting week of my life! It is still weird to think that I'm in Mexico. It's been a hard but extrememly gratifying week. I have two companions Hermana Baumgart from Atlanta, Georgia and Hermana Pineda from Anaheim, California. We live in a cute litte orange casa with some other companionships. Thanks to my four years of spanish in high school we were put in a intermediete class, with six other elders. We're all fairly good at spanish so we tend to get more accomplished then the other begginer classses. This place is beautiful! It is so tropical and lush (probably from all the rain) and there's parrots and birds everywhere. Although, that's really only how it is in the CCM. The city itself is a different story. It's just concrete building stacked on top of each other. But I really do love it. It's usually cloudy and foggy and usually always raining but when the sun shines it is beautiful. The food here is amazing! I love mexican food anyway so this place is like heaven. It's pretty authentic and I resolved to try everything the give us and try a different kind of juice and pastry every day. I love it. Like crazy. A lot of elders and sisters here I see just eat frosted flakes or fruit for every meal. They're crazy. Crazy Americans. But you should all be jealous of the delicious empanadas, tacos, sopas, pan, pollo, y muchas más. Oh and by the way john, best watermelon ever. Mexican melons are the best melons.
This sunday was mexican national independence day which was the coolest. All week the catholic church has been shooting of canons in celebration which is pretty loud. However, some of the sisters have told me that loud gun shots are not uncommon here, and they usually hear them a few times a day. We had a Noche Méxicano where we sang the national anthem of México, watched history and videos of México, watched a traditional dance troupe and a singer. It was amazing. And the best part was at the end all the performers sang the medley We are as the Army of Helaman and As Sisters in Zion. I had no Idea they were members so it made the show that much more powerful. The CCM president thanked them at the end and told them they were a shining example to the youth of México. Then on sundaynight we got to participate in the Grita de México. We got special persmission to stay up past 10:30 (crazy!) and watched it live from the plaza. The presidente would say things like Libertad! and all the natives would cry Viva! Justicia! Viva! It was a great culutural experience. I'm really starting to fall in love with México even after just one week.
I really do love it here. The first week went be sluggishly slow, but i've heard it flies by. Every day is packed with learning and studying and everything else involved with missionary work. You'd think it would be like a prison here but surprisingly most of the time is up to us to study what we want to. we mostly study for our lessons with our investigator, Rogelio. Our lessons with him have been amazing. The first one we taught about the restoration and about the gosple of Jesus Chirst. It went so well. But the second one was even better. We talked about the plan of salvation. The spirit was so strong throughout the whole lesson because we had tailored it exactly to what he needed to hear. I brought up the end of the lesson with mortal death, the spirit world, the judgment, and being with god and our families forever. When I said that he perked up. He asked how and I told him through sacred covenatns in the temple (in my awkward spanish). He asked if he could go there now and I told him he had to be baptised. He asked how to do that and my companions told him the correct way to be baptized. There was a slight pause and the spirit told me to speak up so I asked " Quiere estar bautizado?" My spanish was so bad but he replied, yes! I couldn't handle the rush of joy I recieved from what happened. We continued on and he closed the lesson with his first ever prayer, which was so heartfelt and sincere. Yes, this investigator isn't exactly real, but he is a real person, and the spirit is real. The spirit was there and that was not fake. Afterwards we hugged and prayed as a companionship and I started to cry. Up to that point I had successfully not cried all week, but this was a happy cry, so I was okay. All I could think about was my testimony that I bore to him about eternal families and I realized that I get to be with my family forever, and that is one of the greatest blessings in the entire universe. Well I really don´t have much time because I have much else to do today, but next week I'll try to give more details of how it is at this wonderful place! I love México! I love Missionary work! I love the spirit! I love this church! And I love God! ¡Viva!
con amor,
Hermana Richardson

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Hello


We were told to write to our families upon arriving! I am so happy because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to write until next week! Now mom can't stress about me being in Mexico City with no communication. But I won't say it's nothing to stress about. This place is completely new. As the bus drove out of the airport I was in awe. Even in the plane I couldn't believe it. This city is HUGE! I couldn't even see the end of it through the fog. It seemd to stretch on forever from my plane window. Then the city itself was crazy. Brightly colored buildings everywhere, narrow streets with no lane lines, no lights, and crazy drivers. It was so different. It is not the nice, clean, and proper Fountain Valley and Provo that I'm used to. The big bus bounced along everywhere as we would take bursts of speed at some points and suddenly stop due to congested and weirdly placed off and on ramps. The bus driver pointed things out to us and laughed at the wide eyed missionaries. I must have looked especially innocent because as we passed a fruit stand some teenage boys pointed at me, laughed and smiled, and waved. I waved back and thought about how silly I must look to the people who lived there. Also at one point we were going to a hill and the temple spire came into sight from pretty far off. The bus driver said "templo!" and made a triangle with his arms. This made me and Hermana Jackson laugh and repeat it. He laughed and we all did it together.  My flight went well. I read the Book of Mormon pretty much the whole time. I'm still trying to finish which is what I was supposed to do a little while ago... but I'm almost done. So far I like it here. The campus is beautiful. White buildings and green grass. And the weather is cool and cloudy which I very much enjoy. Well, I best be going. I need to go fill out some papers, find my house, eat today, and other such things. I love you all so much, but I can tell that I will love it here and would rather be doing nothing else! Have a lovely week!
 
Sincerely,
Hermana Richardson