Last week in the CCM!!

Mi querido familia y mis amigos!!!!

This will be my last group email before I head out to HONDURAS!!! Ahhh!! It´s a crazy thought. I feel like it has flown by.... okay so maybe it hasn´t... but looking back it has! haha This has been quite the week. It´s a little hard to focus, but we are trying! Our branch has had a tradition in which the last week you are here you get this red sign to put on the door of your classroom. It says "Semana 6 - Déjalo a la puerta" (Week 6 - leave it at the door). It means to finish strong! We may be finishing one chapter of our missions, but it´s really just the beginning. I really do love it here, and I love the spirit. I love the things that I am learning.

For my personal studies, I have been focusing on a different Christlike attribute each day as well as reading "Jesus the Christ." On Sunday, we heard a devotional by Elder Holland that was SOooo incredible. He has a fire when he speaks to the missionaries, that´s for sure. He talked about how the brethren expect each and every one of us to have one convert by the end of our mission, and that convert is ourselves. He said that there is no other time in life where we will have this unique of an opportunity to become more like our Savior and let our conversions take root deep within us. I was very inspired! I have found that as I am studying more about the Savior, His life and His teachings, I feel more of a connection with Him and I can feel His love more and more. It´s amazing :)

There is a song I found on LDS.org called "glorious" by Russ Dixon. I LOVE it. Whenever I get the chance to be on the church website I put it on repeat. Look it up - it´s awesome. It talks about how each and everyone of us has a specific purpose in this life and that we all contribute our "melodies" to a grand symphony. We all have our specific talents and attributes that make us unique. But that´s the beauty of it! When I apply it here to the mission, we have all been called to be apart of the symphony of missionary work. Some of us are on violins, some cellos, others percussion, but all important! We are called to be US, not to be anyone else. If everyone on the violin tried to play it like a cello it wouldn´t sound so good, would it? That´s because the violinists have their own special part to play. We´re not supposed to compare ourselves to others and try to be someone we´re not. We have to be the best of whatever we are, and no one else. I really like that analogy!

(See next posting for "Glorious")

This week has been fun because it´s Mexico´s Independence day this weekend. They have lots of Mexican Flags and decorations up everywhere and they are serving different treats and traditional dishes during the meals. Saturday night they are going to have a FIESTA and bring in some cultural dancers and stuff like that. I picked a good week to leave! I´m glad I didn´t miss it.... One of the funny things about that, however, is that I ended up eating something that I would NOT have eaten had I known what it was. I didn´t think anything of it until my teacher asked us if any of us had had the dish that looked like ground up Hamburger. She then told us that it is something called "Tripa" which is ground up stomach and intestines..... YUM! haha It was my first experience with "eat now, ask later." Except, the other day we looked extra close at some of the fruit and found little miniscule creepy crawling creatures... yeah... I probably won´t be eating any more apples while I am here!

Things are going great with my companions and my district. I´m going to be really sad to leave them! One of the elders in my district, Elder M, has grandparents that live here in Mexico City, so we get lots of nice gifts :) Usually on Sundays his grandma will drop off delicious breakfast cakes!!! They are wonderful. His birthday was yesterday so we got a big gooey chocolate cake and then little personalized goodie bags for everyone in the district. It was awesome! Love my companions still - which is a good sign :)
My compañeras and I have already started to get sick of all our clothes so we´ve been mixing and matching our wardrobes for fun. There was one time where we each wore the same green shirt on 3 consecutive days to see if anyone would notice (don´t worry we washed it in between...). It was fun... haha only 1 elder noticed. That goes to show how much your clothes really don´t matter out here! As long as they are clean, neat and professional, it really doesn´t matter what you wear. The poor elders only get to change up their ties. Today a bunch of them are getting together for a "tie exchange" because they are already so sick of their ties! It makes me grateful that I can at least change up my outfits. I hope my emails don´t start getting shorter and shorter, I try to write things down on a post-it so I don´t forget what to write about. The days all seem to blend into each other so it´s easy to forget.