CCM- Week 5

Hey!

It's crazy, the last week at the CCM. We took our district picture on Tuesday. I'm a little nervous about leaving, but I can't wait also. Back to the States! I don't know about calling home, I think we can but I'm not sure. And that is cool about choosing companions. It will be nice going back to the States, I wonder if the food there is going to taste different now. That's impressive about the marathon in 6 months. My leg is all better now, I played soccer today, it's fun but tiring. It was Cannon, Stevens, Steggmiller, McCall, and I and as we were playing some people started filming us and said we would be on TV, so that's really cool, I have to find more about that. That's funny about Aidan being little Cole, and thank you for the video game news A. I am still emailing with the Latinos, they are going good. and wow I guess I am popular with my blog, thats awesome. You have to send me a picture of my mussionary plaque. My spanish has definately improved, and full conversations? pretty much, and it depends on what it is about, still learning everyday. And don't worry I will use my common sense, you know me, always cautious. When ever I look at the weather in Arizona, it is always stormy. We got a big storm this week that flooded the streets, it was crazy. That's funny about crush, he rams the door? Just wait till he gets bigger, than he will knock down the door. Glad to see everyone is doing good, and that's funny about the seniors working at the school now. I miss you guys, good luck with school, and lu, do you wish now that you kept my school notes? good luck with your thesis. And what is with papa getting stung with scorpions? I got your letter with the copy of the email and my package, the cookies are really good. During lunch, Elder Seggmiller and I were confusing everyone again, we were talking about chemisty and other scientific things, it was really fun. Everyone was like, we don't understand what you two are talking about, can we please talk about something dumber? There was a girl a few days ago who shoved a piece of bread in the toaster and could not get it out so she decided to use a fork to get it out, when she started doing it, we were all like nooooo! Nothing happened, so that was good. You would think that people would know not to do that sort of thing. Elder Baum has his nightly argument with a yappy dog outside the wall, its funny to listen to, he goes at it for at least a few minutes. We have a made new games to play in the class room, we use the caps of the water jugs. We tried to see how many times we could bounce it off our foot without it touching the ground. I have the record at 4 times. Then we also had to kick the cap off the ground and kick it through the window, I won that one too, what a fun game. :) Our lessons are improving, I can see how far I have come. It is getting easier to understand others, even when others can't. I may not be the loudest, strongest, or best when it comes to teaching others, but saying the right thing at the right time is just as powerful. I made some riddles and posted them on a board, it's gotten popular in our classroom building, and as far as I know, no one has solved it all the way yet. So on Sunday, I finally had to give a talk, it was on the Holy Ghost, I thought it went ok, a little shorter than the others, but I did it. I have been playing alot of vollyball and soccer. It has been fun. They have some pretty good things at the tienda, one of my favorites has been this icecream. the top of it is icecream covered in chocolate and nuts and the bottom of it is a icecream sandwich, with is how you hold it, it is really good. This is our last P-day here! The CCM has been really fun, and the next email will be from Oklahoma!  

And I forgot, we have found out that our spanish level is around a 7 year old, some poeple brought their kids on sunday for church here and we could actually understand them. Elder Aguilar says that we speak better then some of the drunk people he has met, so yeah!



Progress on the Guard Towers here

Matt. 17:20

Some of the riddles I put on the board

Us Chilling in the Laundry Room, Waiting for it to Finish

My Last CCM Haircut!

CCM- Week 4

Hola!

I think that this was a pretty good week, no one is sick for once so that's good, and Spanish is improving. Tortilla tally is 8. Wednesday night we had a giant mosquito in our classroom and we could not kill it! By the end we were chasing the thing around the classroom with our grammar books trying to hit it out of the air. Once in a while we would hit it, it would fall to the floor, and then get back up again. In total I think it survived 3-4 hits from a book and 2 attempts to step on it. It was pretty funny. The Cheetos are really good here, they taste like real cheese and are a little spicy. On Wednesdays we get new people and it's fun to find them and speak Spanish to them; one group stared at us and just said si. We fasted one day to help our district and our Spanish, it went well and I think everyone learned a lot that day. We also took more pictures with the Latinos, they are so much fun to hangout with. Friday was the best day ever! During breakfast I was in line for food with Elder McCall by the kitchen door when we heard music playing in the kitchen. They were playing Scorpions, No One Like You, so we just stood by the door for a while listening to it, it was awesome! I miss music. Elder Alva was showing me some pictures of drawings he took by the Ancient Mayans, they depicted Lehi and his family arriving in the Americas and according to the drawing, they brought a lot of turtles with them. It was really cool. The days are going by so fast! Teaching lessons are getting better everyday. Saturday was a crazy night, we are all working on the computers and we can hear a lot of music from the parties going on around us. And then the fireworks started, they were so loud and close to us that we could feel it. It is because of that, everyone has a joke here that we are in the Hunger Games. Because the fireworks sound just like the cannon and we are surrounded by a giant wall. Also that night, someone clicked on a news app, so we were able to see what was going on in the world. Wow, you leave for a month and the world very different, riots and a state of emergency in Ferguson, lots about ISIS and Iraq, something about Yazidis and a helicopter crash, Robin Williams, and Ebola, so that was interesting. Sundays are one of me favorite days. We have no lessons to teach and its a more relaxing day. We were able to watch a movie about Joseph Smith. Lunch was awesome, we had BBQ! It was so good. Huge storm that night, very heavy rain and lots of lightning. It was our Latinos last day :( so we were hanging out with them most of the day and we took lots of pictures with them, we are all going to miss them. We said we will all email each other. Elder Alva gave me a watch that he had and said all it needed was batteries, so i can remember him. He is such a awesome guy and a great friend, good luck on your mission, I know you will be a great missionary. Bueno suerte mi amigos. They were still here the next day so we got to say goodbye before they left, it was lonely without them that night. Our lessons are going really well, even my teacher Hermano Castillano said my Spanish has greatly improved. Later that day, the entire CCM inside and outside smelled really bad, we never knew why. Luckily, it rained hard and washed away the smell. The lightning was really cool to watch. I got mail today! Donuts! thank you! On Tuesday we got new Latinos, one of them had a really shiny suit, so we call him shiny suit. We also got the water service project again, so I has in the van stacking all the water jugs, when I was done my district was gone. So I finally found them later in the gym stacking chairs, so I told them, "You know I wasn't with any of you for the last half hour right?" They were like "really?" thanks guys... its all good though. We are now the oldest district! Can't wait to go back to the states. my leg is feeling a lot better, and that's funny about Mr. Karimi thinking that Aidan looked like me, I love all the pictures. how has the weather been in Arizona?

We are going to miss you guys!

Mexican Cheetos, which are the best things ever!

First, that is a pretty cool picture, second, thank you Elder Alva for helping us with our Spanish and making us laugh at night, you are going to be a amazing missionary.

Our Laundry Room

CCM- Week 3

Hola!

I have been getting the letters and packages from you, I love them it always makes my day, thank you. All the Elders in my district are jealous! :) I miss you guys, good luck on all the running. My stomach is all better now, but I hurt my leg doing something, so I'm taking it easy right now (it's fine when im walking, but I'm not running for a while till it feels better). Our Latino Elders, Elder Nasiemento and Elder Alva are both awesome! They are soo much fun to have around, we all learn so much from talking to them. Elder Nasiemento only speaks portuguese, but luckily Spanish is close enough to where we can understand each other for the most part. The Latinos are really funny, one night we decided to teach them pick up lines in English and wrote them down on a piece of paper. Now I think all the Latinos in our apartment building want it! I don't know what they are going to do with it because it is in English, but occasionally one of them will come to our apartment to ask for it and then run off. In our bathroom when you flush the toilet the water in the shower gets really hot, so yesterday while I was in the shower, Elder Nasiemento thought it would be really funny to keep flushing the toilet, I stopped thinking it was funny after the 1st time he did it. It's all good though because he took a shower the next morning so I decided to flush the toilet a few times also. :) Elder Alva and I had a long conversation one night that XBOX is better then Playstation, and our favorite video games: Call of Duty, Assassins Creed, Halo... We can't wait for Halo 5, and are sad that we are going to miss Star Wars 7. Our lessons with our fake investigators are going really well, some lessons go better than others but everytime we do one, we get better. We have three investigators a week now, so lots of practice. After class one day we had a Spanish rap battle, it was pretty good. Elder Eisenhut got sick again, so we walk into the classroom and Elder Baum wrote on the whiteboard, "Elder Eisenhut is dead so Elder Baum needs a new companion (we are at the apartment)". And it was the start of the new plague that is going around here, so we can't shake hands anymore and we wash our hands constantly. And guess who went to the hospital again? Elder Eisenhut, poor guy. But I think he is the current record holder here for the most hospital trips! We had President Pratts granddaughter in our district this week, so after she left, the Pratt's invited our district over to their house for brownies to thank us for letting her be part of our district of a week, it was really nice. On Sunday night we got to see the moon rise over the mountains, we could actually see the moon move. Somehow we started talking about worlds without measure and that there should be temples on the moon, mars,.. and we decided that "Temple on the Sun" sounded like a cool band name. The days are long, but the weeks are short, it only really makes sense if your here. Everything I think is getting better, we have been having some problems as a district but its all better now. Everyday we try to get my companion, Elder Schwartz to lift weights, so far we all have been unsuccessful. So it was really funny on Tuesday because every Tuesday we have a service project. This one was restocking the water jugs in all the buildings here. We are all loading these water jugs into this big van, and so even Schwartz had to lift them so we were all excited because that is the first time we have seen him lift anything, Go Elder Schwartz! It only took about 30 min, so after that, we got more time to play volleyball. I never got the pictures from the other Elder Santana, and I met another one last week but could not find him today to take a picture with him. :( My Spanish is improving everyday, I have not needed to use the dry cleaners yet, and I got a haircut today! I think it looks good, but it hurt to get it, they are not gentle here, I survived though. I love the daily notes from you, I look at them everyday. The weather here is nice, we usually get a weekly big storm, it's cool to see all the lightning and hear the thunder. Hows the weather in Arizona? When we were doing the wash this morning some worker came in and told us that they were turning the water off and don't know when it's going to be turned back on, so it was a mad rush to get everything done water related for today. We love the time when we are doing laundry, they got new couches for the laundry room and they are very comfortable! We think we are all going slowly insane though, today we had a conversation about how graceful dress shirts look when they are going through the dryer, it was pretty funny. We sing the song "Called to Serve" at least once a day here, so I think everyone has it memorized by now. I can't believe that we are half way through the MTC, the time went by so fast , how was it for you?

The New Group!

The Rain

My Spanish Scriptures Case

I got a haircut today!

CCM- Week 2

Hey Guys,

It's finally Wednesday again! I met an Elder Santana on Thursday! He took some pictures of us, but he hasn't sent them to me yet, he is going to Alaska. Elder Seggmiller told me about a book that I have to get called "How to Create a Mind". We have been having lots of fun with the Latinos this week. We keep saying to them "donde esta frijole". where have you bean, where have you been, and they get very confused, its so funny. They don't get it... We have gotten some pretty big storms here, it even hailed once, that was fun to see. We had a stress management class a few days ago, I never get stressed, so it was very boring. I was asked if I get stressed, I just said, "not really". On Saturday, the elders in our district had a conversation about guns and explosives, it was a really fun conversation. Elder Aguliar moved out of the apartment and into a house on Sunday, it was very sad for us all. He is so much fun to have around and we always have the strangest conversations. He was telling us that he wants to be black so he can play basketball better! During lunch with him, he took a picture of all of us and said that it looked like the last supper because he is leaving on his mission Tuesday. He said Elder Eisenhut was his disciple and that one day he could be the master, it was really funny! He also said that Eisenhut would be The Pope, we were all confused by that one. At dinner Aguilar was asking us what "holy crap" was, so Elder Baum told him what crap was. Then a little while later, Elder Eisenhut gets some peanut butter, and apparently Aguilar has never seen peanut butter before, so as soon as he saw it he said sort of loudly, "What the (heck) is that! Is that holy crap?!" Were have never laughed so hard before, I don't know where he is getting these phrases from but he uses them correctly without knowing what he is saying. The Spanish is slowly getting better, and I think the teaching is going better also. I showed everyone how small I can write and they where all amazed. Yesterday, we got new Latino roommates and thoroughly confused them by greeting them with "Aloha"! Elder Nasimeinto and Elder Alvo. Nasimeinto is from Brazil and Alvo is from Mexico; neither of them speak English, so it's a good way to learn more. I'm doing good, been getting stomach aches, but they are getting better. I like all the pictures from you guys, and Lu, you can do a sport! Did you get Cates to sign my yearbook yet? How's school going for you all? and here are the pictures!

 

 

Aidan's Parrots

The District  

A Statue that I Found Last Week

This weeks Picture with the Statue in the Background!



More of the District



Is that the Nimbus 2000?!? You're a wizard José.

Mexico City Temple

District day at the Temple



The Crew- Me, Elder Baum, and Elder Eisenhut

More Temple Pictures

Got Bananas!

Check out those prices!

City View