I love to see the temple

Today our district got to go the Mexico City temple's visitors center!! (the actual temple is closed for renovations which is a bummer, but esta bien!) 

Seriously such a fun morning I loved seeing the city as we drove on the bus. It really made me appreciate the CCM a lot more and the fact that I get to live in america for most of my mission. We went on a little tour with the sister missionaries and one of them really struggled with english and it made me feel so much better that learning a second language is hard but it's going to be okay! We took some awesome pictures inside and outside by the temple. It was a gorgeous temple and visitors center! they even had a fun little kid friendly room (i'll explain the pictures below) We've really been looking forward to getting to go the temple and it was definitely worth the wait! 

Okay so we had a really amazing sunday this week and I got a lot of new direction and thoughts but I just want to share kind of an overview and something that has really stood out to me this week. In Relief Society Hermana Pratt talked about a few general conference addresses one of them being Eyring's talk about a heritage of hope. And it just really stood out to me that in the gospel our diligence affects more than just us, we need to turn our thinking outward, become more like the savior and strive every day and every hour to make decisions that our future generations will be proud of. so much stands for our posterity on us as an individual. Even in missionary work it's like that. You convert one person but they could in turn bless generations. Its just so mind-blowing but amazing to think about!! Also we watched an old MTC devo from Elder Holland and he talked about how we need to be followers forever. Like the disciples who tried to go back to fishing after the savior died, we can't turn back. As we are truly converted to Christ, we make a decision to change our lives and continue on the path as disciples. We don't turn back to our fishing nets in hard times, we keep pressing forward to feed his sheep. And we do it all because we love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ will ALL our heart. But It's also good to remember that it's all in small steps. The back of one of my watches saws "one tick at a time" and also in 1 Nephi 18:1 it just references that it all comes one by one and little by little. It's the small things that turn into something grand!

Mexico/ life in the CCM things for the week:

- Tuesday nights are pizza nights (noche de la Pizza) and it's my favorite. food is getting progressively worse here so it's always fun to look forward to that!

- mini bananas here in mexico are my fav. (I'll include a picture of one today)

-sometimes the city really loves to set off fireworks. like all the time. And they really sound like hunger games cannons going off haha which tribute died this time? so horrible

- I found this drink called Manzanita Sol this week and oh my it is AMAZING! It kind of tastes like a soda version of Martinelli's

-sunday night walking home there was this amazing pink/ purple lightning! so pretty

-We pretty much played speed during gym time all week. And i'm still not very good at bball haha

-one of our teachers said "muy suck" this week it was so hilarious to hear him talking all in Español and then using that so seriously hahaha we still use it now.

Our lessons are getting so much better. I don't write out what I'm going to say anymore we just trust in the spirit and go for it! We are learning so much and my español is improving A LOT. we kind of cheat most of the time and forget to do Solo Español except maybe like 3 days a week but it's so crazy to me that 4 weeks ago I knew almost NO español besides Hola. The Lord is definitely blessing my life here!

Well I love y'all a lot! Don't be shy in sending me emails and dear elders ;) and I always love some good pictures! haha love y'all!

xoxo

Hermana Smart

I have a lot of pictures this week so it'll come in a few waves! 

"Oh-oh I´m halfway there...oh-oh livin' on a pray-er!"

¡Hola! 

Well if you didn´t catch on from the title of this email...i´m halfway done with the CCM!! So close to New York it´s crazy(: And we are definitely livin´ on prayers here in more ways than one! Not only livin' on prayers to learn Español, BUT...

We are livin´on a prayer to survive the zombie apocalypse 2k14 here at the CCM!! yikes the "plague" has hit the CCM hard. Starting around sunday there was like 80+ missionaries sick...so we were told a million+ times to wash our hands!! that made everyone nervous. And then Hermanas in another room in our casa got sick and we were really paranoid. And then as luck would have it yesterday afternoon Hermana White started looking really bad in the middle of class...so our teacher made her go to the infirmary which was a very good thing! Long story short and to spare y'all of the horrible details. Hermana White AND Hermana Smith have been really sick since yesterday. Hermana white definitely had the worse of it. It got especially bad last night and she wanted a blessing. So me and Hermana Alexander asked 2 elders from our district to come giver her a blessing. I think it was honestly one of my favorite moments so far in the CCM. Elder Merrifield and Elder Brasher lite up when we asked them (then proceed to take 15 minutes to try to figure our exactly how). all 8 of the elders in our district ended up coming to our casa so they could all be part of the blessing. We really are a little family as a district. It was such a sweet blessing, and the spirit was so incredibly strong.  It´s amazing to see how grown up the elders can be sometimes amid the immaturity. I really just love my district fmaily! 8A for life! (: 

Well now you know the most exciting story to the week, I´ll briefly go into some of the other stuff. also It was raining this morning and the other hermanas are obviously still sick so me and Hermana Alexander ended up going outside to take some funny pics...I'll explain those at the end haha. Also we should get to go to the Mexico City Temple Visitor Center next week on pday! Email time will be a bit later...but look for some amazing pictures for next week too! 

Spiritual thought of the week:

        I absolutely love when my favorite spiritual thought comes from the area 70s that barely speak English. It gives me a lot of comfort to realize that the spirit does amazing things and I will be able to be successful in teaching as long as I have the spirit with me! Well This week's thought comes from Tuesday night devotional with Elder Netzahualcóyott Salinas (try to pronounce that one haha, it means coyote fasting or something?)

        He talked about WHY we obey the commandments and it was so powerful. I obviously can't retell an entire devotional, but the central point was the we obey Because we love the Savior. We don't obey for blessings, to avoid consequences, or for social pressure. We obey with all our heart because the love we have for our Savior Jesus Chirst. He talked about how Nephi and Laman & Lemuel followed the commands when they would go back to the city and so forth, but they did it with different attitudes. Because Nefir obeyed out of love he became a christlike disciple, all because of the WHY.

        What an amazing opportunity I have to be on a mission representing my Savior, obeying out of love and sharing the amazing love he has for all of us with others who don't know(:

well this email is totes ma-goats getting long again....wow I must be really bad at this! I'll finish it off with some fabulous bullet points!

MEXICO/CCM THINGS

- worst plumbing ever here. Super fun with sick roomies

- HUGE spoons always in the cafeteria (I may have mentioned before, Dad would love it) but I totally got a normal sized spoon this week and didn't know what to do haha

- the smells in Mexico are outrageous! super fun for my sensitive nose

- seriously the smallest world here at the CCM. this week alone i've run into an elder from my mission prep class, AND a Hermana (going to my mission) who is friends with an elder I met at the MOA....so crazy!! Crazy that they all remember me too??

TRES FUN THINGS

uno= thursday night we had a donut party thanks to Hermana Smith's aunt! She sent her a box of krispy kremes and we "partied" haha (also I think there is a few mexican websites to send missionaries food if you do want to look into it it´s something like www.misionarypackagemx.com)

dos= Friday night we had a mini FHE / fiesta with our whole casa and we got to meet the latinas and talk in spanish it was awesome

tres= our morning teacher Hermano Murillo's wife had a baby! He'll be gone for a week but so fun for him! Also our sub is really fun and so far has helped us a lot. We were struggling teaching and he gave us really amazing pointers. Our lesson yesterday with "Juan" (our afternoon teacher) went really well it makes me happy to be continually improving. We've failed a lot at solo español but it's slowly improving! 

Well if you're still reading thanks! You're a champ. I love y'all so much thanks for your continual support (:

xoxo

Hermana Smart 

"I Just Came Here to Dance"

haha well I better start off by explaining the title of this email. So I really needed some notebooks for Spanish so we went to the store here in the CCM (La TIenda) and they were completely out except this tiny one that says "I just came here to dance" hahahaha I bought it and we laugh at it every time. They got more in so I bought a bigger one so now I just use this notebook to jot down notes to include in emails, hence the title.

Okay so I wanted to start off with some spiritual thoughts from this week, since I know too much happens in a week to retell in one email the most important things I can say are how I am learning and growing here in the CCM.

The devotional last tuesday night was decent, the guy who spoke had very broken english but afterwards we had a district devotional review and wow it was so amazing. It´s crazy how much you can feel the spirit and get soo much out of a message that is so simple from the language. I hope that is what ends up coming across as I teach others. Here´s some thoughts from our night:

  - matthew´s advice to me before I leave keep sticking with me to keep it real and remember the spirit of the law. Its easy to get caught up in doing everything perfectly but we just need to be ourselves and remember why and who we´re doing everything for. Lose yourself in service but don´t lose yourself

-We need to have the Lord as our 3rd companion out here D&C 6:32

-I need to be the best missionary I can to convert myself and to show love for the Lord, not to show the world that I am so amazing.

-BE YOUR OWN FIRST CONVERT

-We sow what we reap, plant everyday.

-PMG is here to convert us, helps us relate and then convert others

-THE SPIRIT IS EVERYTHING, the language we should all speak is the pure love of Christ.

We had a really good class about stress management and this awesome quote from Cecil Samuelson was read from an MTC devo MArch 2002 and it basically just said that we shouldn´t lowers the standards the Lord sets, but we also should´nt be raising them higher than what the Lord has established. Such a good thought to remember! I definitely am way to hard on myself a lot of the time. 

Also in PMG there is a quote from President Monson about remembering patience and that has really helped me a lot this week.  I´ve been struggling with the language and it feels like everyone around me has spoken it before and at least understands it but I just really need to remember patience in all things. 

Okay wow this is getting long quick...haha i´ll be surprised if most of you are skimming this email now or just looking at pictures!! 

One more spiritual though. In relief society we talked about how there is a pattern in all things (d&c 52:14) and the pattern I am living in right now is the Garden of Eden into the Lone and dreary world. WE get comfortable in our gardens of eden like pre mission and then we get thrown into the CCM and its like our lone and dreary world but eventually by the end of the CCM we get comfortable and it will become our Garden of Eden. The pattern repeats over and over through our missions and life and we just need to remember that the Objective is progression, to learn and grow.  We also talked about Nephi building a boat and its like us building a mission The Lord will always provide a way and he has given us ore like scriptures, PMG, etc that we need to turn into tools and eventually we look back and it is amazing the boat we have built but it all come small things at a time. (read D&C 109:22-23 too) It just shows how we have the Lord on our side!!

Okay I think we need some humor now!! (keeps me sane)

-WE had service on wednesday and GUESS WHAT?!?! It was......SWEEPING bahaha of course. They must have been warned that I was so good at it ;)

-My companion went to BYU-H so she has sandals like me (picture attached) but they call them cockroach slippers...okay this is not too funny but the picture is?

-Our elders are so crazy and immature they were farting during TALL the other day...oh geez kind of funny the looks of other elders y hermanas though!

-our doorbell @ the casa sings CHRISTMAS music!!!

-our teacher (that was our investigator last week haha) Is so crazy!! He laughs at us and makes us run around buildings in skirts (to prep us for the stress class) And now we teach him again under a different name and he´s so funny he´ll pretend we´re at the wrong door (since its all outside and there isn´t a door) its just crazy.

- My bunk bed is SUPER squeaky and its so funny because we´re so exhausted at night and I can´t move a muscle without it being all crazy squeaky haha

FOOD:

never have I eaten so many cantelopes and beans like ever. There is super yummy chocolate cereal we have for desert. We had amazing caramel mexican popsicles and wow! Saturday they gave us chocolate chip COOKIES (inside family joke) haha who knew I missed cookies?? Peaches and apricots were a gem yesterday. 

Also fasting this sunday was for 24 hours (saturday lunch was last meal until sunday lunch) and I was definitely strengthened by the Lord because it wasn´t too diffficult!! 

MEXICO THINGS

-nightime sirens and dogs barking always

-INSANE rain (some pictures attached) serious puddles 

-Mosquitos came out this week and they are everywhere and LOVE me

MISC that I forgot

-Enrique our investigator turned night time teacher (Hermano Palma) caught be sleeping in class on accident the other day and oops was the embarrassing! haha good laugh though

-My companion is super athletic so every day during gym time we doo fun things (like run track, and play all sorts of sports) But I´m actually getting a lot better at making baskets in basketball!!

-A Hermana in our casa gave us stickers for our first fast sunday so now I have  a baby horse on the back of my name tag haha

spanish update:

I´ve memorized the missionary purpose, baptism invite, Moroni 10:5...)

Our teacher got mad so now we have to do SOLO ESPANOL which means if we say any spanish (except at night in our casa) we have to do pushups/situps and oh man I am going to struggle. At least we did get some latino natives in our casa this week for 2 weeks! So hopefully I´ll be able to start getting stuff. Although I can pray en espanol!! 

Well I´m out of time but I love yáll, sorry for the long email I´ll attach pictures in case you don´t have the stamina to read haha

xoxo

Hermana Smart

Hola from the CCM!

¡Hola! 

Wow I can't believe I've already made it through my first day here and i'm writing you all from MEXICO!! (also please forgive typos not only is this a spanish keyboard but the space key is sticking and all that fun stuff!! Also I only have an hour in the computer lab every pday to write and read oh and my pdays are on tuesday if you missed that (:

wow there is so much to say so many fun things and changes but I promise I still be my old self and keep it interesting! I'm starting a little notebook for  bullet points to include so that I don't forget the super great stuff of course!

Well the CCM (MTC in Espanol) is great and different

First the food:

It actually isn't too bad, i mean it is cafeteria style and some things are crazy and some times breakfast is like bean burritos (haha still ate it though, gotta love always trying new things) But we have had amazing green ice cream at one of our lunches that reminded me of princess diaries and it was fabulous,also had ice cream sandwiches that were mexican and great! They still try to feed us american food that is still kind of mexican haha like corn dogs, hot dogs, hamburgers, cereal.....I'm doing just fine with food and no issues yet which is great!

The weather here in mexico city is great! we are at 7000 ft and so it is pretty cool not too hot or cold most of the time, but it definately does rain almost every day so that always makes life interesting! haha I do love it. also the surrounding area is GORGEOUS I wish some of my pictures did it justice...and we can only take pictures on pday so i will try to take a picture of the hill of houses at night is is spectacular! But overall I am still very glad the actual mexico part of this is only 6 weeks because the bathrooms and houses and such are still well mexico (: 

My companera is Hermana Alexander. She is from northern California and played softball at BYU-H for 2 years before coming on a mission. She's great, really easy going, and we get along great so far. She has this awesome hawaiian candy she shared with me with this cool sugar stuff on it? not sure if anyone know what that is but its so delicious and interesting! I included some pictures of the first day and today!

My other two roomates(there are 4 girls in a room with 2 bunkbeds and a bathroom,and 5 rooms in a casa) Are Hermana Smith from Montana (she went to BYU and knows some of my friends like Brock from Alta) and Hermana White who is from gilbert and she wen to BYU-I for a year. We have had a blast so far I got really lucky they're all really fun and similar personalities for that I am blessed. Also They are all going to NYC as well as two others in another room in our casa! We'll all get to fly out together!! YAY!! 

Our distirct is also great, 4 elders going to NYC and 4 to Wichita you can tell that they all came from high school they get really crazy, all but 1 elder who went to a year of school first. THey are seriously crazy sometimes but its all fun, keeps it interesting for sure!

Well onto more missionary stuff since thats what I do 24/7 (: Because I'm officially wearing the badge and am a representative of Jesus Christ which still doesn't seem quite real! 

We wake up at 6:30 and have to be at the classroom by 7:00 so my get ready is for sure way different....but somehow I make it work just don't judge too much what I look like in pictures haha ;)

We were thrown into teaching our first investigator the 2nd day COMPLETELY in espanol. It was crazy and didn't go super well, but the next day we worked hard and it totally was great. I was still mostly reading from phrases I had copied, and my companion since she has taken spanish before still corrected my pronunciation  but we could feel the spirit so strongly and that amazes me that we are able to bring the spirit and feel it even when we don't understand the language. He even said yes when we extended a baptism commitment crazy eh?? We continue to have lessons and classes and sacrament and all prayers in spanish and I'm still pretty lost, but I have learned so much in such a short time! The Lord is definitely with me here. 

Sunday was my favorite day I got over the 3 hardest days before then according to most of the elders y hermanas here. Relief Society was in english and a powerful lesson on speaking the words of christ. Sacrament I understood almost nothing but it was great. We watched a devotional from Elder Holland from 2013 and it was amazing. It just made me refocus and realize that I have been sent here for a reason, and the biggest convert should be me! Made me want to go study the gospel for hours!! haha

I just need to remember that the whole conversion process has to happen to me before my converts in NY and that I struggle learning spanish just like the gospel will be a foreign language/concept to many of those I teach. 

Well here are some randoms from the week:

- we say companionship prayer always in spanish and I can for the most part do it

-they gave us like 20lbs of spanish books...yikes for my luggage!!

- there was a GIANTmoth/butterfly in the TALL (gospel language online program) lab the other night so crazy... it flew in the window and scared Hermana white so badly! I'll have to get the picture from my companion (illegal picture on a non pday oops)

-Saturday night there was HUGE fiesta on the mountain and the music and lights were on like all night...kind of hard to sleep but fun to "dance" to wlaking home

  (PS did I mention the hill at night is GORGEOUS??)

-our investigators name in Enrique and he'll probably be a teacher in the future 

-we love saying eees okay like Juan Pablo on the bachelor...I mean it must be spanish right? haha

-I've seen SO many people I know (BYU= shelby allion, faith call,laura lewis, Kayci, Tomas, and 2kids from alta wade hansen and Taylor Bell) I haven't seen Steve's npehew yet though gma! So sorry!

Well overall it's been a great first week, this feels pretty normal so far and i'm sure it will just keep getting better, promise to write more and better next tuesday still getting used to this! haha love y'all so much!!! 

xoxo

Hermana Smart