The CCM

So... I have finished my first week here at the MTC. Because there are so many missionaries here they allow us to email today instead of pday becuase there wouldnt be enough time for everyone. I am not sure when I will get to email next. It is quite the place here. They keep us on a pretty tight schedule from sun up to sun down. we are always doing somthing. The food here is starting to get pretty predectible already. For breakfast we usually have warm milk, a corrasant role, fruit which are usually sort of strange, some eggs or  really milked down oatmeal mush. Lunch is always the biggest meal. Consists of steak, chicken breasts, lots of rice, potatoe,  soup--sometimes lentle seed soup--and then some sort of salad with a breadstick, and more fruit and such. Then for dinner they might give us a bowl of soup, or rice with ground hamburger. I am  really tired of eating plain rice. They rarely make any american food, we have had sandwiches, a strange looking hot dog, and some sort of hamburger. So that is what the food is like if you guys were wondering, pretty bland most of the time. 

Spanish.  All the people here know little to no English. Everthing is in Spanish in the CCM here. The devetionals, the meetings, the hymns, all the lessons, all the signs in the bathroom. Everything. Plus you always have to be ready to speak spanish. You never know when you will be called on to give a prayer, spritual thought, sacrament meeting talk, etc in Spanish. The funnest part is trying to teach our fake investigators in spanish. We try to teach the lessons in our broken spanish. We usually do 1-2 of those a day. Sometimes I like to say the wrong words. For ejemplo, I said that Jesus Christ came to atone for the dead fish of the world instead of sins of the world. The differnce is pescado and pecado. Sometimes they record it and then we have to relive our pain again. The only mercy with spanish is sometimes with the devtionals they give us headphones so we can listen to a latino attempt to translate into english. 

They finally let us out of this compound to go to the temple last week. We are locked up pretty tight. There is a big fence around this place and you dont do out unless the secruity guard lets you out. . We got to se the city again. It is a wild place. I saw a bus going down the equivenlt of a freeway with its doors open because there were so many people that the doors would not close. Lots of grafiti everywhere, it makes the all the arcutecture quite lovely. The roads are pretty slow here though beause there no enforced traffic laws. Even ambulances go down the street at like 25 mph. It is fun to watch out our  window of the CCM and watch the cars, somtimes they drive right over the median or honk to go through a interection instead of stopping, lots of motorbikes weaving all over. I nother words if you dont drive defensively you will be toast in like 2 seconds. Anyways going to the temple was fun.  It is interesting trying to understand because it is all in spanish too. It can be difficult to becuase it is hard to hear what the temple workers are saying and so I attempt to imitate what they are saying in my greengo spanish. I am pretty sure they got exhausted trying to correct what I was saying and so they just let a lot of things go. 

I am also the district leader for my district which constists of 4 companiships. This means that I usaully have to make sure the kids do what they supposed to. All but one of them are recent high graduates with grandiose dreams of becoming lawyers or doctors and they are obessed with sports and high school topics and such, which can make for somewhat dull converstaion. My companion is alright, not always focused and takes forever to get ready, he is obessed with soccer. 

Here is a spiritual thought from Elder Holland from a devottional. Missionary work is not easy because it was not for the son of God.  Discipleship means doing what the master would do. So each road to salavation passes through the garden of gethsemanea and calavry. Pretty cool thought. I believe that it can be applied to any aspect of life. 

So that is the general idea of the CCM, the days seem like like weeks and the weeks seem like days. It all blurs togther. Anyway here is a picture of the CCM they took yesterday, I am on the roof towards the right. they took away our cameras so I dont have any other pictures. 

Chao

Elder Gilbert