First of all, my companion finds it highly entertaining to take pictures of me when I fall asleep.... the one she got of me last week was when I fell asleep reading scriptures...it´s quite picturesque actually. haha
Tuesday Devotionals are pretty much the best!! They´re almost always in Provo but broadcast to other MTCs around the world so we always get to watch it. Last week´s was M. Russell Ballard and it was amazing! He talked a lot about how to become great missionaries and the importance of setting goals in missionary work and throughout our lives. He also said a sentence that was word-for-word what something in my Patriarchal Blessing says so that was like the coolest thing ever.
On Wednesday, we got a new investigator named Julio (who is really our other teacher pretending to be an investigator) and Hermana Hansen and I taught for the first time without scripting anything that we wanted to say, and it went surprisingly well! It was hard to form coherent thoughts, but we learned how to rely a little more on the spirit to bring what we know to our remembrance. It was such a cool experience! Our lessons with Julio are only 15 minutes so sometimes we have a hard time teaching him everything he wants to learn. Oh, Hermanas Turner and Hansen and I decided to all switch nametags the other days to see if our teachers really know us, but then we got a new teacher and felt bad so we switched back and maybe we´ll try it again soon. :)
Thursday, we had a special devotional with 2 Seventies that came to Mexico to speak to us. Pretty much everyone that ever comes to speak to us just talks about Missionary Work but I am constantly learning from the things that they share with us! They challenged us to read the missionary chapters in Alma (17-42) and I´ve noticed already how much studying them has helped me in being on a mission! After the Devo, we went back to the normal schedule of studying all day and teaching our "investigators". My memory drives my companion up the wall because I memorize things like it´s nothing, but our teacher told us that her pronunciation is better so if we keep working together that we´d both be "Mexicanas" in no time. hahaha. Thursday afternoon we started doing this thing called TRC where we teach students from other districts. They make up investigator stories and then we go in completely blind, learn about their lives, and then teach them whatever part of the lessons that they need to hear. It was incredible to see how strong the spirit can be even in a situation where we have nothing else to go on except the investigator stories and the broken spanish that we know. It was probably my favorite thing that we´ve done so far--and the best lesson that Hermana Hansen and I have ever given!
On Friday we taught Julio again and he really likes to throw us curveball questions when we teach him. So we went in with an idea of what we wanted his lesson to focus on, but then we hardly even got to us because he asked a bunch of questions that we had no idea how to answer, so that was a little awkward, but it ended up being a pretty decent lesson anyway. I´ve learned that it´s way better to go in with a couple of ideas about what to teach and end up changing everything than to ever give an investigator a lesson that they don´t really need. We also did TRC again and I love it! It´s a lot less scary knowing that I´m teaching people that have been here for the same amount of time as me--I feel a lot less intimidated that way! Also, when I play the investigator I like to use my real name and it freaks people out because it´s weird (thanks mom and dad) :)
Hermana Hansen has also taken up teaching me how to play tennis. I can´t believe I never did before! She tells me I´m really good for never having played before but she´s probably lying to me to make me feel better about my life. haha. Oh, and we finally feel like we´re bonding with the elders in our district...they all told us their celebrity crushes so I guess that means we´re friends! They´re pretty great. We also had some pretty crazy power outage stuff here from a thunderstorm so instead of being able to use our computers for spanish like we usually do we just hung out in our classroom and played Mafia.
Saturday Hermana Hansen and Hermana Turner and I decided to have a day where we only spoke to each other in español! It was crazyyyy hard, but we all did it and I was thoroughly impressed at how much spanish I actually know!! We´re gonna try to do that more often too so that we get better at it! We taught Ramiro for the first time since Monday when he told Hermana Hansen and I how bad we were at teaching so that was scary. We both thought it went better but he didn´t so we have no idea what to do about teaching him. We get the feeling that he doesn´t actually want to be here when he teaches us so it makes it hard for us to want to teach him. Hopefully that´ll get better through the next couple of weeks!
Sunday, I bore my testimony in spanish in sacrament meeting and it was terrifying! I got up there and forgot like everything I wanted to say, but I did it! And now that I´ve crossed that fence, I´m feeling a little more confident in speaking spanish, YAY!
Nothing too exciting happened yesterday. I had a really hard day but Hermano Juarez took the time out of his free time to help Hermana Hansen and I a lot. He´s seriously like one of the happiest people ever! We love him :)
Notes for the book:
1. First emotional breakdown: Sept. 20
2. I started a starburst chain that I´m gonna build throughout my mission and see how long I can get it.
3. I´ve been practicing my nonexistent artistic skills while I take notes during devotionals and whatnot. Lemme tell ya, I am drawing some pretty killer stick figures.
That´s all. This one is really long! Sorry!
LOVE YOU ALL!
-Hermana Wilson
-Hermana Wilson
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