Matthew Vierkant's Mission Blog: Hola mi familia y amigos!

Finally just reached the one week mark of my time in the CCM (MTC in Spanish)! It has felt like a year but the it has also been the greatest year of my life! I guess after the first week time just flies by but I really am enjoying every second of my stay here.

Elder Jack and me at the temple

I have been blessed with the greatest companion, roomates ever, and district ever. We are all very friendly and we love to talk to each other a lot. Maybe a little too much. But we work hard and we try our best. Our district makes up our class, which is the intermediate class for the people who arrived. We all speak Spanish pretty well. I have become so much better at speaking and understanding Spanish because we speak with native speakers a lot and in Spanish with each other as well, although we do speak a lot of English too.

Our class started teaching our first ¨investigator¨ on Friday. We did it totally in Spanish. It was hard, but not because of the language barrier. Our investigator couldn´t read, was bored by church, didn´t like missionaries very much and didn´t want to pray. This wrecked our first lesson plan because we had planned on using the scriptures a lot. But we taught her again yesterday and on Saturday and it went a lot better. We used pictures to help her understand and we taught much more simply with less planning, letting the Spirit guide us through the lesson. There were a few times when I said something in the lesson that I tried to say later to classmates and I could not figure out how I said it in the first place.

I have got to say, I think I might get fat before I leave the CCM. The food here is great. Especially the tacos, pastries and fruit. I have never liked honeydew before but here it is nectar from heaven. I stack my plate with it every meal. The tacos need assembly, but when you add the meat, salsa, beans and rice to a tortilla, its perfect.

Being in the Mexico CCM is interesting. It feels like you are in such a different place but at the same time I felt right at home in a couple hours. I am so excited to be here. The only annoying thing I can think of is the mosquitos that are every where and maybe the torrential down pours that are coming from storms on the coast, I guess.

A funny before I go. When I was praying for my investigator at the end of the lesson, I for got her name. Later on in the prayer, I thought I remembered it, so i thanked Heavenly Father for the opportunity to talk with Gloria. Come to find out right after the prayer, her name is Glanda. So we left laughing and I went back and told a few other people in our district who teach the same person. Aftering my story, two other companionships ended up doing the same thing.

Elder Vierkant

Temple