Hola!
Half way through the CCM.. I can't believe it!
This week has been really fun! Fridays are when our district does service. This week we cleaned 300 plastic chairs to get ready for the new missionaries that came this week. We are about to overflow there are so many missionaries! But it is amazing to see first hand how fast the Lord is hastening his work. And I am so excited to be apart of it! Hermano S told us that we have 1,200 missionaries right now and we are expecting to receive about 250 or so every week. During our service activity, it started pouring...and hailing. The roads turned into rivers. It was pretty crazy!
About your questions of where I am staying, there are 6 rooms in our casa including a kitchen (but nothing works) and a laundry room. Our room has two bunk beds and I sleep on the bottom and the other Hermanas sleep on the tops. All of our luggage is on the bottom of one of the bunks where the other Hermana would have been sleeping if she was able to come! We have our own bathroom which is really nice! And yes we get warm showers! The bunk beds are really close together and one night I actually bonked my head and woke up with a lump on my head. Hermano S taught me to say "me duele mi cabeza" which just means my head hurts. Also, Hermana J talks in her sleep which can be pretty funny sometimes! A few nights ago she was talking in spanish! Our teacher was so excited. She said "Soy una buena misionera" haha. And she is!
On Sunday I played the piano for Sacrament meeting in our Zona. It was weird because some of the spanish hymns have different rhythms from english, so everyone was a little off singing. One day this week we ate cactus! It was pretty interesting, but I think I like it. We say prayers so many times a day and I think my knees are getting bruised from kneeling so much. :)
A run in the rain!
I have started reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish this week. It is amazing how much I can already comprehend. I am reading it with the English version and learning lots! We were promised that if we read the whole book in Spanish we will be fluent so that is my goal.
We taught an investigator named Josh this week at TRC (the place were we teach real members or investigators). He was such a cool guy and we taught him about the Book of Mormon. We taught with nothing but our spanish scriptures for 25 minutes! The Lord was definitely with us in that lesson. But Josh said he understood the whole thing! That made us very happy missionaries! We invited him to pray at the end and he was really nervous, but he did it. It was one of the most humble prayers I have ever heard and the spirit was so strong. I gave him a Book of Mormon and he tried to tell us he couldn't take it because it was ours. We told him we brought it just for him. He was all smiles!
Mom I finally got your dear elder this week! That was so fun to get! I found out the regular mail from the states takes 10 days. And I haven't met the other Hna Burnham yet. But I went with Hna Burnham, my 2nd cousin, to the temple today! She is so fun!
The Temple was the best experience ever. We got to leave the CCM which was really fun! The bus ride was about 45 minutes. Mexico City is so cool. It is crazy, we saw dogs hanging out on rooftops... yeah doubt I'll ever see that again! We went through the visitor's center at the temple, but weren't aloud to go into the Ciudad de Mexico temple because it is being worked on right now. The Sister missionaries at the visitors center took us on a tour of it and I was thinking the whole time "wow these sisters are so cool! I want to be just like them!" and then I realized I was wearing a name tag, too. haha.
At the visitor's center
I got out my camera to take a picture at the temple, but it died right after! I was so sad. But my companions are going to send some of their pictures to me so I'll forward them. We also were able to go to the tienda de zarahemla. Which was this cute little church store in temple square. They had all these homemade church things to buy and of course everything was in spanish. Hermana Jensen and I got matching "HLJ" bracelets. (choose the right in spanish..haz lo justo) I also got a cool scripture case for my spanish scriptures.
Being at the temple was great. The spirit was so strong and I could feel our Heavenly Father's love for me. I am so grateful for my family too! You guys are my favorite people in the whole world and I am so glad we are sealed together in the temple so that we can be families forever. :) I love and miss you all so much!
We also had a Zona tournament "world cup" today of foosball. We beat some of the boys, but ultimately got bested by our district leader. We were team Italy!
Thanks for all your prayers and love, I definitely feel them everyday!
I hope you have a fun time at Trek Aubrey! I know you are going to have a great experience. Tell me all about it next week! Also, there were some missionaries this week that got to skype an EFY session and talk to them about missionary work! I am praying that I get to do that next week while you are at EFY in Palmyra! THAT WOULD BE SO AWESOME!
I love the Lord and I love this work! It is hard to be a missionary and to learn a new language. But in our devotional this week our speaker said "That in which we persist in doing becomes easier to do because our capacity to do it grows." This is so true! And I have seen it in just these past three weeks. We went from knowing no spanish to being able to teach a 25 minute lesson in all spanish, with nothing but our Book of Mormon. So amazing and a testament that God lives and is ever so present in our lives.
Yo se que Dios es nuestro Padre Celestial y nos ama. El Señor es mi luz y mi amigo. Estoy agredecida por mi familia bonita y por la oportinidad ser una familia para siempre por media de el plan de felicidad. Yo se que nuestro proposito en esta vida es ser feliz. Jesucristo es nuestro Salvador y si seguimos Cristo, podemos volver a Dios. Me amo esta Iglesia y este Evangelio.
Con amor siempre,
Hermana Buxton