So first of all... the food.
There is ice! And the drinks come out of the machine cold anyway so I
never even get ice. They have Jamaica here and it's even better than it
is at home! More sweet. Their juices here are amazing. They taste
like real fruit juice. I have tried quite a few new things. One of
which is fresh guava... which I do not like at all!! It tasted like I
was taking a huge bite of perfume! But I have enjoyed the food a lot!!
There hasn't really been anything (other than some of the weird fruit
and mystery meats) that I have tried that I didn't like. You just have
to be a little careful about what you get. I have rice and beans with
every lunch and dinner because I think they may possibly be the best
rice and beans I have ever tasted. So there's no need to worry about
how well I'm eating. We get plenty of great food and I haven't had any
problems at all with my stomach!
We
do have warm showers! Which was great when we figured out how to make
it warm by about our 4th shower!! Our first 3 showers were FREEZING cold
because we didn't know how to make it warm! The knobs aren't marked so
we just kinda had to figure it out. So apparently, for any future
missionaries who come to the CCM and stay in the casas... only turn on
the bottom knob and turn on the top one a little bit after it gets hot
so it doesn't scald you! This was definitely a life-saver to these four
sisters!! :) This is one thing that is a little weird here in the CCM.
You kinda just have to figure things out for yourself. We receive
very little instruction on what to do and we have a schedule to follow
with lots of classes, personal study time, companionship study time, and
language study time with our district, but it is really up to us
whether we make our days productive. I think this is really great
preparation for when we go out into the field!
There
is actually a LOT of English speaking here! All of our Tuesday and
Sunday devotionals are in English and all of the classes that we have
had so far are either a combination of English and Spanish or completely
English. In our class with our district our teacher tries to speak to
us only in Spanish and I pretty much understand everything that she is
saying and often-times explain to my companion what she is saying and
sometimes even the entire class. We have a lot of classes throughout
the day. Not really any time at all just to sit around and be lazy. We
get a half hour to get ready for bed at night and a half hour to get
ready in the morning and that is our only personal time. A lot of our
study time is dedicated to planning our lessons that we will be teaching
to Carlos (our "investigator"). We had to teach our first lesson on
Friday and it did not go very well at all... We do not speak the
language so it was very difficult to get our message across that we
wanted to teach. We did a lot of reading straight form Preach my Gospel
and the pamphlets that we got on the first day. Saturday's lesson was
not much better but yesterday was great!!! I'm starting to actually be
able to explain myself in Spanish and yesterday we understood almost
everything that he was trying to tell us!! I am now able to pray and
bear my testimony completely in Spanish and actually feel the spirit and
communicate the things that I want to when I do! It is amazing how
fast we are learning here! I know that there is no way that I could
learn as fast as I am without God's help. The gift of tongues is
real!!! We also had interviews from our Branch President on Sunday and
he had me pray in Spanish and after, he asked me if I understood
everything in Spanish now. I laughed and told him no and he said that
my prayer sounded like I was a fluent Spanish speaker!! It was such an
amazing confidence boost!
The
Sundays here are great! This Sunday we started our fast after Lunch on
Saturday and ended at lunch on Sunday. We had lots of great classes and
devotionals where the spirit was super strong and we had a very intense
talk about chastity followed by interviews from our Branch Presidents.
Testimony meeting was great! One of the districts all bore their
testimony in English because it was their last week and they wanted to
be able to communicate their feelings better then they performed a
musical number. That district is leaving today. Which means that they
had to call new zone leaders and they called two Elders from our zone!!
Which means they started being the leaders of the entire zone after
being at the CCM for only 3 days! Crazy! Then I had the opportunity to
bare my testimony in Spanish and it was great! The spirit was so strong
in that meeting!!
One
funny thing that happened was in our first lesson with Carlos. :) So in
Spanish, pecado means sin and pescado means fish.... so I told Carlos
that Jesus Christ died for all of the fish of his children.... haha I
realized immediately what I said and corrected myself but it was not
soon enough because he was dying laughing at me! It was pretty
hilarious. Even in the moment. Then later in the lesson we had him
read 3 Nephi 13:9-10 which talks about how parents give good gifts to
thier children and verse 10 says "Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a
serpent?" Carlos started laughing again because the word pescado in
that verse reminded him of my mistake!
Another
funny thing about the CCM is that a lot of the people here do not speak
very fluent English so we were having a presentation about all of the
rules for the gym and the man who was giving the presentation (he was
probably about 20-21) said that he was "the bad in the movie." We were
confused at first because it is also hard to understand what they are
saying sometimes because of their accents and we realized that he was
trying to say that he has to be the bad guy and lay down the law. So he
kept saying "I am the bad" or "I'm the bad in the movie." It was
hilarious!! He also kept saying "this is your problems" it was hilarious
because it sounded really insulting and I don't think he realized it at
all!! XD
I love you all so much! Thank you for all of your prayers and fasting! Have a great week!
--Hermana Harvey
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