Getting Duped and Secular Songs

Hola everyone!

 

Another week done at the CCM (phew). It feels like I have been here a month.

 

So life in a trio is getting better and better. We are becoming friends and praying and working together more diligently. I'm actually starting to enjoy it!

 

Okay so I figured I would give a rundown of a day in the life of a missionary at the CCM.

 

6:30 get out of bed (ugh)

7:15 CLASS

8:15 Desayuno (breakfast)

8:45 CLASS

10:00 TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning)

11:15 Sports and shower

12:45 Almuerzo (lunch)

1:30 CLASS ON CLASS ON CLASS

5:15 Cena (dinner)

6:00 MORE CLASS

8:00 Refaccion (Snack)

9:00 Planning

10:30 BED

 

Day in and day out! So much class, I think my brain is going to melt.

 

Tomorrow, EVERY SINGLE HERMANA IN THE CCM EXCEPT FOR MY COMPANIONSHIP IS LEAVING. Every. Single. One. The CCM is divided into three groups: The 0-2 weekers are Nuevos, the 2-4 weekers are Medios, and the 4-6 weekers are Viejos. The native speakers stay for 2 weeks. There are no medios at the CCM, only Nuevos and Viejos. The Viejos run everything. They have callings, make sure the Hnas are where they need to be, etc. etc. So tomorrow, my companionship turns into Medios, and we have to assume A L L the responsibilities of Viejos. Nooo! On Wednesday, we are getting 20 Norteamericanas: 4 hermanas and 16 elders. I'm excited for that, but I'm sad to watch my beloved Viejos leave.

 

So here in the CCM, songs get stuck in your head. A LOT. And more often than not, it is a secular song, like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or 1D. So we have taken to spiritualizing the songs that get stuck in our heads: For instance, to the tune of Party in the USA,

So I put my scriptures up, they're playing my hymn, the pianists fingers fly away,

nodding my head like amen, moving my soul like amen...

Haha, you do what you have to do.

Last night, all the elders and sisters were gathered around the piano playing songs like "Halo" and a whole selection of Disney songs, so that was WAY nice. I got to break out my piano skills and play the first part of Don't Stop Believing (aka the only song I know on the piano other than Carol of the Bells). Also, my companera Hna Fisher LOVES Abba, so she nearly dies every time I play it, which is way more than I should be...

 

Yeah, it is straight up Religion Prison here. There are gates and guards and ahhhh I am just so excited to G E T O U T O F H E R E.

 

Sundays are awesome. I had to talk, AGAIN, but this time I got to talk in English, and with my companeras. We watched two movies, "The Testaments" and "Legacy". We were all laughing WAY too hard at Legacy. We seriously found every part where someone wasn't dying HILARIOUS. It's amazing how much your sense of humor changes here...you find everything funny.

 

So...I am emailing on the nurse's laptop (American keyboaaarrrddd), because I missed my original email time, which was 10am today. Why? I had to go the eye doctor! Guess who has spots in her vision. Yeah. Everywhere I look there are little grey blurs and spots dancing around in my field of vision. So I went across the city to the opthamologist today, and he dilated my eyes and shined about 20 DIFFERENT LIGHTS in my eye until I thought I had seriously gone blind, then told me that I was IMAGINING THE SPOTS. Ha, right. Anyways, apparently one of my eyes isn't quite 20/20, so the other eye is compensating, and I developed astigmatism. So tomorrow at Walmart, I have to pick up reading glasses to attempt to correct it. 19 years old, and I need reading glasses. Going through the city was crazy, though! The drivers here are insane. There are no regulations on the road, and you only get in trouble if you hit a physical person on the road. There are lots of American stores, like Payless, Little Caesars, Taco Bell, IHOP, McDonalandia (not a misspelling...), so on and so forth.

 

We get to go on a field trip tomorrow! We are going to the Stake Center to play sports, then to Walmart, then to the mall to eat American food (they have Subway!), and something else that I can't quite remember. So I will detail all of that in my email next week.

 

Oh, one time this week we walked out back to the basketball courts for sports time and there was an ambulance and a bunch of nuns just in the court. I still just don't even know why; it was so weird.

 

Also, SEND DEARELDERS. I loooooove them. :)

 

Love you all,

Hna Judd

 

 

Week One in the CCM (MTC)

Hola everyone!

So this week went by quickly, yet not. They say the days go by slowly in the CCM, but the weeks go by quickly. I think that is true!

 

Okay so both my plane trips were really good. I actually sat next to a woman who grew up in Guate on the way to LA! She was so excited that I was going there. In LA I met up with 13 elders, and 4 other hermanas, then we flew to Guate. I had an entire row to myself, so I actually got to lay down and "sleep". We arrived at about 5:30 am, went through customs, and got on a school bus to go to the CCM. The driving here is NUTS. People cut each other off and whistle and swerve and motorcycles go between cars. Once we were pulling in to the parking lot, we looked to our left and saw a pick up truck with a bunch of men armed and ready to shoot in the bed. Welcome to Guatemala.

 

They let us take a nap, and that was good, but other than that the first day was really hard for me. I was choking back tears at dinner, and once we went to bed, I just sat there and cried. I have never felt more homesick in my life than I felt that first night. Fortunately, that has been getting better every day. I haven´t cried since!

 

There are 7 missionaries in my district. Elderes Toma, Wickhamshire, Johnson, and Rhoton, and 3 hermanas, Hna Brough, Fisher, and me. We are a trio, which has its challenges, but is fun most of the time.

 

On Sundays (the best day ever btw), we all have to prepare a 5 minute talk IN SPANISH and we are called at random to come up and talk. Considering they call only 6 out of like 50, I thought I was safe. WRONG. Guess who had to give a talk on Enduring to the End in Spanish. Yeah. Speaking of Spanish mine is doing fairly decent. Hna Fisher doesn´t know ANY spanish, but Hna Baugh knows more than me, so we balance each other out. I can roll my r´s when I say words like hombres (shoulders) nombre (name) Cristo (christ) etc. Seeing a pattern? :)

 

I swear I am going to gain like 40 pounds here. They feed you SO much and all you ever do is eat and sit and eat and sit. But the food is actually really good.

 

The Hispanas here are HI-larious. We have 4 in our room and despite the language barrier we are always rolling on the floor laughing by bedtime. We pretty much play charades and they say english words like "shut up!" and "toothpaste!". Hna Montanas taught us the Macarena (the words) a few nights ago.

 

Did an Elder Allen ever serve in our ward? Because I am in the CCM with his sister down here! She was so excited when she found out and started saying things like "WBL Ward getting dissolved" and "Roushars".

 

P Day is the second best day of the week, besides Sunday, since we aren´t holed up in a classroom for 10 plus hours. We have pretty much chilled, played sports, went to the temple (which was awesome) and now we are emailing! We do have classes later, but esta bien.

 

Okay, so package info. Don´t worry about the packages, they get here. No catholic stickers, just write HERMANA JUDD really big on the package. I still haven´t gotten Dear Elders yet but I think that will happen tonight.

 

FUNNY PHRASES OF THE WEEK:

"Como se dice how?" - Hna Baugh

"I´ve been 19 for 1 1/2 years" - Yours Truly

"Yo se que El Libro de Mormon es avocado" - Eld Toma (it´s supposed to be verdadero)

"I just love foreign stale cereal. It´s like a surprise game, a treasure hunt." - Hna Michaelis

 

Alright I love all of you and hope to hear from you soon! I don´t think I´ll be emailing next Tuesday since we are going to Walmart (holla), but it will be sometime, like Monday or Wednesday.

 

Love you!

Hna Judd

I'm Alive!!!

Okay so the keyboards here are really weird. anyways i´m sorry that i couldn´t write yesterday, we didn´t have internet! so we have like 5 minutes today to send a quick email. we are under a hurricane warning right now!!! not going to be a bad one though. I got suuuuuper home sick yesterday and was crying and wanting to go home but today is better.

So we got into guate at about 5.30 am yesterday. the plane ride to guate was good, i had my own row! you could defs tell when we were flying over the border, it was lights, then no lights. at all. there were 13 elderes and 5 hermanas flying. my companions are hna fisher and hna baugh. they are both from utah. we share a room with 4 latinas, who we can barely talk to! today hna baugh asked "como se dice how?" hahaha...she asked how do you say how. :)

The food is really good here. i like it a lot. we have had chinese, lots of eggs, and today for almuerzo (lunch) we had cafe rio.

I can roll my r´s kind of already! gift of tongues i tell ya.

We are teaching our first investigator tonight (although i have my suspicions that he is actually a member...) so that will be really interesting! I am very excited about that. We have been lesson planning for the first couple hours.

Okay so we have to go already but know that i am okay and that i love you all and i am doing good!

I´ll have some more info on packages the next time i can talk (sometime next week, no idea when).

love,

Hermana Judd