Serving In Sacramento! : Cassidy's First Week

Wow, what a week it has been! It´s crazy to know that I've been here a week already! The CCM is wonderful! I didn't know what to expect here but all I can say is that the spirit is so strong here. I love it so much and the people are just amazing. Let me just give you a run down of my week. So last Wednesday I flew here to Mexico and the flying went great. I was a little nervous when I got here to Mexico but I went through immigration and customs just fine. They literally have children working at the airport which was weird. Like this 10 year old boy was checking my luggage and I was so confused lol. Right as I walked out the doors there was a guy with CCM Missionary sign. We talked and he asked if I had seen any other missionaries but I hadn't. Then a Mexican church guy drove me to the CCM. He told me that I could only speak Spanish to him lol. He tried helping me come up with Spanish words and he showed me where the temple was. I got to the CCM and I was the first missionary there. So, that's when I did a check-up with the nurse and wrote a short email to my parents so they know I'm okay. I waited about 2 hours just chillin' because all the missionary's weren't gonna be there till later. So they brought me to my casa and I unpacked and settled in until 6pm. All the buildings here are named after prophets so If I mention a prophets name I'm probably talking about a building here haha. Anyways, at 6 I went to the biggest building, the Thomas S. Monson, and there were all the rest of the new missionaries getting off the bus. Before coming here I had realized that a close friend of mine from Southern Virginia University was coming to the CCM on the same day as well, so I was excited to see her again because we were Visiting teaching companions at SVU together. I found her and we said hi and asked how we were doing. Then, the best part is that we actually are companions here together for the next 6 weeks!!! It's so crazy that these kind of things happen. We both were so excited and we get along so well because we have so much in common!! I'm SO grateful to have her as my companion! The first night was different but we all get along so well. We live in a casa with different new sister missionaries as well. In our room it's me, Hermana Jones, Hermana Brinkerhoff, and Hermana Jordan. We have had such great times together here and we laugh like all the time haha. Our elders are Elder Bown, Elder Bowers, and Elder Ramirez. They are hilarious and so funny. We have an awesome district! We met our Zone too and they're pretty awesome. Our Zone 12 is like the best zone here everyone says, which is so true. We all do sports and play games together on P-day and during work out time.

Thursday, our first real day, was long and challenging but I learned so much in that one day. Friday was pretty great and we got into the hang of things. Our first week we just had a lot of meetings and stuff because we're new. I've met most of the other new missionaries as well, but we all have different schedules so we never really get to see each other unless when we're eating in the cafeteria. So the cafeteria here is nice. They put out a lot of variety and everything is so fresh and good. I have one picture here that shows what we eat. For some reason they serve chicken nuggets for breakfast? lol But anyways the CCM has their own well and water system apart from Mexico so the water is good here so none of us have to worry about getting sick. Plus we only drink bottled water anyways because they have bottled water dispensers everywhere on campus here. On Friday we taught our first investigator in Spanish, so literally our second day here we had to teach a lesson in spanish. Me and hermana Jones said a prayer before and it actually went well. We have taught our investigator, his fake name is Wilberto Suarez, 4 lessons so far and me and hermana jones did our lesson yesterday without any notes or anything, we just said everything from our hearts in spanish. Seriously, the lord has blessed me with the Gift of Tongues because I've learned so much spanish in one week than I had in 4 years during school. All my prayers are in Spanish...I feel like a pro already haha. On Sunday I bore my testimony during fast and testimony meeting in Spanish. The spirit was so powerful that day and me and hermana cried...a lot haha. Sunday was a great day though, so beautiful and just a nice day to not worry about spanish class or anything. Our branch here is pretty awesome. I love our presidency! They are so nice to us and help us out.

Sunday nights we watch a church movie so we watched a couple of clips about Jesus Christ and about the history of the first sister missionaries. Monday was a good fresh start to this week and it was a lot harder because our teacher Hermana Alonso is super harsh on us because we need to get better at speaking spanish. My spanish is good right now, the only thing is being able to respond to people really fast because every Latino here speaks so fast so I try to pick out stuff that they say and try to answer back haha. Tuesday was good and we have devotional on Tuesday nights. It was a devotional recorded at the Provo MTC a few weeks ago and Ronald A. Rasband spoke about the importance of missionaries. It was such a great devotional and afterwards our zone got together to talk about it. It was really nice. You all might be a little bit jealous because it's so beautiful and hot here :) I love it so much I can wear short sleeves all the time :) Today we're going to the temple as a district so that's going to be great! I can't wait to go the Mexico temple :) So right now we are all trying to email before we have to go at like 11. Thank you all so much for the love and support! I know that this is my calling...to serve my Heavenly Father. I´m so grateful to be here as a missionary. This church is true and I love everything about it. I LOVE MEXICO AND THE CCM. LOVE YOU LL! I'll have more time next week to email :)