Tuesday, June 24, 2014

HOLA peeps

hola!

ok I wish I had some crazy stories to tell like last week... but nothing too exciting happened! But things are still great here in the ccm. I can´t really remember what I have told you about the ccm so I will just tell you a few of my favorite things... LA TIENDA, which is the little store they have on campus (because we cant leave (which is why some people refer to it as prison)) but anyway the tienda is so hilarious. they just have way random stuff and they give us 120.00 pesos every week to spend at the tienda so we go as much as we can haha. I am pretty sure that we are sugar deprived here so its very convenient that the tienda has candy. I got an adorable el libro de mormon keychain and I may get some other goodies before I leave which is coming up SOON... 

we are starting our 4th week tomorrow can you even believe it?! My companera and I were laughing the other day because we were like we do three things here at the ccm... study, eat, and study (no I didnt add sleep because every time we go to sleep we wake up one second later so I´m not going to count sleep haha). but its so fun and ah I wish everyone could come here just to feel how incredible the spirit is here. its great. 

Have I mentioned how much I love our teachers? probably because they are ADORABLE no joke and SO FUNNY we were seriously blessed with the best teachers ever. It was hilarious the other day we were trying to get hermano soto to say hashtag and he could not say it for the life of him and we were like say "hash brown" and he said it perfectly so we said "say hashtag" and he goes "shash tie" hahaha seriously too die for! 

Ok so every wednesday we do service for a couple hours just doing random stuff around campus and by random  I MEAN RANDOM this week we got brooms and sweeped all the walls of the buildings??? hahaha yeah it was so random and they didn´t look any different when we were done... but like Sister Hinckley said "first obey, then understand" am I right? 

One of my favorite things that we did this week was TRC (which is where you teach volunteers who are sometimes members and sometimes investigators but you just knock on doors in this building and get someone random) I was having a really hard day because I felt like I didn´t know any spanish and I was feeling super discouraged but hermana johnson and I prepared a lesson about the restoration for TRC and we felt pretty good about it. But right when we walked into the room, I knew that we weren´t supposed to teach that lesson and that Cherry (the member we were teaching) needed to hear something else. So we got asking about her family (all in spanish by the way no ENGLES) and her job and found out that she was having a really hard time with her job and making a decision that could affect her job.  So I read in alma 7:11-13 some PERFECT scriptures about the atonement and how Christ knows exactly what ALL OF US are going through.  I poured my heart out to her and we were both crying. I was able to bear my testimony to her in spanish without struggling for the words and then my companion bore testimony of prayer and that if she prayed with a sincere heart about her decision that she had to make that Heavenly Father would listen to her and help her feel peace with whatever choice she ended up making. It was so cool and I gained such a strong testimony of how the spirit testifies to us as we teach.  Because its not us that touch the hearts of those we teach its the Espiritu Santo (Holy Ghost) and if we realize that, and do our part to prepare, the Spirit will do the rest. 

Did I tell you about sunday nights? we get to watch a movie every sunday night! which is super exciting even if they are all church movies.. we watched the testaments (I think thats what its called) and it was so funny because there was laughing and gasping from all the missionaries when there was kind of a little "romance story" 

oh and I talked in church on sunday! They make everyone in the zone write a talk and then on sunday they just randomly call people up to speak and lucky me I got to speak haha. I spoke on the atonement and I would love to send you guys my talk but it is in spanish... so maybe I will translate it for you peeps but maybe you´ll just have to learn spanish if you want to read it. 

guys I have a new best friend... my dictionary. 

TODAY HAS BEEN SUCH A GOOD DAY. We got to go to the temple!! well the temple is closed... so we got to go to the visitors center!! but wow it was our first time leaving the ccm in almost 4 weeks so it was crazy exciting for all of us hahaha. It was so fun driving there and actually seeing mexico city. But yeah the temple is gorgeous and so is the visitors center. We watched a movie while we were there about the plan of salvation and it was SO GOOD there wasn´t a dry face in the room. So if you guys get the chance you should go to the visitors center and watch it! 

I do have one request this week.... pray for me to have patience...... there is this elder in our district that has been STRESSING me and hermana johnson out with his laziness in learning the language and he is the district leader so yeah pretty stressful when youre trying to learn a new language and it sort of feels like he is purposely holding back the class haha. but prayers are always welcome! 

I am pretty sure I have gained at least 600 pounds while being here at the ccm (no exaggeration (jk)) but for reals they feed us so much and I am a sucker for the chile verde enchiladas SO GOOD. but lucky for me they have cereal every morning Zucharitas (frosted flakes) and froot loops! 

Oh guess what? Hermana Johnson and I are singing with another district in our zone at the devotional this coming sunday! we are singing I know that my redeemer lives but in espanol of course. It is beautiful. If you have computer access you should look it up in spanish im obsessed. 

Every monday night we have FHE with our zone and we play signs hahaha. it is so crazy and funny because everyone gets so into it. 

ok Im sorry I didn´t have any crazy stories this week! I will try and make something crazy happen this week so my email will be more interesting. I

 LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH and I love this gospel with all my heart. Thanks so much all of you for your examples and for being my family/friends you´re all amazing :)

todos mi amor
hermana wortley

(feel free to send my emails to anyone who wants to read them but make sure to warn them about how weird they are first haha)
oh and send me more pictures I love seeing all of your beautiful faces.´

these were taken today at the visitors center/temple!


Tuesday, June 17, 2014

HOLA DUDES

HOLA again from sunny or not so sunny mexico!! 

THE RAIN ROCKS. 

First off happy fathers day pops you rock. 

Ok ah I will try to write as much as I can but to be honest we do the same thing every day anyways so sorry if it sounds repetitive. 

Ok so BIG NEWS everyone is always talking about how amazing tuesdays are because its pizza day and we have a live broadcast devotional from provo so we were super pumped and it was also our P(party)day jk we dont party. but anyways we get to the lunchroom and quess where the pizza was from....... COSTCO. so yeah I guess you could say it was the best day ever a little piece of btown. 

and that night it was CRAZY (I do all caps for emphasis) we were in the auditorium which has these doors at the bottom and during the devotional it started POURING no joke it was raining so hard and then the people on the first four rows of the auditorium had to move because there was a river im not even exaggerating RIVER going through the auditorium hahaha it was so hard to pay attention to the speaker because we were busy watching people try to get the water out of the building. so that was exciting. 

Ok wednesday hna. johnson and I fasted for our investigator and for our spanish because spanish is hard and its hard to teach someone when you cant talk to them. but our lesson with gabriel went good and "we committed him to baptism" I put that in quotations because "gabriel" aka hermano tapia is now our afternoon teacher (I like to call him hno. tapioca)!! haha so that was hilarious when we found that out. he is so funny though and he always says HOla like a gingo and como ESTAR its so funny. We love our district and our teachers so things are good. 

Last night we went to a devotional and it was an old one from january of 2013 by elder holland and it was amazing! I seriously reccommend that you all look it up. It really hit me about how lucky we are to be living in this dispensation and to have missionary work moving forward in full force. Watch it and let me know what you think! there were a couple of things he said that really made me think about a few family members of ours (cough cough the strombergs) and how Elder holland doesn´t understand how returned missionaries can become innactive WOW. sorry just a side note but it was super powerful. 

Oh Sam merrill came to the ccm this week! I saw him like one second after he got here and it was so good to see a familiar face! I went up to him yesterday to see how he was doing because that first week FULL of meetings was brutal. but yeah its fun to have someone from BTOWN here. I also met kanelas boyfriend! he is adorable and we took a pic together so we could send it to kanela. 

Ok now for the BEST STORY EVER. So last night aka this morning the carbon monoxide beeper went off at like 3am and I was like eh whatevs I am exhausted so I just fell back asleep and then like 20 minutes later the girls from the room next door were like you need to get up and grab a pillow and blanket we are moving houses. HAHA WHAT yes so we got up and I could not decide if I was sleeping or not so I grab a blanket and clip on my nametag and we go out front of our casa, its also raining, and we all get in this big white van HAHA yeah a bunch of girls got in a big white van in the middle of the night oh my I was so out of it, and we drove like two seconds away to another casa and we got into empty rooms to try and go back to sleep. 
but unfortunately I didn´t fall asleep for like an hour and we had to be up at 6¨´30 so yeah and then we woke up and walked back to our casa to get dressed and the alarm was still going off so we just got dressed really quick and went to do personal study in our classrooms. and its PDAY so after breakfast hna. johnson and I went to the reception of help desk and were like hey our alarm is going off are we ok to go back to our house and do laundry or what? so we ended up going back and cleaned the house and cleaned the bathroom of the girls next to us because we felt like it haha and some peeople came to fix it. 
so turns out we did have some kind of leak coming from the laundry room or something but they took care of it and the also took care of the beeping alarm by removing it HAHAHA #classicmexico anyways it was quite the eventful night and SO FUNNY. 

Im sorry if I sound like a total weirdo.. which you already know I am.. but I promise I am learning and studying A TON. its so great being here and trying to learn as much as I can about the gospel and how to hablo spanish! I made probably 600 flashcards this week with words that I thought I might need to know haha so pretty much the whole language.. my district was laughing at me but hey who is going to be laughing when I am speaking spanish and they arent! 

I love you all so much thank you for being so great and supportive and fabulous and wonderful. 

oh super random but there is this elder here that looks exactly like carson kuhn!! every time I see him he probably wonders why I stare at him hahaha no joke he could be his twin. 

LOVE YOU
hermana wortley


the first pic was taken today of me and hna. johnson and the second was the other day or last pday I don´t remember of our district!



Tuesday, June 10, 2014

June 10, 2014

HOLA AMIGOS Y FAMILIA

Oh my it is so weird that it has been a week already!! but I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY. seriously the ccm (mtc) is the best place ever (after bountiful of course) but 4 realz everyone is so nice and we are all in the same boat trying to learn spanish and what not but yeah things are good here in mexico. 

Ok i only have like 45 minutes left porque so many of you wrote me THANK YOU!!! you made me cry of happiness because i love you all so much anyway.. so I will write as much as I can!! starting at the airport, good news there were like 25 people that flew with me all the way to mexico so that was super fun and we took a pic of all of us so hopefully i can find out whose camera that was taken on LOL. but funny story there was this hermana who was trying to joke about us all chewing gum at the airport and how its against the rules but i could tell she was really concerned hahaha me and a few other girls were laughing because we weren´t even at the mtc yet so I thought that was funny.. also i saw the tiniest person ever at the airport no joke ive never seen anyone tinier. 

skip to the ccm... it was crazy driving here because mexico city is so run down and there is graffiti everywhere but right when you pull into the gates of the ccm it is BEAUTIFUL.. leave it to the church am i right? 

I live in a  casa that has a  living room, laundry room, and 5 rooms with 4 people to a room and each has there own bathroom which is nice, but last night we had 3 rooms full of people leave so thats 3 more bathrooms YAY at least for tonight because there will be about 80 more people each week for the rest of the summer! 

ok my companion..... she is hilariousssssss we LOL all the time and get along so well! she reminds me of you katelyn! and her voice reminds me of the main girl on my big fat greek wedding haha but yeah i have been blessed with an awesome companera! oh and she is from pittsberg (spelling errorrr) (this keyboard is en espanol so yeah oops and no autocorrect) 

Ok on to acutal missionary stuff.. I have definitely realized how missionaries become so close with the Lord because prayer is a refuge. I have been having an awesome time so far but it is hard not being able to speak the language and also being away from you peeps. I wanted to call you guys and tell you all about the ccm but oh wait you cant do that... LOL so I knelt in prayer and thanked my father in Heaven for the opportunity that I have to be a missionary and prayed for you guys and my progression as a missionary. 

Ok I LOVE our teacher, oh and my district. Our teachers name is hermano soto and he is adorable and so funny/sweet and he showed us pictures of his fiance and she is so cute so yeah we are obsessed with them. too bad he gets married a few days after we leave so we will miss the wedding haha.. not that we would be able to go anyways. but yeah last week was pretty much non stop orientations and meeting so it has been good to start our acutal rutine (another spelling error??) 

sorry if this email is kind of all over the place it is only my first one so dont worry they will get better!! and yes trevor, sunday was the best day ever and things have started to pick up. 

ok crazy but we had our first investigator on friday... IN ESPANOL and no i don't speak espanol so it was scary! but it actually went pretty well and he was extremely patient with us! 

THANK you paige and mom for hiding notes in my luggage it was a pleasant surprise to say the least and loved them both! I mailed you guys a family letter today so you'll have to let me know when you get it! 

ok ready for the funniest thing ever?? at least its funny to me and my companera.. we were in our second lesson with gabriel our investigator and things went pretty well except I pretty much read off my notes the whole time because once again no hablo yet haha (but we are practicing¡¡) anyways.. hna. johnson asked gabriel if he would be baptized and then she leaned over to me and said "I just went for it" in english, and for some reason I dont know whether it was actually super funny or if I was just extremely sleep deprived but I started laughing my head off and not just any laugh, the kind where you cant stop... 4 realz CANT STOP I am laughing right now and it was like 3 days ago! anyways It was super funny... oh and so awesome they have a pb and j and nutella sandwich bar at breakfast and dinner just in case you dont like the food which I have had to have a sandwich a few times haha but the food it pretty good! paige it kind of reminds me of costa rica food but not as good. 

SUNDAY was amazing we had an awesome devotional and we got to watch the john tanner movie and a movie about christ (BOTH IN ENGLISH (imagine a clapping emoji)) 

ok now about my district! there are 8 of us, 6 of which are going to Kennewick with me!! so that will be fun! but hna. johnson is going to pheonix. the oldest is 26 and the youngest just barely turned 18 so it is a super diverse group but we get along really well and one of the elders in my district likes parks and rec so #tendermercy 

yesterday We commited our first investigator gabriel to baptism which is a miracle since Im sure he had no idea what we were saying half the time. and we are almost positive he is already a member hahaha but there were some girls who came the same day as us who got a real investigator once again #tendermercy that we weren´t them. 

but yes the first week was good and I love being here. I know that I have a lot of work to do with my espanol ( and its hard because they gave us like 20 books to learn spanish and kind of expect us to teach ourselves #classicmexico) but I am honestly so happy to be serving the Lord even if I am not even in the field yet. oh and sad news for me.. the mexico temple is under construction so we wont be able to go :( but at least we still get to go to the visitors center! 

I love you all so much and am so grateful for all that you do for me and have done for me 

LOVE YOU and MISS YOU LIKE CRAYYY
hermana wortley




Wednesday, June 4, 2014

HOLA

Hola familia!!

I made it to mexico and it is seriously SO beautiful!! it is the biggest mtc in the world and we have only been here about an hour and I already love it. Everyone is so nice. Don´t worry I slept a little bit on the plane so I am not too tired and also good news we had orientation and they are giving us the rest of the day to get settled and we can go to bed whenever we want! haha My companion isn´t here yet so me and a few other girls are just going to explore a little bit until our companeras get here. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH (sorry trevor and cortney and rusty i don´t know your emails) My P day is on tuesday so thats when I will email! tell boom boom i love him and that he is adorable. I will write you more next week about house casas because I haven´t seen them yet! but they sound awesome!!  

love you 4 realzzzzzzzz

hermana wortley :)