August 22, 2013

Oh my lanta where to begin. I’m famished. The food here is either going to kill me from starvation or from the… well you obviously know. I really thought I wasn’t a picky eater. Well, I stand corrected. I live in casa 13. In my room there is just Hermana L and I.  The first night we had roomates, but one had such good Spanish that she got moved to the 2 week program and left her companion to join a trio.  Casa 13 is known as the cockroach house. We were swarming with them the first few days, and we had to be fumigated.  Isn’t Mexico great? Hermana L is my companion, she’s from Springville, Utah, she played softball at Western Nebraska, loves sports, being one of the guys, hates girls,and speaks almost fluent Spanish.

BUT ANYWAYS I’m in District 13E.  It consists of Elder H, Elder M, Elder D, Elder A (district leader), Elder H, Elder H, Elder T, Elder W, Elder N, and Elder S. These guys are a crazy bunch and basically never do anything when they are supposed to, they’re the closest thing I have to family so I’m learning to love them.  Well I already do, but yeah..Our days feel never ending.  From 6 to 10: 30 we are constantly going, studying, teaching(in Spanish), on repeat.

On our 3rd day we got to teach an investigator, not a real one, she’s actually going to start teaching us tomorrow, but we thought she was. Like I mentioned earlier Hermana L is good at Spanish so lucky we have survived the past 6 discussions with no thanks to me.  So yeah spanish is hard and I cry about it almost every day. PRAY FOR ME PLEASE.

So back to my crazy district, yesterday they caught a hummingbird and it died in the box they kept it in, so there’s that.  It flew in my face, and I almost had a heart attack.  These boys are the younger brothers I’m so glad I was NOT blessed with. But on Monday we were all feeling kind of homesick so Elder H had this bright idea to do a "talk show" "late night with Elder H" and you know what? I ain’t even sorry I was the second guest on the show. Haha, it was a time where basically the class could ask any(appropriate) question to the one being interviewed and I’m gonna be straight with you, it was hilarious. It was during language study time though so Elder A finally flipped the lid on it, but I don’t regret it.  It was nice for me to kinda get to know the guys in my district, as weird as they are.

The weather here is so weird. Weird being good.  It’s perfect weather. It’s not too hot or not too cold, we don’t have a heater, we don’t have AC.  We leave the doors and windows open just to circulate the air, but it’s not bad at all. Also at night we get the prettiest view of the houses on the hill (you won’t get a picture though because were only allowed to talk pictures on p day. Maybe next week? For the first week we kept hearing what sounded like gun shots all day long, followed by sirens. Here’s a relief: only SOME of them are gunshots. I guess there’s a hospital near and whenever a baby is born they do fireworks, whenever someone dies they fire off a cannon, what a relief huh? It really was, because our classroom is right by the exit/entrance so we were legitimately scared. Also there was a tiny earthquake last week, we had to evacuate the buildings, they’re so worried about aftershock and all that.

This morning we went to the temple and we feel like we were chickens running with our heads chopped off. We had a devotional on Tuesday and the man who spoke told us to pray for ourselves to see if Heavenly Father Loves us, does He really have a body of flesh and bones, is He really our Father, does He know who I am and does He love me as a father loves His children. I thought I knew these things but after praying for days and receiving a true answer by the Spirit today I am telling you, you have GOT to do this yourself. I was overwhelmed with love and knowledge it was one of the greatest feelings I have ever received.  I was brought to tears. I challenge you all to pray to find these answers yourself. Also while I’m at it with that devotional read 1 Nephi 8. Decide now what kind of person you are going to be, be the ones who fall to the ground when you see Jesus Christ. I haven’t read any emails besides this first one mom sent me, but I will be able to print them out and read them later, just know that I love you all, I know that I am serving the Lord and doing what He asked of me. It’s hard, but nothing worth having is given to you. You have to work and find out for yourselves, I love and miss you all but would not rather be anywhere else.  I love you all!

Love always,

Hermana Groves