Feliz Navidad!

From July 28, 2015

Hermanas Glauser and Houghton.  Hehehehehe.  Love you all.  P.S. isn´t the CCM beautiful!?

Dear Family, Friends, and Wonderful People,

Feliz Navidad!  These are our two (random) Christmas trees
 (which our progenitors acquired somehow)

I have less than a week left in the CCM, and it´s weird to say the least.  My district and generation is now the oldest, and my zone will have 3 other districts that are younger than us by Wednesday.  Ew.  But it does encourage the Elders to (occasionally) be serious and set a good example.  It´s fun, and we´re still learning SO much, ever day.  Teaching lessons in Spanish has become  a lot easier, although I´m sure my grammar is horrible, and occasionally, when I say something that I think makes perfect sense, my investigator/teacher just stares at me with a blank look and I know I´ve missed something!  In other news, we celebrated Christmas in July on Saturday (complete with Christmas trees, Caroling (in Spanish AND English), and "presents" (riddles and jokes)).  We said "Feliz Navidad" to everyone we saw, and many of the Mexicanos were confused--we explained and they still just thought we were weird.  

Okay, other awesome/funny moments from the week include a visit from the Director of ALL international MTC´s in the world, and a talk from him.  He showed us pictures of all the others MTC´s (in places like Ghana, South Africa, Madrid, Bogota, the Phillipines, New Zealand, etc.) and they are ALL beautiful (everyone really liked the England one especially Luke!).  For your information, the Mexico MTC is the second largest, and can house up to 1200 people (I think we have about 600-700 people here right now), but is spread out on 95 acres.  Whereas the Provo MTC (the largest) can house 3000 and sits on roughly 35 acres.  So I guess you could say we´re blessed beyond belief!  Also, they don´t have palm trees, random flocks of green parrots, or perfect weather  in Provo :)  All bragging aside, it is gorgeous here and I will miss it a LOT.  

Also, when the Director spoke on Sunday, the MTC choir sang the EFY medley in Spanish (if you have not heard it, it is AWESOME, and powerful, and wonderful) and I loved it.  The best part is when the choir joins together and sings "Como el ejercity de Helaman, Debemos obedecer, Seremos misioneros del Señor llevando al mundo su verdad" (We are as the Army of Helaman, we have been taught in our youth.  And we will be the Lord´s missionaries to bring the world His truth).  This line is especially powerful when sung by about a hundred Elders and Hermanas.  

On a less-spiritual note, one of the Elders in our zone told a story one evening that went like this: "So I played the susaphone (tuba) in high school, and one time I was standing in formation, just chilling there, and this clarinet player just ran into me!"  End of story.  We all sat there waiting for the punch-line for about 10 seconds and then fell over laughing.  It´s nice to have a fellow-tuba player in the District though!

Okay, in case you were wondering if we got anything productive done this week, we are currently learning about present subjunctive in Spanish, and we just finished going over the two separate types of past tense (preterite and imperfect) and conditional verbs.  Also, I´m currently working on memorizing D&C 4 (in Spanish, of course).  And, in the mean time, there is an epidemic in the CCM and several members of our zone have contracted a nasty virus with fevers, unhappy tummies and the works.  I´m praying I don´t catch it before I head out on Monday, and we´re all under strict instructions to NOT shake hands with other people, and to WASH hands ALL the time.  

Now that you´ve heard way more than you wanted to about my life, PLEASE send me some info. about your own!  I love to get emails, and I ESPECIALLY love letters and postcards!

I love you all, be safe and happy!

Hermana Houghton

This is the gym where we... play ping pong.