04.17.2014 Email

HOLA familia! 

 

Don't worry i still cant speak spanish so dont get your hopes up. I dont have a super a lot of time to email, but everything is going pretty good! Also this keyboard is extremely hard to type and its a spanish keyboard so i have no idea where anything is. Anyways, My comps name is Hermana Dodge. She is really nice, shes from Orlando, Florida and she is going somewhere in Honduras. We get a long really well, sometimes she is hard to work with, but she reminds me a lot of me too. she is super blonde sometimes so it makes me feel good about myself. haha. There are two other missionaries here going to Tempe, AZ too so thats good.

 

 Well the first few days were very overwhelming, but it got a lot better on sunday, and everyday after that just goes by SO fast. I really can't believe it. The air here smells like sewer, especially when the wind blows. its gross. but we all live in little houses with about 6 rooms, a kitchen, laundry room, and living room in each. The Mexico MTC is the largest MTC in the world, it doesnt have the most people here, but it has 90 acres of land. so its cool, its like a little village. We share our room with Hermana Voyles, who is from Vegas, and Hermana  Rust, who is from Vernal. They are really nice and funny. At night we never get anything done because we just stay up and laugh about everything, its crazy cause i feel like ive known them forever!

 

The food here is pretty good. actually on a scale of 1 to 10 its like a solid 5. They serve like real mexican food and its kind of gross. the past few days have been a lot better but i usually just end up eating fruit. EVERYBODY here eats toast a nutella. its like a huge thing. They have nutella and peanut butter in the cafeteria until pretty late at night, and everyone goes and eats it. I haven;t tried peanut butter with nutella but i do put nutella on the toast. So basically Ive just eaten fruit and nutella and toast lately. awesome.

 

The bugs here are SO bad. The very first night we left the window open because it was so hot and we had so many mosquitoes in our room! But then we learned to spray the screen with bug spray at night. works pretty good. Sometimes we still find some in our room though. I have gotten like 4 mosquito bites on my face already and only like 2 anywhere else. So i guess my face must taste pretty dang good. Also, I think i got a spider bite on my chest because i thought it was a weird bump but it hurt so bad so i picked it off and then it turned black.. so hopefully i don't die.

 

 We also arent supposed to have food in our rooms because cockroaches will get in our house. The elders in our district always find cockroaches in their room becuase they have food in there all the time. So there is this Tongan girl in my district and her cousin died last week, and i guess when you have a family member die its their tradition to give them candy and food. So there is another elder in our district who is tongan and so all the elders bought a BUNCH of food and candy from the Tienda and gave us a whole bag on our doorstep. So we have so much food in our house right now. its awesome, but i swear if i see one cockroach i am throwing it all away i dont even care.

 

 But lets see.. Its started raining a lot the last few days. itll be sunny in the morning and then it will just down pour in the evening. its so crazy. It is way pretty here. There are so many houses up on the mountain right behind us and they are all colorful. The sunrise in the morning is so pretty. I will have to take a picture sometime. Also, there are these huge like cannon things that go off all the time. all day, all night. it sounds like we are getting bombed, but apparently it is something with the catholic church? i dunno.

But spanish is going pretty good. I was really frustrated and stressed the first few days because i could not understand anything at all. I still cant, but I think I am getting better. Sometimes I still get frustrated. Everybody was saying that the spanish language is the easiest language to learn so i thought i would have it in the bag, then I got here and realized i know nothing. But it definitely is total immersion. Our teacher only speaks spanish to us in class. and if we say and english word we have to do a push up! He is really cool though. I love him so much! his name is Hermano Sanchez. He is the funniest person ever. But we had our first investigator lesson last friday, it had to be a 20 minute lesson completely in spanish. It was so hard. We mainly just read straight from the Preach My Gospel. Then we had a lesson with him saturday, monday, yesterday and we have another lesson today. It is so hard doing a lesson in spanish and actually expressing yourslef because you don't know like any words in your head. But yesterday we got him to commit to baptism. which was awesome! So we will have to see how tonight goes! Every week we have to prepare a 5 minute talk in spanish and then in sacrament meeting they will randomly call people to come give talks. Its terrifying. My companion had to last sunday, which means i didn't have to, but i might have to this sunday, so im way scared! I can now bear my testimony in spanish though, which is good. and i can kind of pray, not as well as my testimony which is super weird. but yeah so i guess i am improving little by little! Spanish is hard, but I love the social life here! I have made a lot of new friends which is fun, my district is so fun! I love it so much. In my district we have three pairs of Hermanas and two pairs of Elderes. We used to have four pairs of hermanas, but they switched to a different district. There are usually two districts in each zone, but yesterday we got new missionaries in and they are in our zone, so we are going to have three districts in our zone, which will make us the biggest zone here! The Elderes in my district and zone are way nice and so funny. And I do know two people here! Connor Steed is here, he leaves next week and he is going to Texas, and Haden Porter is here too! I think he's going to Honduras? Not exactly sure. But yeah guess who my zone leader is, Haden Porter! haha or should i say Elder Porter. It was super weird at first, well I guess it still is kind of weird, but I see him a lot, obviously, and he's actually super fun. his companions name is Elder Sessions. And I LOVE him. He is the coolest person I know, I love hanging out with them. 

 

I did meet the girl from Kent and Kristas ward, I sat by her at dinner one time! She's really nice. But yeah, I think that's about it. I havent gotten too homesick which is good, Saturday night was probably the worst, I was just having a hard time because  felt like I didnt know spanish. Its cool becuase we only pray and sing in spanish and I love singing in spanish, it is the coolest thing ever. You can just feel the spirit so strong. 

Well, I hope this was long enough for you, mom.

 

Con amor!

Hermana Johnson

 

P.S. I think I might need you guys to set up a skype account for me because I don't have one? I think. i'm not exactly sure yet. Maybe just set one up for me then I will find out if thats what is supposed to happen. Also, I can't remember the scripture i wanted for my plack, plaque? so i will try to find it and see if i can email it to you today!