Week 3 June 30-July 8, 2016

¡Hola Familia! (and friends)

I can only email all of you while I´m at the CCM, but sorry for forgetting my address book last week.

Holy cow our entire District has been looking forward to Pday all week (especially since they changed it) and we´re stoked now that it´s finally here. Pdays and Sundays are simply the best.

First things first- Basically right after emailing last week, we got to go to the Mexico City Temple. I might just have a new favorite temple. It´s so cool, especially with all the designs on it, and there´s escalators inside to get to each floor, and it was kinda funny cause we had to use the translator earphones (where normally the latinos use those in the U.S.). The endowment room was pretty neat, but the Celestial room chandelier was stunning (as always). A cool idea our district had was to bring and read our Patriarchal Blessings in the Celestial room. Let me just say, I believe the veil is thinner in the temple, and it´s pretty neat. :)

There was basically no leg room on the bus ride, so my knees were right up to the seat, but then again, what else is new? But it was fun to see the city and the missionaries were singing hymns (see video).

Saturday (July 2nd) was pretty stressful... we gave a 40 minute "investigator" lesson in spanish and that was rough, and we also had to practice explaining the entire Plan of Salvation in Spanish in 5, 3, and 1 minute(s). Hahaha it was crazy

But Sunday was great. They always are. After church and devotionals, we watched a devotional from Elder Bednar, as well as videos about John Tanner and the Atonement. Overall I just felt inspired to be less selfish and keep and outward perspective on serving God´s children, and not just focusing on myself. I´ve felt this prompting so much in the past few weeks, and it´s really powerful to think about, that these next 2 years belong to the Lord, and to forget myself and focus on serving his children.

Monday was FOURTH OF JULY!! Well there weren´t fireworks cause it´s Mexico, but the cafeteria did their best to make an all-out American meal, Pulled pork sandwiches, corn on the cob, watermelon, cupcakes frosted Red, White and Blue, and (costco) apple pies with a super-processed cherry ice cream. Not to mention super-carbonated cans of Rootbeer that lacked most root beer flavor. But hey, they tried. And everybody stopped eating halfway through so the Americans could sing the Star spangled banned while the Latinos just kinda stood there and videoed us.

Last night was a MONSOON. It usually rains a little here every day, but it poured pretty solidly for about 3 hours. It was basically like a Texas storm, and the streets started to flood. And there was hail. It was pretty exciting.

And now for the funny things this week:

-I didn´t expect half the district to break into singing T-Swift during our planning meeting

-We "stole" a piano from the other classroom cause we were itching to play one and the Latinos don´t usually use them...hahaha we tried to be all Mission Impossible and discreet about it, but the way it thundered while it rolled, we may as well have had a trumpet fanfare preceding us

It´s a pretty rigorous schedule here at the CCM, but I have grown to love that feeling that I´m actually doing something with my summer (and life) when most HS graduates are partying and stuff. I´m grateful for the opportunity to be here, and the strong spirit that resides here.

Until next week,

Elder Stolle

P.S. Josh Erickson I can´t believe you report in 5 days!!! That´s so neat bro- you´ll be awesome.