Hola!

Second P-day (: the days are starting to blend together and they are all the exact same. It seems like just as I lay down and finally get some shut eye my alarm goes off and its time to start the next day. I really love the language and am having an amazing time learning and applying it as we teach practice investigators everyday. It's now August, which means it's the month that I will leave for the field! I'm so excited to get out to Xalapa and be able to actually change some lives. On the 2nd of August, we had a 24 hour fast along with a District fast and testimony meeting. Its amazing to see how fast people can not only learn and begin to understand a language, but be able to stand up and testify in a different language what they know to be true in the gospel (me being one of them). After having the district sacrament meeting and ending our fast, we had a goodbye devotional to our older part of the district. Its a tradition to sing ´God be with you till we meet again´ in Spanish of course. I said goodbye to my ´grandparents´ of 13B and even though I had only known them for two weeks, they were the first to introduce my district to the CCM and I had some really cool bonds with them. Especially one who a golfer for BYU Hawaii.... the only thing keeping us from being brothers was the fact that he didn't go to the promised land of the U of U for school (;

 

The Spanish is coming along great. I'm picking it up really fast and its awesome.  My comp is super cool. He taught me how to solve a Rubiks cube. My schedule is wake up at 6:30 go to study time at 7. breakfast at 8. classroom language or doctrine study until 11:30. gym until 1. lunch then study time and then TALL, a computer language learning software until 3:30, and then classroom stuff until 6:30. dinner then and then classroom work until 9:30. then we head home and have personal study or get ready for tomorrow.

 

We were extremely lucky to take part in a devotional by Russell M Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He talked about how we need to become ´epistles´ of Christ. In other words a writing or account of the life of the Savior and that our job as missionaries is to share that account with everyone we meet. I cannot wait to go to Xalapa to share all I know with the people. From what I've heard so far is that it's hot, humid, rains everyday, and that the work is changing so many lives down there. I did hear the other day of a missionary who recently left the CCM to go to the Xalapa mission, and while trying to teach was spit on. Now at first it scared me. In fact it terrified me that I was going to be in a place where I'd be considered an outcast or that I would be as this Elder, mocked and spit on... and then I realized, even if this did happen, I wouldn't be alone. My older brother and Savior Jesus Christ will have gone through what I'm suffering and then more, and more, and more. Whenever I thought about all that Christ went through and all that he did for us, it gave me comfort in realizing I'm not the only one with tough times. In fact when I'm at my lowest it's Christ that carries me through my difficulties. I had a really good talk with my branch president about this and was the one who helped me realize that its not missionary vs  the world, even though it may feel like that at times.

 

Today, Thursday, we went into Mexico City and had a really long scary drive to have visas extended or something.. I really didn't know why we went, just that I got to go out of the walls of the CCM was enough to get me interested. The hour and half drive through the city was life altering as people in Mexico don't care about right of way... after taking care of things in the city, our bus driver took us around the city to take pictures of cool statues and buildings throughout the area we were near. Anyway its been a great week, and I love this place. It may get a little repetitive... but I know that it's the right place to be and that in 3 weeks it will be the start of the best and hardest 2 years of my life!

 

Love,

 

Elder Babcock

 

P.S. I became friends with an Elder who just left. His suit had holes in it he, his ties stained and his shoes worn. Yet he was the happiest and most loving person. Right before he left the CCM we switched ties. Seeing his face light up when he got the tie made it all worth it. The tie is the red and blue paisley one. Although I loved the tie, seeing him get excited over it was 1000x better than wearing the tie myself. We wrote each other messages on the ties and then we said goodbye. Anyway that's all.

 

The complete district

Downtown Mexico City for visa extension