Friday, February 3, 217
Hello everyone!
I hope you've all been doing well without me! This Sunday marks the end of my second week at the Missionary Training Center (MTC). I'll be speaking Spanish on my mission, so I'm at the MTC in Mexico City! Since I know not all of you are members of this church, and those of you who are don't all speak Spanish, I'll start by explaining a few things. An "investigator" is someone who is interested in the church that the missionaries are teaching. Male missionaries are called elders (élderes in Spanish) and female missionaries are called sisters (hermanas). The MTC is where we receive training on how best to teach, serve, and speak the language. In Spanish, it's called el Centro de Capacitacón Misional, or CCM, instead of MTC. Each missionary has a companion (compañero) who they spend pretty much all their time with. Each companionship is part of a district (distrito). Each district has a district leader, and two or so districts make up a branch (rama) with whom we go to church and do certain activities. Most of the time, we are with our district. Once a week we have P-Day, or preparation day, when we can do things like laundry, take pictures, and email.
Now that that's out of the way, I'll talk about my compañero. His name is Elder Youngblood, and he's from Tennessee. He ran cross country and track, and he's very spiritual. Overall, we've gotten along pretty well. In the picture with our whole district, he's on the far right, next to me.
Sorry we're all closing our eyes, it was super bright, but our preparation day is the only day we can take pictures, and we needed some pictures! We'll take better ones later. From left to right, there's Elder Bullough (District Leader), Elder Jorgenson, Hermana de Benito, Hermana Harris, Hermana Doyle, Hermana Smith, Hermana Caldwell, Hermana Bradshaw, me, and Elder Youngblood.
We've been studying Spanish every day except Sunday. The majority of each day (except Sunday) is spent learning Spanish and learning how to teach. We've had a fake "investigator" to teach. He's actually one of our teachers, Hermano Rosales, and he's super nice. We had to practice teaching in Spanish, which was kind of a challenge since we don't speak that language. My Spanish classes in school have helped a lot, but it's very different from actually speaking the language. The teachers all know English, and can sometimes help us out, but the Latino missionaries don't usually speak any English.
I'm running out of time to write, so I have to wrap this up. I'm really enjoying my time here, and I've loved learning Spanish. Feel free to email me if you have questions or just want to talk to me. You can also write physical letters if you have the address of the CCM. I can only read emails on P-Day (Friday for me), but I can read physical letters as soon as they arrive, so if you want to make sure I can read it when it comes, letters are better. It doesn't really matter either way to me, it's just for if you'd rather I read it sooner.
Anyway, I'm out of time. I don't have many pictures yet, but I will make sure to send more next week!
Elder Rowe
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