September 25, 2013 -- Last week in the CCM

bored on the bus on our way to the temple, thats elder jolley behind me

laundry day with herm. pierce

this is a common looking taco stand you see here in mexico, there are firework shops and taco stands just about everywhere here.

heyyyyyy!!!! so this is my last week at the CCM in Mexico! its been very bitter sweet this week, im getting very sentimental and i keep thinking this is probably the last time ill eat ice cream in Mexico, or im gonna miss these cement squares that drive me crazy because they are spaced out weird and you cant walk on them at a normal pace (you´d understand if you were here), or that im going to miss these randomly huge torrential down pours that turn our road into the grand riviera.

really most of all im going to miss my teachers and the people ive come so close to here, especially my district and our roommates :(.

but its all so awesome knowing that my time is only beginning and the people im going to get to know and the experiences im going to have are only going to get better!!! which is so awesome. ive got 17 more months of the hardest, coolest, best thing ive ever done in my life so far! i wish they would let you go on a mission after your mission! maybe that will be the next big announcement in the next general conference...

okay so there are a couple big things that happened this week, haha one of them was a language mishap haha. so. me and herm. peirce were having gym time, bicycling our little hearts away and getting ourselves prepared for the field when we really have to bike and we had a couple natives in the room with us and there was a companionship right next to us that we were talking to in spanish about what our favorite food was here at the CCM. i tried to explain what an oreo was because theres this amazing lemon pudding thing with oreos in it that i love but i dont know what pudding is in spanish, nor do i know how to explain what an oreo is in spanish either haha all i could say was its black and circular haha anyways we just let that one go haha but she was telling us that she really liked the fruit here and i said tambien! which means me to! and then i tried to ask her if she liked the yellow fruit, but instead of saying amorillo, which is yellow, i said amoroso, which is loving haha so i asked her if she liked the loving fruit here. the natives thought it was pretty funny.

okay but i got something better than that for you today... so we have an elder that played on a rugby team before coming here so our elders in our district have gone and played rugby for the last couple of gym times. well, they were playing rugby and one of our elders in our district got his tooth knocked out!!! i guess he just got to close to someone and got elbowed in the mouth. haha it was terrible. but he got to go to the dentists in Mexico and got it fixed haha but man what a story for him when he gets home to tell.

and one last big thing that happened yesterday. so remember how i told you that we have had two big hurricanes that we are getting the side effects of? well this whole week has been pretty nice compared to last week. there have been random downpours but it hasnt been that bad. well yesterday it rained the entire ocean on the CCM in 30 minutes. it was crazy!!! i have pictures to prove it! 

and ya! our street turned into a river yesterday! to bad we didnt have a tube to float down in it! 

 the day of the the grand riviera right outside our front door, we even got a new swimming pool! 

it was so much fun! talk about a puddle jumpers dream. its cool though because the ground here is like a sponge and it disappears and quickly as it comes and everything is back to normal.

ah man i love it here, i love the weather, the people, the experiences, and the feeling of the spirit. ill miss it, but i cant wait to get to minnesotaaaaa!!!!

until next time,

love hermana ficklin

September 18, 2013

Here are some photos of the fiesta and some other fun things! hope you enjoy haha 

and that is president and hermana pratt at the fiesta 

and this is my zone hermana dodson elder hart elder whiting and elder christiensen

and elder brasseaux is the one up on stage

these are the natives that were going crazy at the fiesta haha

WEEK FOUR! im on week four. already. that is so weird. because that doesnt sound like ive been out for that long, but it seriously has felt like ive been here for a year. no joke. but its also weird to think ive only got two weeks left in the CCM. that will be a sad but exciting day!

okayyy so this week has been fun! on saturday we celebrated mexicos independence day and I will say that was SO MUCH FUN! the natives here were going crazy! If you can imagine what a typical mexican party is (sombreros, the dancing mariachi girls, fireworks, the arrrrrriiiibbbbbaaas and ayayayayayas and ahahahahahahas and MEXICO,MEXICO,MEXICO!) thats really what it was like! and thats all you could hear haha! and then we sung the mexican anthem which is a fun anthem 

--- Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck5fjxHoubg

(: its fun to listen to) and Mexicans really have so much pride for their country. 

then on sunday, the mexican tradition is that you stay up all night until the next morning, because the actual independence day is on the 16th, but as missionaries 11 o clock is good enough haha i felt like it  was two in the morning! so at 11 o clock we all met at the gym to watch the president of Mexico ring the bell of independance at this ancient palace, and from what i remember president pratt telling us that this place that they meet to ring the bell is a meeting place that the Mexicans have met at for centuries, even before the spaniards came, and so its a very old tradition. im really interested to find out more about it sometime! 

---Here is a link to a bell ringing ceremony with the Mexican President:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOuNPassFvc

haha okay so its been raining  SO MUCH! right now there are two hurricanes on both sides of us so we´ve been getting the side effects of them here. Mexico city is actually built on a lake and so the ground sinks every year. at the temple  they were telling us that the temple has these big poles that go down to the bed rock that help the buildings from sinking and in one part of the courtyard of the temple they showed us a pole that they said was when they first built the temple it was under the ground, and now its probably sticking four feet  out of the earth! it was crazy to see! so this whole week the ground has just been a swamp! haha you REALLY have to watch where you step. needless to say i learned my lesson. on saturdaywhile we were waiting to get into the gym for the fiesta, i had to run back to my casa,and my casa isnt that far away from the gym, you just have to cross the field of grass to get to our back door. so it was getting dark and my shoes were already wet because here your shoes are almost always wet haha but i got maybe half way out and i basically just sunk into maybe two or three inches of mud and water and grass and my shoe almost didnt come out with my foot hahaha it was the funniest thing and then my shoe was all squishy with mud the rest of the night. it was gross. but tis the life of a Mexico CCM missionary haha (:

so my ´´investigators´´ who are my teachers right now, hermana valdez and hermano hardy, are awesome!  they choose investigators they taught on their mission and pretend to be them. hermana valdez is amanda right now and its really cool to be able to practice teaching and finding out that i can teach! and in spanish! really bad spanish, but ive learned that speaking isnt as important as what the holy ghost does in the lessons. its the coolest thing and even though they arent real investigators, i love teaching them and im so excited to go out and teach! 

okay so one fun thing that has started up this week is a game our district calls ´´what are the odds´´ haha and its a dare game basically. so ill explain with what one of the elders did haha so the salsa here is soooo good! but the salsa lately has been extremely spicy, even just a little bit sets your mouth on fire for a week (jk more like an hour) haha so one of the elders went up to hermana livingston during lunch and said ´´what are the odds that you eat a spoonful of that salsa´´ haha and you have to pick at what odds you have to do it by picking between 1 and 15 and you can make your odds higher by only choosing numbers between like 1 and 5 or 1 and 7 ect. so hermana livingston chose her odds between 1 and 7  and so hermana dodson counted one, two, three! and they both yelled out their numbers and they both yelled out ´´four!´´ haha and since they both  said the same number, she lost the odds haha so she had to eat a spoonful of salsa haha and she was dying! haha its been funny to see what people have had to do. i made elder hart lose his odds and every time elder whitting talked to elder hart, elder hart had to repeat anything he said to him as a question. haha and elder whitting didnt know he had to do that haha

anyways this week has been good. there have been great days and hard days but everyday has been a day of change and learning and im so greatful for this opportunity to learn and grow and to make my weaknesses strengths. love you all! love hermana ficklin (:

September 11, 2013

About the photos: the temple again, and the dome building is the virgin of the guadalupe basillica i think is what its called. its a pilgrimige part and these are the cafeteria decorations for the 16th

(See Kaylani's letter after the photos - and some new tidbits about the food.)    : )

Hey everyone! okay so here's the low-down on the last week or so!  haha its been a lot of fun here! Im finally starting to get over that hill of the language being difficult, its now starting to get easier and easier to learn, and i understand people better everyday, which is nice!

this week has been full of alot of funny things so ill share them with you (: so my comp hermana peirce doesnt like animals that much and she was telling me how she hates birds (because they are all over here) and that she hopes that she never gets pooped on by one... haha well the next morning she got pooped on by a bird. haha she was not happy about that.

and last week one of the elders asked if he could borrow my scissors for a second to cut something and i said yes and gave them to him and then he gave them back and i put them in my bag. when i got home that night i wanted to cut out some of my pictures and i couldnt get my scissors to open, so me and hermana peirce are using all our strength to try and open these darn scissors and we cant figure out why they wont open! haha and then i realized that they were super glued shut haha. elder horne had used my scissors to cut off the top of his super glue and it had got on my scissors and glued them shut haha.

 oh man, okay and this is fun, so it rains ALOT here, usually every day around 5 o clock until 8 or 9 and our shoes just get soaked from it and we have to spend the rest of the night in soggy shoes and socks (that feeling isnt my favorite)! the other day there was probably an inch of rain that we had to walk through. so we got smart and just took our shoes off and we just walk barefoot around outside to save our shoes, which we should have thought of a long time ago haha but i like it!

oookayy so the food here is getting better and better (ive even heard that the food here is better than the provo mtc) i think that they are trying to americanize the food here, they had whopper candy in the salad the other day haha and we had mac and cheese spaghetti and we have pizza every tuesday night. i really like the food here alot! they have this yummy yellow fruit that tastes like a pear and a mango and then the seeds in the middle taste like banana. we´ve been having some good mexican treats this week because the 16th is Mexico’s independence day  (found out they dont celebrate cinco de mayo here) and we’re gonna have a Mexico night this week which im excited to see what thats about!

ummm oh! me and hermana peirce have been doing alot of tennis and ping pong lately so im getting better at those, and our district is always playing volley ball, so my serve is getting pretty good!

haha okay so we sing alot here, which i love, but we sing alot haha, um so me and my comp and our other district hermana companionship thought it would be funny to start a rap hymn group and we thought it was funny to think about how president pratt would take that if we told him that we had a number for sacrament and got up there and started rapping hahaha! we have alot of fun here but there are so many awesome spiritual and learning moments here that i cant get enough of.

Each and every day im here there is a new trial for me and i never know what to expect day by day. im just learning how to better myself in every aspect really and its so cool to see day by day my progression whether it be with the language, the gospel, my testimony, my relationship with God, and even just learning my own weaknesses and how the experiences here are showing me how to strengthen them. ive been learning that what God wants you to teach your investigators, he wants to you learn as well.

Elder Holland is my favorite speaker, we´ve heard two of his devotionals here and he is a compelling speaker and every time you just walk out thinking wow, i am going to do my best to be the best missionary in the world! and your just so pumped and filled with the spirit, and a little intimidated by him haha but one day, im going to be able to speak like him.

being here has given me such motivation to do so much more with myself. im learning to be able to put my complete faith and trust in God which has been so cool!

Hermano Hardy has been teaching us that we can ask specific prayers, like very specific prayers, and Ive been praying ALOT here and ive asked for some very specific prayers and ive seen some miracles happen here that has made my faith in God increase so much. Ive learned how truely important prayer is and how we can use it effectively and if there is one thing i would tell you, is to pray haha prayer is so powerful and i love it!

theres been so much ive learned here already and i wish i could write about all of them but im out of time :( but just know that God knows who you are personally and he is ready and willing to bless you if you give him your all. okay until next time!

love you all!

love hermana ficklin