Week 3!!!!!

Buenas Dias!

This week has been a pretty good one! I've just been in the daily routine of classes, studying, teaching, and playing. Not much new stuff has actually happened this week.

The weather here has been fantastic! It has rained a couple of days but only one of the days did it rain super hard.

We asked what the CCM (Mexican Mission Training Center) was like.

The CCM is pretty big, with a huge wall all the way around ( A rock wall, with metal fencing, and barbed wire circles at the top, like a prison (Hence why one of the nicknames of the CCM is "Spirit Prison")) There are six classroom buildings with about 12 classrooms in each, the buildings are in a layout of 2 by 3.  They are by the Comedor (Cafeteria) and the Thomas S. Monson building (Investigator rooms study area, etc.) The other half of the CCM is devoted to the casas, there are 51 casas with 5 rooms in each. The rooms are nice and big... except ours, ours is the weird one. Ours has a little hallway with a couple chairs and a bench desk thing. Our room is through the short hallway and it is smaller than the others, but apparently our shower is bigger than everyone else.

The most amazing thing we do is teach the fake investigators, because when we are in there the spirit is so strong, not only teaching, but giving us the gift of tongues. When we are teaching the fake investigators the Spanish just rolls off of my tongue and I understand every word, it is incredible.

Our new pretend investigators have agreed to be baptized which is good! The new investigators also have harder problems and harder questions. For example this week our fake investigator "Eric" has to make the decision whether or not to take his mom of life support after the car crash that killed his father and brother, and put her in a coma. This was definitely a hard and delicate thing to teach, but I believe that we did it.

Our gym time is still devoted to soccer. We play soccer so much that my shoes already look like I've been playing for a year, they are pretty worn out ha ha:) But it is always fun to play and relieve the stress that builds up.

These past couple days my roommates and I have started doing the push-up challenge. For those of you who don't know what the push-up challenge is; It is when you start done day by doing 25 push-ups. Then everyday you increase the number you do by 5. Yesterday was my 70 day, it was difficult, but I managed to do my 70 pushups in a row. Tonight is 75 and I'm ready for the challenge! I can't wait to make it to 100 though :)

This week my back muscles that have given me trouble the past year or so seized up again and were really painful. They made it hurt to breath, sit, talk, or  pretty much do anything. Saturday night I had my roommates give me a priesthood blessing which helped so much, within two days I was able to do everything I wanted. Even though it is healed I can still feel that they are really tight. I am stretching and taking preventative measures, but I would appreciate it if everyone would pray for my back to loosen up and not cause me pain.

This week I got a package from my family with some treats and it made my day. It made everyone jealous because I have received 2 packages whereas most have received none. But I shared my treats with everyone.;)

In class they don't actually teach that much Spanish. They teach us a couple things, but it is all review of the simple stuff we know. All of the Spanish that we learn is on our own during personal study time and during class (In the aspect that the whole class is taught in Spanish). During class time we usually do many things, we learn the fundamentals of the gospel and conversion, we study them, We discuss some preach my gospel. But the main thing we do Is practice teaching, and every time we do we learn something new, whether it be how to use preach my gospel, how to plan a lesson, how to use the book of Mormon and introduction, and so on and so forth.

Sunday was good again and the spirit was so string. We watched the Testaments so I had to tell everyone about "Papadwa" (What i call my dad every since we watched that movie for the first time) It made so many memories come back and reminded me of the good times at home. 

Monday night was pretty special because it was Mexico's Independence Day, so our nighttime classes were canceled (YES!) and we got to have a fiesta! Well as much of a fiesta as you can have at the MTC (CCM) ;) We got to watch some traditional Mexican Dancers which was really fun and relaxing. I've always thought it was cool what the dancers could do with the traditional swirly dresses,so it was a fun activity.

Tuesday night we had a devotional broadcast from the Provo MTC where Richard G. Scott spoke abouty prayer and it was awesome. It taught me so much about prayer that I didn't ever know. But I do know that we can pray to our Heavenly Father and he always wants to hear from us and speak to us, no matter what.

Besides that I'm just living and loving :)

Love you all!

Elder Nielson :)