Week Five and I'm still Alive!

Hola hola hola!

My last email from the CCM! AHH next time you hear from me I´ll be in Iquitos... That´s so strange to think about! That reminds me though, I don´t know when I´ll be able to email next since I leave before p-day here, and I get to the field after p-day there. I might have to wait until a week from Monday :( lo siento..

Next stop - Iquitos!

So not much interesting has happened this week!  We´ve come to a decision that the CCM hates our district. First they decided to change our schedule from schedule B to schedule A, so now we never see all our friends on schedule B.  It´s so sad! Also now we have physical activity in the afternoon, when the sun usually starts to peak out, so it´s actually kind of hot out. But then not only that, but when they scheduled us for p-day activities today, they split up our district! So Hermana Fink and I were in one group with all the principiantes (the new kids) and Hermana Gillingham and Dickman were in a group with all intermedios (the kids who were new two weeks ago).  All our elders were with in another district. Anyways, so basically I have no cool pictures from this week because we weren´t together today!  Haha!

Good news of the week: today they actually rented buses to take us to the temple and to go shopping.  We didn´t have to squish into the city buses this time! yay! The driver was talking to us about where we needed to be and when so they could pick us up.  Nobody understood her but me! I tried to ask her questions back, and I think she actually understood me! Yay!  My Spanish is improving! In the temple, I talked to one Spanish sister about Iquitos for a little bit, so basically I´m fluent now ;) haha just kidding(or as we say here in the ccm.. hotah-kah, because that is how you say the letters j and k in Spanish haha)

Also this week our district decided to spice things up a bit in the dull CCM life and we started a prank one Elder. Basically, we just write "Sacapuntas" (which means pencil sharpener in Spanish if you were wondering) on a piece of paper and slip it into his stuff. He has no idea who´s doing it and he thinks it's hilarious! One day when we were playing futbol, he left his name tag on the side of the field so I put a piece of paper with his name tag.. and then our friend Hermana Ingram always gives him her rice at meals, so she slipped a small piece of paper into her rice so he would find it while eating.  Another Elder stuck a piece of paper into his Ranch powder (I don´t really know what that is, but that's what someone told me) hahaha Basically the whole CCM is in on it, except him and his companion. Even some of the teachers are in on it, it´s hilarious! (Little things humor us here!)  He and his companion have a list of who they think is in on it, and everyone in our district is at the top so we need to try to discreetly frame another district. I´ll keep you updated on any further developments.

Hmmmm we also changed "investigators" this week, so our teacher just decided to start playing an investigator named Kevin (except they pronounce it "Kay-bean").  I only really felt like sharing that because that´s Dad´s name and I wanted him to know how they say his name in Peru. But Kevin is good, he let us into his house the first time we went to go contact him.  He didn´t let anyone else from our district in, so that was funny. He´s kind of hard to teach because all his questions are super complicated, like why Nephi was allowed to kill Laban, or whatever, and of course we have to answer in Spanish so that makes it like ten times harder. We just started saying, we´ll study that tonight and give you an answer tomorrow, but right now we´re going to teach you about the Restoration hahaha. It´s fun!

Yeah there's like nothing really else going on ... only so much can happen when you sit in class all day every day. But next time you hear from me I´ll have a whole lot more to share!

Oh, also just wanted to let everyone know ... thanks for all your emails.  It really makes my day reading about everything going on back in the United States, so please keep emailing me! Sorry if I don´t respond, I don´t have a whole lot of time on my e-mail but just know that I really appreciate any and all emails I receive!

Love you all!

Talk to you soon! Next stop: Amazon Rainforest! (off to find Paddington Bear!)

Hermana Gurney

This is Mama Gurney ... I wanted to share part of her letter to me ... I had sent her a message and talked about the difficulty I had learning Mandarin on my mission and my vision of the "gift of tongues" referenced in scripture.  This was her response ...

"I have noticed the gift of tongues a lot, sometimes it's so subtle that I don´t realize it. When Sister Bednar, spoke to us a few weeks ago, told us "the more specific your prayers, the more heaven hears". So I´ve tried to be more specific in my prayers. The past few weeks I´ve just been praying that I will be able to understand what people are trying to tell me so that I can be better prepared to respond.  I´ve noticed that even when I have no idea what any of the words they´re saying are, I still somehow have this feeling about what they´re trying to say. It´s so great! Also I memorize words so quickly! I´ll write something down in class and two hours later in a lesson, I´ll remember it.  It´s times like those where I don´t stress about the language."

Love her!!  Thanks for all your love and support!!  Kim