PARAGUAY!!​!

 

 

 

Well, it`s a little strange to be writing in English, I must admit. And this is only one week in. . . so I`m going to apologize in advance for what my English is going to be a few months from now :) Ok. I have a very limited amount of time, and quite a bit to write about, so this is going to be a first-second-final draft all in one. 

Traveling to Paraguay: 

32 hours of traveling is A LOT. There were 27 of us missionaries heading to Paraguay, and we were quite the sight! We flew from Mexico to Bogota, Columbia, then to Buenos Aires, Argentina, then finally to Asuncion, Paraguay. The flight attendants from Mexico to Columbia looked like a whole slew of Camen SanDiegos  (if anybody remembers that show). That`s pretty much all I`ve got for the whole 32 hours. Oh! I was blessed not to sleep through any of the offered meals (that I know of :) That right there is a genuine tender mercy of the Lord. Airplane food may not be grand, but it sure is fantastic when it`s the only option available :) 

Traveling in Paraguay:

We spent the first day in Asuncion at the Mission home getting all oriented and everything. They only had room for about half the missionaries at the mission home, so the rest of us got to stay in a little hotel a few blocks away. And they fed us the biggest and best meals we`d had in 6 weeks.

We finally met our companions Wednesday morning, and it was probably the most suspenseful event of my entire life. Not kidding. It felt a little bit like the Hunger games. We were all sitting in a chapel, and the trainers were spread out in the pews and we newbies were all huddled in the front corner, completely bewildered and terrified. And one by one President Agazzani called up a trainer and then a new missionary. Tender Mercy of the Lord number 2: I didn`t pee my pant (thought I might :)

My companion is Hermana Quito. She`s from Peru, she`s been out 12 months, and she doesn`t speak any English, which makes every daily task that used to be normal really quite interesting :) AND she likes Korean Dramas. Who`d a guessed. Don`t ask me how we managed to figure that out between my broken Spanish and her lack of English, but we did.

The Lord could not have sent me to a more perfect place. I love Paraguay already. I love the dirt roads and the crazy colectivos (buses unlike any you`ve ever been on in the States) and the people and Guarani and the plants. . . I`ll have more details next week. And I`m going to get better at whipping out these emails. Promise.

I'm In Paraguay!! Sept 24th

Hey, I´m just checking in really quick, we survived our 32 hours of traveling, and we may not look like much, but we´re so excited to be here. I already love Paraguay. It´s green and there are dirt roads, and our mission president is wonderful and funny and doesn´t speak any English at all. We meet our companions tomorrow, and our pday is on Monday. But we only get an hour of email time here, instead of however much we want like at the CCM, so I´m gonna have to write more letters and less emails. Well, I´m doing great, can´t wait to shower and sleep in a bed, and I´ll send you more info in a week!
Love you guys!

~Hermana Houldridge

Haz Lo Justo!

 

~ Highlight of the Week: Giant cream puffs for lunch ~

 

THREE MORE DAYS!!!

 

That´s it. And then I´ll be on my way to Paraguay. . . which is so much scarier than flying to Mexico ever was. Give me 4 days and I´ll be a real missionary. ( Not that MTC missionaries aren´t real. . . we´re just. . . still in the MTC )

 

 

The beginning of the week was rough, due to a slight disagreement between my nose and the rest of my face. My nose was bent on crawling off my face, and I just wouldn´t let it. (I´m gonna need it these next 17 months) This resulted in me learning to not shake investigators hands after lessons, and how to hold in a sneeze while explaining the Atonement, and how to still run during gym time without the convenience of breathing through my nose. It was a fabulous learning experience.

 

 

Also we found the biggest, nastiest bug in our housemates´s shower. This thing could have eaten us (or at least our little toe). It´s a good thing I´m blind when I shower (no glasses :) and I can´t see the creepy crawlies :) We made the mistake of handing it over to the elders, who made some sort of terrible plans with it. . .

 

 

Weed Whacking. Maybe it´s a menial chore to all you guys, but it has never looked so fun. And they do a lot of it here.

 

 

Aaaand possibly my favorite pass time (besides studying the Gospel and reading the scriptures, of course :) is a good ol´ game of Kill/Save the Flower. It´s the only thing that can keep me awake during devotionals on Sunday night. It´s second only to Melonball, and since Melonball´s not quite possible on the mission, Kill/Save the Flower´s got a comfortable spot as number 1.

 

 

Question: Is there a book on how to fly Hot Air Balloons? I´ve been giving it a lot of thought, and now I have all these technical questions . . . no body here at the CCM seems to know the answers. . . so I´ll need a good book, or at least a wikipedia article to read about 17 months from now.

 

 

Ah. Name tags. The teachers here have white ones. We have black ones. We asked our teacher a few nights ago why his was white, and his response was, ´It´s the color of experience´, and then one of our Elders exclaimed, ´Like Gandalf!´ . So there you go. I now understand perfectly :)

 

 

Last night Hermana Kimball and I discovered the wonders of Mexican Super Glue. You´d think it´d be the same as in the states, but it´s not. Luckily 6 weeks of Spanish has given us enough language skills to muddle our way through the directions (with help from the pictures), and we were able to safely and successfully apply super glue (Kola Loca) to Hermana Kimball´s scriptures.

 

 

And I´m running out of time, but I need to mention Mexican Independence Day, which was the 16th, but which they celebrate all week long. Which means we got to celebrate too, since we could hear all the fire works. We missed seeing most of them though, because for some reason nobody else in Mexico City goes to bed at 10:30. . . strange, right? :)

Waiting for Mexican Night in the rain

Presedente Pratt did let us stay up and participate in the Grito Sunday night, which is where the President of Mexico rings a bell and shouts ´Víve (some historically important founding father)´ and everyone else shouts back, ´Víve!´. It was pretty sweet. But it was way past 10:30, and I was struggling. Honestly, I bet we all go to bet at 10pm in heaven. It´s a lovely time. Don´t know how I ever survived otherwise :)

 

Well, next week I´ll be in Paraguay! Yay! Guess I should start speaking Español. . . :)

 

 

Service! We worked in the kitchen (I´m happy about it, I promise :)

The streets of Mexico, viewed from a bus :)

Our elders are quite pampered, but they share sometimes :)

They have Israeli candies here! (at least, that´s the last place I saw these)

¡Listos, Siempre Listos!

 

~Highlight of the Week: getting a package and a letter in the same day! :) ~

 

 

I am learning all sorts of useful things here at the CCM, like how to speak Español, and how to survive 18 year old elders, and (by far the most useful thing I have ever learned) how to fold fitted sheets. Yes. After years of wrestling my fitted sheets into an only somewhat recognizable folded state, I now posses the knowledge necessary to perfectly fold a fitted sheet into a nice little compact rectangle. Mexican style. My life is forever changed.

 

 

Hermana Gleed and I ran three laps around the grassy part of the track barefoot the other day. We decided our noses wouldn´t be able to survive our shoes getting another soaking (the smell of our closets could knock out a small elephant by the time p-day comes around), but we couldn´t give up our run (exercise time is precious). It was quite the work out, because the warm weather grass that they have here is rather thick, and we were sinking in a good 2 or 3 inches with every step. Gotta love the rain :)

at the track

 

 

Elder Bednar is fantastic. May we all get the opportunity to listen to him this upcoming General Conference! We watched a clip of him in class the other day, and he was talking about spiritual promptings. He made the point that we don´t have to recognize promptings as spiritual promptings when we receive them, and that often times we won´t even know we were prompted until much later. So what´s most important is to live worthy of the spirit and stop worrying so much about recognizing them in the moment. Good stuff. Gotta love the apostles. And for a quick side note, our district is pro at saying ´Apóstoles´. We´ve got it down :)


taking devotional seriously

 





 a dark, solid colored umbrella :)

 

 

Something my companion said got My Fair Lady stuck in my head earlier this week. And not just any song from My Fair Lady. It was the ´aw ah want is a room sauhm where, fah awaee from the cauw nahght aeer´ one. K. That probably means nothing to anyone. But it´s where Aubry Hepburn is singing in this thick Cockney accent, and it´s fabulous. Unfortunately Cockney accents don´t lend themselves readily to Español. And they sound a little out of place in Mexico. But so does the Mary Poppins ´It´s a jolly holiday with Maryeeeee´ song, and Hermana Gleed sings that every time we whip out the paraguas (umbrellas :) We´re just connecting with our English roots I guess.
 

Here´s something noteworthy - I drew a fantastic t-rex during a game of Save/Kill the Flower this past Tuesday. I´ve never drawn a more perfect dinosaur.

 

And I´ve been humbled by a few embarrassing moments this past week:

 

We were in Tall. I feel pretty comfortable in the Tall labs, since we´ve been here for 5 weeks now, but I´ve never ventured to play music through LDS.org like some of the other missionaries do. But I was feeling bold. So I went for it. I put on my big clunky headphones, and pulled up a hymn. It sounded a little faded, so I´m turning up the volume when Hermana Gleed taps me urgently on the shoulder and says, ´Hermana! You´re headphones! They´re not plugged in!´ I immediately realized the whole lab could hear the hymn, panicked, cut the sound, and could have melted in my seat right then and there :)

 

 

Then yesterday I told my teacher,´Necesito un baño´, which does not mean, ´I need to use the bathroom,´ but instead, ´I need a shower´. And then later that day I told him, ´Yo soy enfermo,´ which happens to mean, ´I´m mentally ill´ instead of ´I´m sick´. I´m on a role this week with Español :) But my roommates informed me this morning that I was talking in my sleep last night, in Spanish! So all is not lost, and perhaps there is hope for me after all :)

 

 

So I´m sending a picture of the funny sinks. And of me getting a package, and of my baby palm tree (Jorge), and a tree we´ve deemed the Horton Tree (it looks exactly like the tree in that one Dr. Seuss book where the elephant sits on an egg in a nest in a tree . . . ), and of us at the track (when it´s not raining) and of my shoes, and of guava! I think it´s guayaba in Español. . . I was so happy when they had it at the Comedor the other day. It´s my current favorite fruit.

weird sink  Here's the link to the explanation. Look for "Tuesday"



Jorge

Horton tree

 

shoes!

guava

 

~Highlight of the Week: Making friends with other Hermanas - harder than you think in the CCM, since all time is scheduled. . . :) 

 

Week three done, going on four. And that means I´m more than halfway through my time here at the good ol´ CCM. It´s a little bitter sweet, or would be if I didn´t still have three more weeks of cafeteria food to look forward to :) My companion and I still can´t accurately guess when the many suspiciously similar looking jello-like desserts are worth it or not.

 

Ok. Here it goes.

 

The cupboards in our room really do smell wonderful. And I know I´ve already said this, but I get to smell them every day, so it´s still new news :) It makes getting out my study materials one of my favorite things to do.

 

All of the recorded devotionals include a musical number, which are all accompanied by a Sister Omatangelo (I think that´s how you spell it, but I could be terribly wrong. . . Sorry Sister Omatangelo :) Coolest. Last. Name. Ever.

 

Alacrán is Scorpion in Español, according to my best friend, the Spanish/English Dictionary.

 

The mosquitoes are playing mental games with me. They are everywhere, but for the first whole week I didn´t get bit. We eventually learned to treat them more like flies. But then the other day I found a bite on the most visible spot on my arm. . .like a warning, like they´re offended that we´re not scared of them or something. And then a few nights later I woke up to one flying past my ear. Not ok! Easily my least favorite way to wake up :) It tormented me for hours, and when I finally got up I wasn´t quite sure if it had really been a mosquito, or just my imagination getting the best of me. . . these Mexican mosquitoes are tricky little bugs. . .

 

An elder in my district treated us to the entire ´morning routine´ song from Tangled. We kept expecting him to run out of lyrics, but he knew every word :)

 

The crows here are kind of scary looking. Like they´ve been mauled by a cat and are still upset about it. But the parrots are fun (and a little noisy), and occasionally you can spot a brilliant red bird, like a golden finch, but red.

 

And what else. . . Ah. The adventures of finding your progressive investigator. . . :) So to help all these brand new missionaries learn how to teach, the MTC teachers pretend to be investigators ( and probably endure all sorts of the most horribly pronounced Spanish ever uttered on the face of the earth because of it). It´s extremely helpful, though nerve racking and frustrating ( but only when you´re investigator falls asleep) and so hard to adequately prepare for. Our teacher, Hermano Lloyd, happens to be very good at it, and always keeps us on our toes. He´ll pop into class, announce he´s headed to the building across the way, and then take off into the evening´s thunderstorm (pretty much a daily occurrence this week). We then quickly cram a few more faith-promoting spanish phrases into our heads, don our raincoats, and pray for the best before braving the 50 feet of brick pavers fraught with large puddles and small rivers to get to the building across the way. Once safely across we then have to look into every classroom till we find our ´investigator´. We say another quick prayer, come to terms with the fact that we´ve already forgotten the spanish phrases we´d just practiced, and knock on the door like there are souls to be saved :) It´s quite exciting.

 

And I can rest in peace because the flower I was trying to remember is Lobelia - my mom´s looking out for me :)

 

And I thought I´d be free of the ´cups´song (made famous by Pitch Perfect) for a while,  but as it turns out the Hermanas I live with kind of like the missionary version my roommates and I wrote a few months back. . . So if we´re not singing a hymn we´re singing ´I´ve got a ticket for a long plane ride. . .´

 

 

Heading out of the CCM

 The big B on the mountain
 (stands for Benemerito, I think. The name of the high school)

the building we have class in

us and our classroom

this is me with my study materials out in all their glory



in class. . . playing a game. I forgot what it´s called

I found an airplant and named him Phil

friends from the branch - they head out this Monday to California

roommates at the temple