Today I've been in the CCM here for a week. It's
been hard, but at the same time I've definitely learned a lot. At the
airport I made friends with about 12 other missionaries who came here to
Lima. They're a great bunch of kids and they all helped me out quite a
bit since I had never flown before and wasn't really sure what to do.
Our flight from Salt Lake left at like 10 AM, we had a layover in
Atlanta, then we got to the CCM here at 1 in the morning. Our first day I
was with all the Americans that I came here with because we were doing
immigration stuff. It was long and boring. Every day since I've been
with the latinos. Since I have a pretty good understanding of spanish,
they put me in a latino district, and I'll only be here for another
week, when you're usually here for six. That's been really hard, but it
has helped my spanish quite a bit. There's two other americans in the
latino district also, Elder Ramirez from Salt Lake and Hermana Esplin
from Pocatello. Elder Ramirez is fluent in spanish though, because his
mom's from Spain and his dad's from Peru. They're both going to be
serving in Cusco also. My companion's name is Elder Martinez. He's from
Mexico City, and is always singing or dancing. It's funny though,
because when he sings it's always in english. He especially loves Taylor
Swift, One Direction and "All I Want For Christmas Is You". I've also
became pretty good friends with Elders Osinaga, Pavon, Oranella, Garcia,
Ponce and Salazar, who are in my district. It's been quite the
experience with these guys since there's kind of a communcation barrier,
but they're all really friendly and help me whenever they can. In
return I've been helping them try and learn english. I never thought
english was that cool, but these guys love it, they're always studying
these little english pamphlets they got. A couple have started calling
me "Teacher Thacker" since I help them so much.
Since
my birthday was Sunday, we celebrated Friday night instead. These
latinos go all out. They got all the latinos and all the americans on
our floor to come into our room and sing hapy birthday. Afterwards the
Americans were like "Wait, who's Elder Thacker?" Pretty funny. As for my
actual birthday, it was pretty interesting. We had church services like
sacrament meeting and preisthood meetings then afterwards we had a
devotional about obedience in the mission field.
Spiritually
a lot has happened this week too. In our classes we've been learning
different ways to study and how to teach. Every day Elder Martinez and I
have to teach an "investigator". It's been really hard, but I feel like
I've progressed quite a bit in just the few days I've been here. During
dinner or free time when we're just goofing off I only understand like a
third of what the latinos are saying, but during classes I always
understand my teachers. That's been a great example for me of the gift
of tongues haha. But seriously though, I definitely consider that a
miracle. Today we got to go to the temple here in Lima and do an
endowment session. That was really cool to see the movie and stuff in
spanish, and get to experience that. Afterwards we went to a church
store on temple grounds and I was able to buy a spanish bible and hymn
book. Elder Salazar gave me a triple combination for my birthday so now I
have all the standard works in spanish. :) After we left the church
store, we all went to this supermarket so we could buy candy or soap or
anything we needed. Two of the elders stayed a lot longer than they were
supposed to so we missed our bus back to the CCM and had to get a taxi.
It was definitely an adventure.
Love you all and miss you tons.
Elder Thacker
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