05/19/22 Week 1 away from home
The past couple weeks has been crazy crazy crazy!! I cant believe how much has happened already
Tuesday may 10 I left my parents (sad day for my mom's birthday to be on) at the airport and got to meet 5/8 of my district when I arrived in the airport... we also adopted an elder who didn't have any of his district there, he's an honorary member of 10c now. Many flights and talking and sitting and being exhausted later... we finally got to the airport in Mexico city!!! Except then we had to wait like 2 hours for 3 missionaries to get off a plane...and then we had a 45 minute long bus ride and arrived at the CCM around 5. There was an amazing talk that night by Jeffrey r Holland, I took really profound notes, but off the top of my head I could not tell you what it was about, I was literally so exhausted and jet lagged. Also on that night I met a latina missionary and she has since become one of my dearest friends here. My Spanish isn't amazing and she doesn't speak annnyyy English but I love her and the spirit she has about her has allowed me to get to know her pretty well. Every day since then we give each other a hug whenever we see each other.
Wednesday through Saturday of last week was a blur of classes, devotionals, arguments, tears (of every kind-happy, sad, spiritual, angry), hugs, laughs, and so much more. I looooove my district... if there's one thing I've learned as I've been here it's that the Lord knew the people I needed to be with. Every single person has helped or inspired me in some way and I love each of them fiercely. Crazy how three or four weeks ago I didn't know them at all, and now I feel like I would go to battle for them!!! The more I learn about each of them the more I respect and love each of them. A lot of their stories to have even gotten here are crazy! I was anxious about going "late" and being older than everyone, but every person in my district except for one is here "late," and the wonderful thing about that is that every single one of them is here because they WANT to be here, not out of obligation or expectation.
Sunday was pacckkeddd... I've never had such a busy Sunday!! They had sacrament, classes, district meeting, choir (I 
CHOIR), come follow me, devotional, and workshops, all crammed in from 9am to 9pm. The crazy thing about Sacrament meeting-- they tell everyone to prepare a talk (in spanish!!) and then assign who is speaking from the pulpit after sacrament meeting starts. This week we only have two districts in our branch (last week we had three, one left to their missions on Monday and we didn't get a new district), so we will have 15 people for them to choose 6 speakers out of... and at least 4 of them have already spoken!! So there will be a good chance I'm speaking... but it's OK because I wrote a fire 
talk about having faith to persevere to the end.
CHOIR), come follow me, devotional, and workshops, all crammed in from 9am to 9pm. The crazy thing about Sacrament meeting-- they tell everyone to prepare a talk (in spanish!!) and then assign who is speaking from the pulpit after sacrament meeting starts. This week we only have two districts in our branch (last week we had three, one left to their missions on Monday and we didn't get a new district), so we will have 15 people for them to choose 6 speakers out of... and at least 4 of them have already spoken!! So there will be a good chance I'm speaking... but it's OK because I wrote a fire talk about having faith to persevere to the end. Choir was wonderful, I loooooovved it... we sang as sisters in zion/armies of helaman but in SPANISH and then performed it for the devotional on Tuesday night... it was amazing!!! I had chills!!! Now my comp HATES singing with her entire soul so we did splits for that part and I went with another sister in my district, and that was fun! But I don't know if she wants to do it again next week so I might have to find someone else to do splits with.
So some things I've been struggling with a little:
My comp is a little bit... negative sometimes. She just doesn't want to do a lot of things, and particularly if she's hangry, she tends to drag things down-not that I'm perfectly positive all the time either... but... It has been causing a little bit of contention, and it's been really frustrating for me... but we've had some good conversations about things and i pray all the time to feel God's love for her and things are much better than they were last weekend.
Every single kind of food here except cereal makes my stomach sick. Soooo I've been eating cereal for like several days straight (is this how I become Marlee??)
It's very hot and as much as I do put on sunscreen all the time, my arms are a little crispy 
also bug bites
also bug bites I keep getting dress-coded... ME, DRESS-CODED???? Yes... a couple of my dresses reach my knees and are considered too short... a few of my shirts have v necks... which when you're built the way i am, means cleavage if you're standing within a foot of me, or if I bend over... someone gave me a hug and then dress coded me for my shirt in that case... and most recently, I have a pair of pants, which look EXACTLY like a pair that are on the missionary modesty website, which are apparently too tight... even though the elders were wearing pants that were even tighter??? Idk why it's so strict here but from what I've heard, unless my mission president is super strict, I will be fine to wear pretty much all of it in mission... so I might just wear the same two dresses every day until I leave here.
Our teachers have very high expectations of us and give us a mountain of homework... every day... but we only get like 1-2 hours depending on the day for personal study, language study, comp study, etc. and so all of that time gets taken up doing the homework (which is a struggle for me in particular because im a little ahead of the class and so the homework often feels like busy work
). When we don't do the homework or don't do the homework completely, they do a really good job of making us feel like the worst missionaries who ever existed... but the mental health office people just randomly started talking to us and I feel a lot better about this today. They said for our experience here, and as a missionary, and just in life, we are always going to have to prioritize. Here our priorities should be to come to know Christ better and to become more like Him. Learning Spanish, learning the lessons, becoming scriptorians, etc are all wonderful things, but the most important thing is to come to know Christ and to work on becoming like Him.
). When we don't do the homework or don't do the homework completely, they do a really good job of making us feel like the worst missionaries who ever existed... but the mental health office people just randomly started talking to us and I feel a lot better about this today. They said for our experience here, and as a missionary, and just in life, we are always going to have to prioritize. Here our priorities should be to come to know Christ better and to become more like Him. Learning Spanish, learning the lessons, becoming scriptorians, etc are all wonderful things, but the most important thing is to come to know Christ and to work on becoming like Him. Another thought they had that i loved was in talking about the creation... oftentimes we set a boundary/expectation for ourselves before we can love ourselves: when I... lose 10 lbs or reach a certain level of spirituality, or learn a certain amount of Spanish, or whatever! THEN i will love myself, THEN I will be good enough... but God doesn't feel that way. At the end of the day on each day of creation he said "It IS good"!!! We don't have to wait until we reach the (probably) unrealistic ideal we have set for ourselves to believe we are good enough. You IS good :)
OK this is getting really long... but hey, I had time and it's been like 2 weeks since I last had a p day (they really want new missionaries to burn out I guess!)
There are a million things I could say still-my comp fractured her thumb and we went on a fun little tour of Mexico to get an x ray (and now the Mexican doctor and the American doctor are fighting over how bad it is... very awkward), I went to the Mexico city temple today, I learned a bunch of cool history about the CCM, there's a cute little tienda that has OREOS AND DR PEPPER HERE, I got not one but TWO care packages full of goodies from loved ones (thank you D&E and mom&dad
), Tajin on pineapple is amazing, I have a ton of new latino friends, I'm the mamita de casa so I have been getting to know personally all 19 of the girls who came when I did, I'm moving from a casa to an apartment this weekend, there are parrots everywhere, aaaand idk there is so much more but I guess I'll tell you all when i come home
), Tajin on pineapple is amazing, I have a ton of new latino friends, I'm the mamita de casa so I have been getting to know personally all 19 of the girls who came when I did, I'm moving from a casa to an apartment this weekend, there are parrots everywhere, aaaand idk there is so much more but I guess I'll tell you all when i come home Ok ok ok I'm done. Looooovvvee you all
Xoxoxo hna griffin
PS here are a million and one pictures:
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