Hola amigos y familia!
You probably heard about the earthquake that happened in Mexico City last week, and just letting you all know that I am okay! The missionaries weren't in the city when it happened...we were stuck on our plane in Leon instead haha :) soooo yeah the flight was just a mess. A lot of stuff happened that day so here's just the highlights :)
9:30 am -- depart to Mexico City
2:00 pm -- landed in Leon since the Mexico City airport was closed
7:00 pm -- final word that we had to go back to Salt Lake City since there was an aftershock in Mexico City
ALSO we had to get off the plane and go through customs and recheck our baggage cause lots of natives got off the plane without permission since they didn't want to go back to SLC
8:00 pm -- got back on the plane and was told that we had to fly to LAX since there werent enough customs staff in SLC
10:00 pm -- landed in LAX, customs again, waited for our hotel bus
12:00 am -- checked into hotel and had dinner (Delta gave us free hotel rooms and free pizza & drinks since we only had plane snacks that day!)
So yeah it was definitely a very entertaining way to start the mission! We were all so tired by the end of the day, but because us missionaries stuck together and made sure we were all taken care of, we have become such good friends now! A lot of tender mercies that day. Even though it would have been easier to just show frustration and complain, we all learned to be patient and knew that the Lord was taking care of us.
Can I just say HOW MUCH I LOVE IT HERE??? The CCM is so beautiful, and the leaders here are awesome. I LOVE my teachers! They are all so nice and they really care about us and want us to learn the language. There's so many assignments we have to do each day of things we have to memorize & practice, but I know that my Spanish is getting better each day :)
My compañera is Hermana Call & she is so awesome! & our district is so fun :) half of our district is going to San Antonio (yay!), and there are 6 HERMANAS in our district! Having 6 in a district is very unusual.
One night when Hermana Call and I were coming back to our house for the night we found this huge, red grasshopper/spider thing that was by our casa. We thought it was so cool! (See Dad, I'm not scared of bugs/spiders haha ;))
And yesterday when our morning class was taking a break, Hermana Call and I ran into one of the cleaning ladies at the CCM. This lady is THE SWEETEST and we have ran into her several times before, speaking in the little Spanish we know. She always says "You help me with English, I help you with Español." She pulled out her notebook and asked if we could check her English homework. At first I was hesitant and was just focusing on how we were so late for class, but Hermana Call sat down and looked through her notebook to help with her mistakes, and it was a great reminder to me that what's most important is serving others.
So during our personal study in our classroom one night our STL's pulled the Hermanas out to ask us how we're doing. One of our STL's gave us a ring made out of palm leaves, and she gave the analogy of how when Christ walked through the city before His Atonement, people didn't know how to serve Him. So the only thing they thought to do was fan Him with palm leaves. Small & simple, but it was something. So she challenged us to think of small & simple ways to serve Christ whenever we look at our rings or whenever we feel too stressed from learning spanish haha :)
SOOO I challenge all of you at home to think of simple ways you can serve Christ, whether its offering to do the dishes for your mom or saying hi to someone in the halls at school. I know that if you do this, your relationship with Jesus Christ will become stronger and Heavenly Father will bless you.
I love you all & miss you all dearly! But there's no other place I'd rather be :) missions are seriously so cool & I'm so excited that I'm finally here!
Hermana Barlow
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| Leon, Mexico |
Sorry I don't have any pictures of mi compañera yet. Hopefully I'll be better at pictures next week :) here's some of what happened last Tuesday! First One is us off the plane in Leon. Second pic is with Hermana Moore, Bowcutt & Clark at LAX and the other one is Hermana Moore and I on our Wednesday flight to Mexico City
