Thursday, August 18, 2016

Week 1 in the Mexico MTC

All right, I don´t really know where to begin so I´ll just start at the beginning. After I arrived at the ccm, I was immediately separated from everyone due to the fact that even though there are about 500 people here, there are only about 10 people in the 3-week program.  So I didn´t know anyone until I met up with Ben Sierra who took me to dinner and to the devotional where Anderson of the quorum of the 12 spoke, it was also his birthday so that was a cool experience, but anyway afterword I went to my house where my room is and was immediately greeted my a bunch of native Mexicans.  I was a little worried at this point because they spoke with the speed of lightening, so I was desperately hoping my companion wasn´t native as well, but that changed when I went into my room and was greeted by my companion, who didn´t know a single word in English ha, ha. This was the first moment I realized this was going to be one fun time. 

Probably the only bad day I´ve had here was the next day where the only word of english I heard was during dinner when one of my friends from South Jordan came and talked to me. I literally understood next to nothing throughout the day, and it literally felt like a lifetime with every minute. This was also the minute that I decided to study my butt off when it came to Spanish. Luckily my companion´s accent is very slow and I know a very wide vocabulary of Spanish, so I could communicate with him fairly well compared to some other people in my group (who are all only natives, no white people allowed). However it´s only been a little over a week now and I can understand about 90 percent of religious topics and can understand about 60 percent of non-religious topics but I can speak with extreme ease and can talk for a solid 5 minutes or more to an investigator when needed. I´ve gotten good marks on all my tests with investigators and I am now teaching my class English when we have free time.  They all enjoy learning the actual words to their American favorites. Oh and they thank you for the root beer, and cookies, they were awesome even though I got them a week later, not because of the post office but because I didn´t know where the post office was, because I skipped initiation and getting a tour of the campus because of the rarity of my circumstances ha, ha. But the gift of tongues is real here, that´s for sure, that´s definitely one gift I know I´ve gotten while being here along with an awkward halfway southern Mexican accent.

Oh I´ve also been declared Mexican, I´m not allowed to say I´m american or my companions thoroughly scold me, they´ve put a bag over my head and tied my hands with a belt and carried me off, they then performed a “sorta Nemo” like ceremony where you can´t understand the words but it´s initiation. It was a great time and I became a Mexican from Chihuahua, Chihuahua. With that, I have to have a Chihuahua accent so I’ve been working on that very thoroughly but it comes pretty easily as well. My companions are awesome, they are all from difference parts of the Mexico and South America and all have their own accents and personalities. Me and Elder Morales have the same personality and will spontaneous have dance parties when anyone with any authority walks by, it´s always fun to mess with the ccm presidents by not looking too spiritual. Which by the way the ccm, is extremely spiritual, so I had to mention that, but everyone knows the mtc (ccm) is a spiritual place, this Saturday we have our first real test but we´re ready to take it on, the only barrier I have is that I don't have the words for everything I want to say, the only problem my partner has is he doesn't know when to stop talking even when I don't get a chance ha, ha. But we're getting better at it every day. I've gotten to the point where I can teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the entire plan of salvation in under a minute with near fluent Spanish, however that is only because I found someone’s Spanish study book and it has all the vocabulary for every leccion (lesion) in preach my gospel so with every new leccion we learn I have to spend around 4 hours learning about 200 new words, however with each passing day I can memorize more words faster, every morning I wake up first and study Spanish while everyone gets ready.  During this time I can pull off memorizing around 100 or more words when I'm fully awake, so it's been pretty good.

However, today we went to the temple and I understand next to nothing but luckily the spirit doesn't speak only Spanish in Mexico so I was able to do extremely well, the rooms in the Mexico city temple are almost the same as the one's in Ogden so it was kinda a cool experience in that way as well.

Oh I almost forgot, every night we have pillow fights with everyone in our house, there are around 24 missionaries about half are Mexican (including me) and half american and we have all out wars, unfortunately our pillows suffer the most, one can find parts of pillows everywhere after the fights, its great. The people who change out our pillows and sheets weekly don't enjoy it quite as much, too say the least.  Oh and this guy in another company looks just like Bryan Wilcox and smiles like him too.  So whenever I see him I break out laughing, he doesn't like it when I do, but it's alright ha, ha.

it´s weird to think i´m already halfway through the ccm and it´s only been a week, this place is amazing,

My companion wants maren´s email.  He’s the second from the right on the table photo, I'm thinking about giving it to him, he wants to be hernandez bunch so he can be my brother so he´s very convincing as well

Well I'm out of time
Having the time of my life,

tortilla count-12 miracle count-14

Elder Kaden Bunch



Chihuahua, Chihuahua Mision

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