Landing In Lima

Hola! So I'll go in chronological order. My first flight from Little Rock left SUPER late, so the pilot told us he'd try to get us to Atlanta as fast as possible- take off on that flight was crazy fast. Then I ran into a lot of Hermanas and Elders headed for Peru as well, so that was pretty awesome. Then came the 6.5 hour plane ride with nothing to do (they made me check my carry on since the compartments were full on the first flight). I somehow managed to not die of boredom, and we landed at 11:45 pm. From there we saw a really awesome Coca-Cola billboard and took a Mercedes-Benz (it was a bus) to the MTC (which will be referred to as the CCM) and finally got to bed at 3:30. And then we got up at 7.

Learning Spanish has been... intense. There are 10 people (all of whome are serving in Iquitos) in my district (group), only two of which are Hermanas; therefore, we get off task a lot and joke around WAY too much. But we watched a devotional by Elder Bednar a couple days ago and decided as a district that we'd make sure to do a better job, and the maturity level has gone up 300%. Everything we do is in Spanish, and we're learning at a crazy pace, but it's more self taught, and then the CCM teachers blast you with enough Spanish to force you to learn the rest. It's great fun!!

Mi compeñero is pretty awesome. His name is Elder Belone, and he's from the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. He's super excited to be serving in the rainforest because there will be a lot more natives out there.

Two days ago we went to Central Lima to do immigration stuff, and it was CRAZY, but super awesome. Our new favorite exclamation (¿¡QUE EN EL MUNDO?!) was heard every time something crazy happened on the road. So pretty much the whole trip. Then we stopped in a little shop (little being an understatement) and bought some InkaKola. It's... interestingly good.

We watched a few devotionals on Sunday, and they really helped. Last week was kind of like shifting from first gear to second, except the cogs were just grinding instead of going together, but the devotionals by general authorities really helped. The big thing that I got from it is that God has called me and every other missionary here to teach the Gospel in Spanish, and as we diligently seek to learn it, excercise faith in Him, and are exactly obedient (which my district hates me for because I went and read every obscure rule from all the materials they gave us, since the CCM has more rules than those contained in the White Handbook, and know pretty much every rule in the book) then God will bless us to learn Spanish in miraculous ways. Like yesterday when two Elders in our district that speak Spanish pretty well got up and taught us everything to know about conjugating in the past and present tenses in one hour. Or where we go teach a 20 minute lesson with pretty much no notes after being here for only one week. Oh, did I mention that my comanion is having a REALLY hard time with Spanish, so I have to say everything every time we teach? EVERYTHING!!! But he's awesome, and is really trying. Plus it means more practice for me!!

Today we went to the temple and that was really awesome. Everyone was talking about how small the temple was, but since I´ve only been to Memphis, it seemed HUGE. It was absolutely beautiful, too. Then we went to Tottus (Peruvian Walmart) where we ran into a return missionary who had us talk to his friends that he was shopping with, which was really fun.

The Spanish is coming along, not as fast as I'd like, but coming.