The Mexico City Missionary Training Center

4/18/17

Hey Mom and Dad. I´m just emailing you to let you that I made it to the MTC. My P-day is on Thursdays starting next week.  I don´t have much time, but give my love to everyone.

4/27/17

Hey guys! I hope everyone is doing well! Life here has been good. Very difficult, but good! Easily the longest week of my life. Mexico has been interesting. I haven't seen much of it since we're in the MTC all the time, but the drive from the airport to the MTC was probably the craziest thing I've ever seen. I would have crashed in 2 seconds if I had been driving haha. It changed my definition of terrifying. The toughest part about being here is the Spanish. They throw you in headfirst. The second day here, we had to teach a lesson completely in Spanish! It went alright, but was very limited! However our Spanish has improved a ton for just over a week of using it! We can pray, share our testimony, and have simple conversations already. It's been a pretty neat experience.
When I first got here, I was assigned Elder Williams as my companion for the MTC. We were put into a district with 2 other Elders and 5 sisters. But then they decided to move the other 2 elders into a different district,  so now it's just Elder Williams and I and the 5 sisters. They're all super cool, and I got called as district leader, so I've been trying my best to make sure everyone is surviving haha. It's a packed schedule here. Wake up at 6:30, breakfast at 7:15, and then different classes all day (besides meal and gym time) until 9pm. For doing a whole lot of sitting, it sure is tiring. The food here has been great! A lot of rice, beans, chicken, fish, and occasionally some American food. The gym here is also pretty nice, which is a huge bonus! Overall it's been a pretty crazy week, and I already feel Iike a different person than just a couple weeks ago. My testimony of the church is constantly being strengthened, and I'm glad that I'm here. I'll send pictures next week! I hope everyone has a great day!

Elder Cherpeski 

5/4/17 

This week has been great. We were able to go to the temple, and on my birthday the sisters in my district were super thoughtful and surprised me with a card and some other stuff! Spanish is definitely coming along, and I'm getting excited to get out to Queretaro in a month! Hope everyone is doing well!

 

5/12/17

Hey guys, I'm gonna combine your emails this week for the sake of time. We only get an hour for emailing, so I'd rather send you one good one rather than a bunch of short ones. It takes forever to type on the tablet. Thank you for that package, it was a nice surprise! I can't believe I'm more than halfway through the MTC! The days feel long, but the weeks have gone by fast. So my district has 6 other people besides me. Elder Williams, Hermana Davis  (who is related to Sylvia Davis), Hermana Whitworth, Hermana Ruiz, Hermana Haubner, and Hermana Bowen. Elder Williams is going to Queretaro, and all the sisters are going back to the states. One in new York, one in California, and the other three are going to Texas. It's definitely rare for a district to have so many sisters compared to Elders, so I'm having a different experience than most people.

On the whole I really like my district, but there has been a bit of tension in one of the Hermana companionships. I've been trying to use the resources here to help sort it out, but they keep getting back to their old ways. Other than that, I haven't had to do a whole lot as district leader. I teach my district on Sunday, call on people for prayers, assign the morning thought, and attend the branch meeting. Elder Williams and I get along alright despite being very different types of people. He's from eastern Washington, and is a good guy. He's very slow in the mornings and gets tired and shuts down from time to time, but other than that we get along.  We both like going to the weight room though, so we go there pretty often. That was definitely a blessing. Slowly but surely I'm starting to let go of everything in my pre-mission life. I think that was the hardest part of coming out here was just letting go of everything I've ever known. I still am really sad that I can't watch the playoffs, so you guys will have to keep me updated haha.

My typical day here goes something like this: We wake up at 6:30 and get ready for the day. We walk over to the comidor at 7:15 and get breakfast. At 7:45 we head over to our classroom and have personal study for an hour. Then at 8:45 our teacher comes and we have our language class until 12:15. There's a lot of stuff we do in language class. Sometimes we'll work on grammar stuff, or sometimes we'll have mini practice lessons working on one aspect of the language. It's the time of the day I feel I learn the most. Then it's lunch, which is usually my favorite meal of the day. We eat a lot of chicken, beans, rice, and fresh fruit. It's all really good. Occasionally there will be mangos there, and they're amazing. They're a lot darker than the one's that we have in the U.S. and they're super delicious. After lunch we go to the computer lab and learn more Spanish through a computer program. After that we do our daily planning for the next day, and after that is gym time. We lift weights about 3 times a week, and play volleyball the other days. It's my favorite hour of the day. After gym, we have companionship study, and we usually prepare lessons during this time. Then we have dinner. After dinner we have another language class, and then we go teach one of our teachers who is pretending to be an investigator. After that we do a bit more language practice, then head back and go to bed. It's a long day, but a good one. 

Sometimes I forget that I'm in Mexico because it's so different here in the MTC compared to the rest of the city. We do hear gunshots from time to time, and it's very loud outside the MTC, but we've gotten pretty good at blocking it out. How are things going on back in Klamath? It's good that you guys were able to fix the deck. I'm glad to hear about Andrew and all that prom stuff! And it sounds like Connor is doing well at baseball! I'm excited to talk to you guys soon! Isn't it getting pretty close to summer vacation? Everyday except Sunday feels the same here haha. Oh, so I guess that the Skype was just a rumor or something because it turns out that we get a phone call instead at 4pm here, so I think that's 2pm there? I'll plan on calling dad's number at that time and you can put it on speaker phone. I think it's a 30 minute call or so. I was really looking forward to Skype, but I guess that can wait until Christmas. I pray for you all often! Give everyone my best, and I hope things are going well! 

5/18/17

5/25/17

Well another week come and gone. And it's all still the same stuff, so not much to update you guys with. It's been sad seeing districts that we spent a lot of time with leave. Soon we'll be that district though. It feels like groundhogs day here haha. I'm starting to get tired of the food here. Not because it's bad, it's just the same stuff pretty much everyday. Spanish has been coming along though, and we taught a 45 minute lesson the other day without realizing how long we had been teaching so that was pretty cool. I've really gotten used to praying in Spanish and the other day I had to give an English prayer, and it was really strange haha. I kept wanting to say the Spanish words. I feel like I've been at the MTC forever now, but at the same time it feels like I just got here. 

For devotional this week, Elder Callister came and spoke about the plan of salvation. It was super good, and afterwards I was able to shake his hand. It was interesting because he used quite a few bible verses to teach the plan of salvation, which was something I really hadn't seen before. Spanish has been going along pretty well, but the area that I need to work on most is conjugating verbs to different tenses. I've gotten comfortable with the present tense, and I need to branch out and start using more imperfect, preterit, and future. Along with some other tenses as well. It's been much more difficult than I thought it would be, but at the same time I've made a lot of progress. Do I feel my Spanish is ready for the field? Absolutely not. But I think I'm pretty close to the cap of how much Spanish we can learn at the MTC. I've accepted the fact that the first few months are going to be extremely difficult haha.

Love you guys!!
Elder Cherpeski