You say goodbye and I say hello. Hello. Hello.

I think this will be my last email from La Ciudad de México. Nothing crazy happened this week. No earthquakes, kidnappings, or really hot peppers. However this past week I was made District Leader. That means I get to pick who prays and what song we sing. No I'm kidding I've got to go to Sunday meetings and make sure that everyone knows what they are doing. I also have to teach quite a bit and some other stuff but I like it. I like having the opportunity to serve my district.

I got to go to the temple this week which was pretty cool. Going through a session in Spanish is interesting but I'm surprised by how much I actually know. Every time we go there, which has only been twice, we get to see some of the city. The size of the city blows my mind. It is incredibly huge. It makes me excited to get out to the jungles of El Salvador, which will be coming up here real soon. I still don't know what mission I'm going to for sure yet. I am pretty sure it will be the El Salvador Santa Ana mission though.

Teaching is tough. The Spanish isn't the hard part either. It's hard, but not the hardest. The hard part is being able to recognize the spirit and discerning the needs of the investigator and then teaching to those needs. Elder Thorpe and I have gotten much better at it then we were at the beginning. It may have something to do with the fact that the people we teach are our classmates and teachers. This past Wednesday we had something called TRC. It's where you teach volunteers from around the MTC. The first TRC we ever had we taught a teacher here. That was probably the most depressing part of my mission so far, which is a good thing because it wasn't really that bad. This past TRC we taught a girl named Samanta from La Ciudad. Elder Thorpe and I didn't have a clue what we were going to teach so we went in trusting that the Lord would tell us what to teach. It was the best lesson we've had. I felt like we taught with the power and authority that is so often mentioned in the scriptures. It was awesome. After the lesson we had a discussion about Orgullo (Pride). It was really good. We didn't talk about it in the traditional sense. We talked about how pride is a sin of comparison and a sin of not trusting in the Lord enough. I think I struggle with that because for all my high school years I trusted on myself. If I wasn't going to do it it wasn't going to get done. Now I need to trust on the Lord, but entre dicho y hecho hay gran trecho. Once I learn how to do that more fully it will be a lot easier to teach and it will be a lot more effective because I don't know the needs of the investigator but the Lord knows them perfectly. We also talked about how we need to be grateful for our weaknesses and inadequacies. See Ether 12:27. I don't know if I came up with this or it came to me through revelation but it was probably a little of the former and a lot of the latter.  Anyways here it is. If necessity is the mother of invention then Inadequacy is the mother of Improvement. Think about why people practice sports, music, art, or anything. It's because they want to get better at it because they feel inadequate at it. We need to be thankful for our inadequacies but we cannot be content with them. We cannot afford to wallow in the depths of mediocrity. If we trust in the Lord and work hard to become better the Lord will use our weaknesses, our debilidades, to make us stronger. Check out 2 Corinthians 12 and also 2 Nephi 4:17-35 for some more good scriptures on this topic.

Thanks for reading and keep up the emails. I love hearing from everybody. Have a great week. Next time you'll hear from me I'll be in El Salvador.

-Elder Rowberry

¡Levantaos del polvo, hijos mios, y sed hombres!

Another One Bites the Dust

If you want to know what it is like to sleep in Mexico City just turn on the Italian Job or one of the Bourne movies on nice and loud right when you are about to sleep. Or even more accurate just have someone play Need for Speed with the sound all the way up all night long. Then release about 30 mosquitoes that just love to party in your ear all night long. Elder Thorpe and I dedicate about 5 to 10 minutes of our night to hunting down and exterminating all of the mosquitoes in our room. Elder Thorpe has kept track of the mosquitoes he's killed. He's got 50 or 60 recorded mosquitoes. When we find a mosquito we catch it. Then we shake it up and then chuck it at a wall or a mirror really hard. You get what we call a "mount" if you can get the mosquito stuck, or mounted, to the wall or mirror. Not to brag or anything but I've got quite a few mounts. Elder Thorpe sometimes just pulverizes them with his hands and all that is left of the bloodsucking scum is a splatter of the juice of its lustful parasitic desires. How ironic. Personally I prefer to take an approach of more finesse. I use my pens like chopsticks and catch them out of the air. You ever heard of Mr. Miagi? Yeah he's got nothing on me. En broma, enbroma, I haven't actually done that yet but, new goal. 

(Whoops I just sent that out unfinished). I hear that my pal Daniel Nyman is getting starved over there in Provo. That is definitley not the case here. They give you all you can eat Mexican food, which in turn, is all you can poop Mexican Food. They feed us meat and tortillas, beans, jello, all the bread you could ever want (including Pan Dulce), rice, vegetables and gallons and gallons of juice, just to name a few things. Apparently maple syrup does not exist in Mexico because all we have to put on our Pancakes and waffles in the morning is Hershey's chocolate or strawberry syrup. It isn't bad necessarily but it does make for some awfully dry pancakes. There is also as much cereal as your heart could desire here for breakfast and dinner.

There was pretty sweet Earthquake here as well. Elder Thorpe and I were just sitting outside studying Spanish the other day and all of a sudden we hear a siren, which is nothing new. This one was louder and longer however. We see all of the security guys just running around getting on their bikes. Here in the CCM they have an early detection system, or they're connected to one somwhere so we get an advanced notice of Earthquakes. We thought that it was kind of weird that everyone was running around. Then the ground started to sway. The palm trees were moving. I could hear audible cracks coming from the concrete as well as the trees. Missionaries were scrambling to get outside to the little safety circles that are everywhere. I saw small fissures running up the sides of the buildings with classrooms. Things were falling everywhere. Thankfully Elder Thorpe and I happened to be sitting in one of the green safety circles when it happened. I sat there thinking this is nuts. In fact it was so nuts that it couldn't possibly be true. There was an Earthquake but it was too small for anyone to feel. However, the security guys did still run out of their security hut like ants and there was a siren.

This week I've been working on finishing the Book of Mormon from where I left off after Origination. I've been reading about Captain Moroni and the stripling warriors and Teancum and all those things. When I read it during personal study time I don't want to stop. The Book of Mormon is easily my favorite book. It's got some awesome, awesome stuff in it and there are people in it that are amazing examples. Moroni was the best! I love the scripture in Alma I believe chapter 48 that describes the characteristics of Moroni. It also says that if every man had been, was, and would be like Moroni the very gates of hell would be shut or something along those lines. In my room I have a picture of Moroni and it is really inspirational. I want to be just like Moroni. Same with Ammon, Helaman, Nephi, and Alma. We also heard a story about Dan Jones in one of the devotionals. He has been called one of the greatest missionaries of this dispensation. I bought a Gospel art book in La Tienda and I found a picture of him in it. Everytime I see it I think to my self you're going down Dan Jones you're going down. No I'm kidding but if I could be even half the missionary he was that would be amazing. Also if anyone could find me some stories of Dan Jones and compile them and send them to me I'd be very much appreciative of that. Everybody! Go read the Book of Mormon! Its awesome. (understatement of the year)

¡Levantaos del polvo, hijos mios, y sed hombres!

-Elder Rowberry

Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin into the future.

Wow. I can't believe I'm already halfway through week four. I've got a good story for you this week.

In our branches we have to write a letter to the branch president every week. The letter was due on Saturday night to our district leader. So Elder Thorpe and  ran over to give Elder Hicken our letter. When we got there, there was around 16 people in the room. There were probably six or eight Latino elders and the rest of them were from my district with the exception of Elder Dennis and his companion, Elder Munson. After we gave Elder Hicken our letters someone said, ¡Más Gringos! One of the Latino elders grabbed me and he and some other Latinos guided me into their room. I did not know what was going on but everyone was laughing, like they knew something I didn't. Which they did. Once I was in the room they shut the door, locking Elder Thorpe outside. "Well that's not good,"I thought. All the Latinos were in the room with me. They made me lay down on the bed with my head hanging off the end. At this point I was getting a little worried and more confused. Then they tied my hands behind my back with a tie. I looked to my left and one guy put on a rubber boot. He advanced toward me then everything went black...

 

 We had a devotional this Sunday. It was a recorded talk from Elder Holland to the ProvoMTC awhile back. He stressed that fact that we should all be guaranteed at least one convert, ourselves. The whole Preach My Gospel thing is focused on the missionary not the investigator like the discussions were. They figure that if the missionary is converted and knows how to teach then they can follow the spirit and say what needs to be said at the time it needs to be said. He explained how Preach My Gospel was born. Apparently President Hinckley said that there was a serious problem with the way missionary work was being done. He could not figure out how a missionary could come home and fall away from the church. Which is what I'm wondering right now as well. I don't see how it is possible. That is when Predicad MiEvangelio was born. Elder Holland said if you go inactive after a mission you better not meet him in a dark alley or he'll go crazy. I have found that serving a mission is one of the most important things you could ever do and obviously I haven't even made it to the field yet. I'm sure that knowledge will grow exponentially when I see the influence of the Gospel in someones life who has never had it before. It's really nice to be able to study and learn and not have to worry about school or anything like that. I also have found out that I thought I knew a lot about the Gospel and I thought I had a really solid testimony of things but I've realized that is not necessarily the case. It's not that my testimony has been shaken, in fact it has grown a lot, its that I realized I don't really understand that much about the simple truths of the Gospel. It's like running a race. I saw a bend in the course, before my mission, that I though was pretty close to the end of the race. When I got here I rounded that bend and saw some more of how much there is left in the race. For example yesterday we were talking about the sacrament in our class. I realized that I have been taking the sacrament for 18 years and I really don't understand what it is or what it does for us. Sure I know that it's a reminder of the Atonement and we renew our covenants we made at Baptism. But what does that really mean? I intend to find out. I would encourage all of you that read this to also find out. Really take an inventory of your understanding of the basics and the core doctrine of the church. Find out if you really know what they're for and why we have them.    Oh you want to get back to the story now? Ok.

 

Everything went black because they stuck a bag over my head. I started yelling ¡Ayudame! partially out of legitimate worry but mostly because I was playing along. I really hoped that they were just playing. I figured they were because A: They're missionaries and B: one of them had a camera and was taking pictures. They took the picture of their companion acting like he was kicking me in the head. They all jumped on top of me and took another one like they had captured and conquered the American giant or whatever. These guys weren't real mature, if you can't tell. They apparently didn't grow up in one day like Elder Holland expects all missionaries too. I know I haven't. Finally they let me go. They tried to get Elder Thorpe but we booked it to our room in the other building. We were pretty sure that there was some rules that were being broken but it's all good. (It wasn't good that they were breaking rule, there is just no hard feelings.) When Elder Thorpe and I got back to our room, a little shaken up, these two other Latinos came into our room, whom we had never seen before, and they just started talking about random stuff. We traded ties with them and they tried to get us to teach them in Spanish. I told them we already had plenty of times to practice teaching in Spanish. One of our Latino roommates came in and brought in a box of All Bran (A registered trademark of Kelloggs. All rights reserved.) He came to me and said in broken English, "Here, this is the bomb." I said, "No that's not the bomb. That stuff is awful." Turns out that wasn't the type of bomb he was talking about and all four Latinos in our room started acting out what the Fiber loaded All Bran does to you. After that the two other Latinos went off on a rant about how rich Americans stomp on poor Mexicans. I told him that wasn't true. I wasn't sure if he was joking or not. I hope he was. So when we finally got everyone out of our room and we shut the door, we tried to climb into our beds. On top of everything Elder Hawkes and Elder Christensen, our American roommates, short-sheeted our beds to get us back for scaring them. Needless to say that was a crazy night. Definitely the craziest yet. Elder Thorpe and I now try to get into bed as fast as we can when class ends because once you start talking to the Latinos they don't stop talking and it's really hard to get to sleep at a decent hour.

Anyways its been another good week here.

Thanks for the emails keep it up I love hearing from everyone.

Work Hard, Pray Hard

-Elder Rowberry.

 

I've seen fire and I've seen rain. (Mostly rain though)

¡Hola! ¿Cómo están?

There was nothing that happened this week that was more entertaining than last week. Sorry. This week has flown by though. Last week I didn't explain much about the CCM. I will try to do it better today. So my companion and I live in the dorms. There are four other people that live in the same room as us. In that one room there are three separate rooms that each have two beds in them. There is a bathroom and a commons area with a table. I don't remember if I mentioned my roommates in my last one. There is Elder Hawkes(Bountiful) and Elder Christensen (Gunnison). There is also two Latinos staying with us. It was Elder Rabell (Leon México) and ElderZacarias (Guerrera México). Elder Z and Elder R left on Monday for the mission field. We have two more Elders that moved in last night. I'm not sure what their names are yet. They don't speak nearly as much English as Elder Z and Elder R did. Elder Z and R are both headed to Juarez, México. Elder Hawkes and Elder Christensen are going to Tampa, Florida. We have a lot of fun in our room. Elder H and C epitomize Gringoism. We have a lot of laughs about that. Last week on Tuesday, Elder Thorpe and I were helping some of the new Elders find their room. When we made it back to our room we discovered all the lights were off. We were wondering where everyone was. I tried to turn on the lights but they didn't turn on. I thought that was weird. I thought something must have gone wrong with the lights. I looked at the breaker switches which is right above the light switches. I saw a sticky note covering them and I assumed that it was a note from a maintenance crew or something. I took the sticky note off and went into the main hall to read what it said. Elder Thorpe had made it all the way down the hall to our room by this time. He tried opening our door but it was locked. (We had already locked our keys in our door once, and we had to get Elder Dennis to pick the lock.) As I was looking down to read the note, of which there was none. I heard the loudest bang. I turn around and see Elder Thorpe scrambling on the floor trying to get out of the room as fast as he could. He had slipped and fallen trying to get out of the room. Turns out there wasn't a problem with the lights and our door wasn't locked. Our roommates had been hiding and they shut the breakers off so we couldn't turn on the light. The sound of those doors slamming is the loudest scariest thing. Anyways we got them back even better a couple of nights later.

     Here is a normal day at the CCM. We wake up at 6:30 and work on the Plan ofSwollvation. (I hope that's not sacrilegious.) It's our work out plan to get swoll or big. I came up with it. For every article of clothing we put on we have to do ten push ups or sit ups or dips. Garments are free though. So after we get dressed we go to theComedor for breakfast. We have personal study after that for an hour in our classroom. Then we have teachers teach us about Spanish and teaching. Hermano Hill and Hermano Zamilpa are our teachers. They're awesome. We have lunch after that. Lunch is the biggest meal here. After that we use a computer program called TALL thatBYU developed to help us learn Spanish. Its really good. We have Language study after that by ourselves in our classroom. Once that's over we go to Gym. Elder Thorpe and I play basketball alot and soccer. We generally take a shower after gym. Daily Planning follow gym and we are not good at that at all. We need to get better. Dinner is after daily planning. Around dinner time, almost every day, it starts to rain. When it rains it pours! I've never seen it rain like it does here. Also the thunder here is incredible. It is so loud. One time the thunder lasted for at least 5 minutes straight. Even though it rains the weather here is amazing. It's not hot and it's really not that humid. Once dinner is over we have another teacher, Hermano Rasmussen (who played our investigator Cristofer). There we learn more Spanish and more about how to teach. Some nights we will get to go to devotionals. I really like those. During the first teaching time in the morning and during the last teaching time at night we have a progressing investigator that we teach. We committed Cristofer to baptism last week. We got Karim and Bernardo this week. It´s really helpful to teach these people. I thought I knew how to teach before I got here. HA yeah right. I´ve learned a ton though. This place is revelation city. It's really amazing to just be constantly fed information from the spirit. Teaching "investigators" is good and it's cool to see them change (they are based on real people that the actor taught on their missions). I can't wait to see real people really change. I'm kind of envious of Porter and Scott right now. They are out teaching real people and real lessons and it's not hard for them to get their message across. But I'm really grateful to be learning Spanish even though it gets difficult at times. The amount I've relearned is incredible and its cool to see all of the people who didn't take any or much Spanish prior to the MTC learn alot. I've only learned a couple of new things when it comes to Spanish grammar but I'm way better at speaking and understanding it then I was. I'm going to chalk that one up to the spirit.

I'm really grateful for your letters.

Work Hard Pray Hard.

Con Amor.

-Elder Rowberry

P.S. I apologize about any errors in my letter. I don´t have a lot of time.

I'm gonna teach some lessons, only got 20 words in my Spanish ah ah I'm preaching. This is really awesome.

This week and couple days has been good. Real good. Like they say the first couple of days are the longest days of your life. Luckily, it gets better. Now the days are flying by but six weeks still feels like its going to be a long time. This first week has been eventful though.

My email is going to be pretty much just scattered thoughts and events because I didn't have time to write an outline and a rough draft. Chistes.

Anyways I'll start from Day 1. Mi comapañero is Elder Payton Thorpe from Springville. He's an awsome guy. He played quarterback for Springville last year and he played Baseball as well. We get along really well so that's good. CCM stands for Centro de Capacitacion Misional. It means Missionary Training Center in Spanish, big surprise. The first day was orientation and kind of getting to know how things work. It was long like I said. Oh and my P day is Thursday. We jumped right in on the first day. We had class and learned some Spanish. We learned how to bear our testimonies and how to pray. We got seperated into districts and that who we have class with. My district is the best. We have a lot of fun. All of the guys in my district are going to my mission. There is: Elder Hicken (Hurricane) and Elder Mitchell (St. George), Elder Evans (Sandy) and Elder Sparks (Arizona), Elder Brown (Morgan) and Elder Salmons (Alexandria, VA), Hermana Israelson (Logan) and Hermana Johnson (Sandy) in my district. On the first day we were told that we had to teach an investigator on the third day, in Spanish. That was pretty intimidating. Thankfully it wasn't a real investigator. But we have been progressing with this "investigator" this whole time now. His name is Cristofer. We asked him to get baptized but he said he doesn't think he has enough faith but he wants it to be true. But we know from Alma 32:27 that all he needs is a desire. All of our lessons are in Spanish and each of our lessons are all in Spanish. I'm so greatful that I stayed in Spanish. It has helped more than I would have ever thought. It's nice because I have words that the spirit can draw from when I teach. Jane, take Spanish. Isaac, stay in Spanish. Josh and Kate buy Rosetta Stone, en broma. But seriously I love being able to help out my district with their Spanish because I know more than them thanks to Señorita.

On the fourth or fifth day I had a pretty entertaining experience at lunch. By the way lunch is the biggest meal here. All the meals are all you can eat but lunch has a ton of stuff. The food is great, some of the stuff is a little strange but I like the vast majority of it. Back to the story. I'm sitting there eating my refried beans with my corn tortillas when Elder Dennis (Bountiful), he's in another district but he is going to my mission, comes up to us and asks, "Who wants to do a dare?" I thought to myself, well if its not against the rules I'll do it. Also it's pretty hard to find a dare that will fit within the rules of the CCM. The rules are many and strict but in the end you have to keep the rules yourself there aren't people enforcing them. So he pulled out a pepper and told me to take a bite. I took a bite and was a little bit hot. It was just a Jalapeño. He was pretty surprised by that so he went back to where he was sitting with a bunch of Latinos. He returned shortly with another pepper. He told me to take a bite out of that. Thinking that it was another Jalapeño I took a generous bite out of it. I hear an audible gasp from the other side of el Comedor (thats cafeteria for you gringos). I look over and see 20 or so flabbergasted Latinos. At this time I should have realized I made a mistake. But alas, I had to look cool and the pepper wasn't very hot, or so I thought, so I swallowed.. They made gestures that asked me how it was. I gave them the two thumbs up. They continued to make the gestures. Shortly after swallowing all heck broke loose in my mouth. The scorching and excruciating pain of the pepper immediately made my eyes got real large and the involuntary tears started flowing. Needless to say that the pepper was not a Jalapeño. It was called a Chili Cerrado, which can be hotter than the Habeñero. To alleviate the spicy inferno in my mouth I started to chug glasses of juice. We had a full pitcher of juice on the table. I drank all but four cups of the juice. While I was doing this the Latinos were ROTFLOL, if you will. The one who put Elder Dennis up to it came over and kept handing me glasses of juice while he was laughing. The combination of the juice and the pepper just put me over the top. I stood up and, as calmly as I could, walked to el Baño. There was an Elder washing his hands and as I was entering the stall, I cooley told him,"If a Latino offers you a pepper don't eat it." I then lost the lunch that I liked so much. I took a ride on the porcelain bus and I paid my toll. As I'm kneeling there, heaving Buicks, the Latino that instigated the thing comes in the stall and says "¿Está bien?" ¡No! I replied as I turned to continue to purge my bowels of the awful evil that had entered therin. I finally finished and surprisingly my mouth wasn't hot anymore. Anyways that was the most entertaing thing that has happened so far. There is still 5 weeks to go so who knows what could happen. I have so much more I want to tell you but there is just not enough time. I'll end with the schedule of a normal day at the CCM. Wake up at 6:30. Drag yourself out of bed. Go to breakfast. Study, have class and study the gospel and Spanish. Lunch. Study, and then before we study again, we study. We have one hour of gym. Then we have dinner. Then we study. Then we teach. Then we study some more. After that estudiar. Then its bed time.

Well I love you all. It´s great here. I´ll tell you more next week.

-Elder Rowberry

PS I apologize for the Macklemore reference in the subject line. Kind of.

Arrived in Mexico

Well I made it to the MTC or CCM as they call it here. We had a nice drive, and by nice I mean slow and hot, through the city from the airport. I think Mexico City can be summed up in three words: huge, dirty, crowded. Someone tell Dallin and Ben that it fi's dirt. From what I saw of New York and what I've seen of Mexico City, New York has nothing on Mexico City when it comes to size and filth. My friend that I sat by on the plane Elder Thorpe (I'm pretty sure he'll be my companion because he is in my room) and I gave out a Book of Mormon on the way to Dallas to a guy named Frank from Raleigh, North Carolina. Mom, Elder Thorpe is the one we saw at the airport that you said I should have asked him his name so if I talked about him you would know who he was. Anyways that was pretty cool. I just barely got my name tag so I guess its official. It feels pretty good to have it on. Before we didn't really know what to call each other.

             We just had a dinner of pizza, juice and some fruit with flan for desert. There was one red fruit, I don't know what it was, but it tasted strongly of baby diarrhea, so that was nice. It's actually is quite cool here and it doesn't seem too humid. Also the spray paint industry here is striving, I have no doubt. It is so crowded. I'm looking out the window right now at the houses that are just stacked on top of each other on the side of the hill. Obviously, the CCM presents a stark contrast to the rest of the city because the grass is nice and trimmed and it's really clean. It's far bigger than I thought. There are a lot of soccer fields and basketball courts and I've haven't even seen all of it yet. Anyways it's pretty exciting. There are a bunch of Elders going to the same mission I am and they are in the same boat as me. Their missionary portals all say Santa Ana but they don't know about San Salvador West/Belize.  There aren't very many missionaries here right now. It's pretty empty. I haven't seen Tanner yet but I'm sure I will. That's pretty much it for me, just a lot of sitting today. I will have more great experiences for next time and my letter will be more exciting and I'll think of some funny jokes or something.

I love you all and thanks for reading.

-Elder Rowberry