Wait. Does that say week 4? Yeah. It does. I´ve been here for a month! Well, okay, a month on Friday. But still!
So my district has decided that yesterday was Christmas World and today is Christmas Adam, since the world came before Adam and Adam came before Eve! So Merry Christmas Adam! Haha. Just kidding.
This week was pretty fantastic! It flew by so fast that I can hardly remember what happened, but I´ll do my best!
On Wednesday, my district had the opportunity to welcome 100 new missionaries to the CCM! It was a lot of work running new missionaries back and forth across the 90 acre campus, but it was still fun! We got to meet a ton of cool missionaries and kinda take a break from the intense everyday studying routine!
I forgot to tell you guys on Tuesday that we got to go to the Mexico City Temple as a district! It was truly amazing and so beautiful! It was a nice break to get out of the CCM, and an even better experience to be there and feel the amazing spirit that was there! I almost forgot how crazy and insane this city is. And it was a cool contrast seeing the difference from the CCM to the chaos that is Mexico City and then to the peace of the temple grounds. Sometimes I completely forget that we are in Mexico City, because it´s so peaceful here and the Spirit drowns out almost all of the outside noise.
This week has been an interesting experience, teaching and role playing constantly. It´s definitely a new experience to have to teach in unity with someone. Completely in unity. Especially in a language you can barely express your feelings in, but it´s all good! The language is coming! Our teacher started a thing this week where he wants us to only speak Spanish. In class, if we speak English, he´ll just say "¿Qué? Lo siento. No entiendo inglés." (Which means, What? Sorry. I don´t understand English). And also he had us ( I think only a few of us actually did it, including me) put a "¡Solo español!" sticker on our nametag, so when people see it, they know not to talk to us because we´re just going to ramble off something in Spanish to them. Kidding. But it is an interesting transition to only speak Spanish. Most of the time I completely space it when I´m talking to someone, and then randomly transition to Spanish in the middle of our conversation. It´s pretty funny seeing the reactions.
Sunday, as always, was absolutely fantastic! Our Sunday devotional was given by the director of instruction and operations at the CCM: Shawn Cates! His devotional was fantastic! He explained some extremely important principles that not only apply to missions, but to life as well. When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes a quest, that is when God endows us with power. Many times, the Lord asks us to do things that we don´t know how to do, but He will show and teach us, providing a way. We shouldn´t live after the manner of men, but after the manner that God shows us. When He shows us how to do something, we should probably do it that way. When we say "finish what you start", it can be a pretty good motto, but not when the Lord tells you to stop. There are three things we need to do to allow the Lord to show us line by line, little by little, to live in His manner: 1) Have a determination to do it His way, 2) Dilligence and hard work, and 3) Depend on God.
He told us a story of when he was a young man, and there was this super cool guy who knew Kung Fu, and, them being young men, wanted to know Kung Fu. What they were expecting was fighting and whatnot, but it was not what they got. They ran. And ran. Until they came to this wall in a park and the guy who knew Kung Fu took two steps on the wall and jumped right on over. He then told Brother Cates to do it. He tried and tried and tried again, but each time he failed. He could barely even get his fingertips on the top of the wall, let alone pull himself up. The guy kept yelling, "Stay on target!! You´re a disease!" Eventually, Brother Cates was able to get over the wall but what he took from it was awesome! He said, "You stick to that thing like it´s a disease. If you do it and do it in the Lord´s way, you will make it over the wall. Just stay on target!"
Stay on target, everyone. Remember the Reason for the Season. Christ was and is the Ultimate Gift! Remember that Christmas just means "Christ Más". Keep the Spirit of Christmas. Keep the Spirit of Christ.
I love you all! Have an amazing week and ¡Feliz Navidad!
Love,
Elder Murphy
Kia Kaha
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