¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Happy New Year everyone! A new year, and plenty of new experiences in the next 366 days for me! 

First off, I finally got my travel plans! I leave the CCM this next Monday at 4:00 in the morning (yaaaaaaaaay). Then my flight leaves the Mexico City airport at 9 in the morning, and then we have a 3 hour 40 minute flight to Panama. After a two hour layover we have a 7 hour and 18 minute flight down to Buenos Aires. Aaaaand that's all we know. We still need to get down to Comodoro somehow, so we either fly the rest of the way and it takes about two hours. Or we ride a bus and it takes 23. Or we bike and it takes 82 hours or we walk and it takes 335 hours. We literally have no idea. So that's a little bit exciting.

Christmas Day Pinata Hats

Putting together hygiene kits on Christmas Day

Hitting the pinata

Candy on the ground!

Gathering the pinata candy

Last week was Christmas, and that was pretty fun to have it in the CCM. After calling my family and then emailing all of you guys, we had this fun service project where we put together a bunch of hygiene kits for refugees in Southern Mexico. It was way fun, and it felt good to be serving someone on Christmas. Afterward, we had some piñatas and that was exciting. That night we watched the Testaments. If you guys haven't seen the Testaments, it will be well worth your time. It's on Youtube, go check it out :) 

We also got to watch the Christmas Devotional from the MTC with Elder and Sister Christofferson. He said, “What greater privilege could we have than to find ourselves on Christmas in the service of the Savior whose birth we are celebrating. There won’t be many Christmases when you are entitled to carry His name on your dress or shirt or jacket as His emissary, His ambassador. You are the companions of the Apostles in this work, and what an honor it is to be serving together at Christmas.”

As for the rest of this week, we've been learning a lot of grammar and speaking Spanish all the time. Yesterday was the last day we could see our afternoon, teacher, Hermano Rueda. It was really sad because he's such a good teacher! He's good at pushing us and helping us learn new words, but he's also good at realizing when our brains need a break from Spanish. We love him so much and will miss him a bunch :'(

Yesterday we also welcomed a bunch of latinos to the CCM and it was a good experience for us because we realized how little we know x). But really, my companion and I could talk well enough with them. It was a little hard because we're not used to how fast they talk, but we did OK. 

To end the email I'll add a thought that I had this week. We were watching an old MTC devotional from Elder Uchtdorf, and in it he was talking about what constitutes success as a missionary. A lot of people will think that success comes from baptisms or investigators or whatever. However, that relies on the choices of others. The only way we can measure success as a missionary is if we're doing well in the things that we can control. And three things he specifically mentioned was our thoughts, feelings, and actions. If we're doing our best and going out every day and trying to teach and get investigators. I think that's a good attitude for us all to have. Sometimes we base our success off of the actions of others, but the only person we can compare ourself to is our Savior- and even then we need to remember that we will never be perfect in this life, but we need to keep trying and getting better day by day. As my seminary teacher said : "If you're a little better today than you were yesterday, and if you're a little better tomorrow than today, you're on the right track."

Happy new year everyone! Enjoy it, and I'll enjoy being a missionary :)