Week 5 at the Mexico MTC - Where Has The Time Gone?!

For goodness sake, where has the time gone? I leave this Monday for Chihuahua at 2:30 am!

There are only 2 other missionaries going to Chihuahua and they are both Latinos and speak 0 English hahaha.

I'm so excited to leave this place. Not that the MTC is horrible but 10 hours of class and study time a day really makes me excited for the field.

I was talking to my teacher about Chihuahua and he said that there are a lot of Latinos that are "gangsters" and cartel members and that a lot of the time they give missionaries money because they want us to pray for the illegal business and crimes and they think God will bless them haha. My teacher said I should take the money because they will get mad if I don't so who knows maybe Il'l end up making a profit after the mission is over.

Anyway I'm way excited and pumped to get out into the field and I hope the gift of tongues really kicks in right about now!

Also have been told by a bunch of Latinos that in Chihuahua the people speak really loud and like yell when they talk so maybe when I come home I'll be even louder than usual. I'm sad to leave all the friends that I've made in the MTC. These guys are awesome people and are gonna be great missionaries. Elder Oliphant said that he knows a guy and will hook me up with some courtside Jazz tickets after the mish so I gotta make sure to keep in touch with him haha.

Anyway I have some pics for this week. We found this iguana that had froze to death during the night. Elder de Guzman picked it up and brought it to class and just laid it down on the teachers desk.

We drew a Christmas tree and a fire place in our casa because we asked the president if we could have a real tree and he said no so we had to improvise lol.

Anyway that's all for this week.

Love you all!

Elder Lignell

                                                                 Our Christmas Tree

                                                              My Book Cover - Go Jazz!!

                                                          A Dead Iguana We Found Outside

Week 4 at the Mexico MTC - Feliz dia de gracias!!

 I can't believe how fast the time has gone!  It's crazy!

This week was actually pretty eventful. So the other day the earthquake alarm sounded and they had everyone evacuate to the street. I was pretty excited to be honest to see if anything crazy was going to happen. Sadly I didn't feel anything, but later that day we went outside and the mountain next to us was on fire! It was pretty crazy to see. It ended up burning about a third of the face of the mountain.

The funny story I have for this week is that this Elder Gunnerson in my district was running to class and his thumb got stuck into his pocket as he was running and he literally almost tore his pants off lol. I was laughing so hard.

Also I should've talked about this earlier but I have a really awesome District. Elder Patton in my district is one of the nicest people I have ever met. During personal study time he will come  around and give everyone shoulder massages. And if that wasn't enough he thought it would be cool to sneak pesos in everyones scriptures on a page that had an uplifting scripture. He ended up spending like 45 bucks on all of us in total.

We had a cool uplifting world wide broadcast with all the MTC's and Elder Bednar was speaking. It was really spiritual and up lifting and a great way to start Thanksgiving morning even if it was taking up some of my pday time haha.

Anyways I love you all and Mom, say hi to everyone at our house for me!

Feliz dia de gracias!

Jacob is on the right

Week 3 at the MTC - Made it to the halfway mark!

Another week down.

First of all one thing I forget to mention last week is that I completed my first 24 hour fast. I actually thought I might die lol. I was so dizzy walking to all my classes. And then right when it was time to eat my companion wanted to go the bathroom, and he took like 6 minutes!! I actually wanted to kill him. (you can take that part out if you want mom lol)  (If you are reading this here, Mom decided to keep it in).

This lady gave me a haircut today and she was super short and spoke zero English and she kept on asking me to slouch in the chair because she couldn't reach my head and it ended up where I was laying down in the chair and she was like perfecto!! haha.

It was fun though to practice my Spanish with someone who spoke no English.

My Spanish is getter better and better every day but I've kinda slowed down because I went super hard the first 2 weeks and was studying so much but now I'm to the point where the rules are really complex and I need to wait for the teacher to catch up! haha.

Everything we do here is really repetitive. Thanks to my mom though I can send pictures which is good and I think you guys will like them. Anyways that's all I really got for this week. Love you all!

                                   Jake Fisher, Ryan Seal, Jacob and not sure who is on the right.
                                   Jacob played basketball with Jake Fisher at Brighton High School.

                                                          Jacob is 2nd from the right.

Week 2 at the Mexico MTC - I Made It To My Second PDAY!

Okay, so a lot has happened this week and I will see if I can remember it all haha.

 

Right after I was done emailing last week we hopped on a bus and went to the temple which was way nice. It was cool to see the culture of Mexico right in front of me instead of over the wall of the MTC.

It was weird going through the temple when everyone was speaking Spanish. I felt kinda lost but at the same time going through made me feel like I was at home again.

 

On the ride back I fell asleep which was really surprising because there was absolutley no leg room on the bus. I had to cross my legs and have them like half on top of the seat in front of me. Anyway we arrived back at the MTC and I went to stand up and fell over!  My right leg was completely asleep, like there was no feeling in it at all.

 

I sat on the bus with my companion for like 5 minutes until I could walk again! haha. 

 

I feel like I'm getting better at Spanish every day but I feel like the more I know the more I know how much I dont know if that makes any sense.

 

We went to the immigration building or whatever today and listening to natives speak Spanish is a lot different than here in the MTC lol.

 

Every night me and Elder Gunnerson (a kid in my district) tell ourselves that we are going to wake up at 5:30 to go play basketball or lift or something and so I would set an alarm on my watch and I thought my alarm was broken but Elder Gunnerson said that every morning he would hear it go off and that I would immeditaily turn it off and he would try to talk to me but that I would already be asleep lol.  We are like 1 for 11 on waking up at 5:30 haha.

President Bennitt here at the MTC is awesome. He is a way spiritual guy and is always telling a cool missionary miracle stories and stuff.

 

I still haven't found one missionary going to Chihuahua Mexico  in the MTC, but every Latino I talk to about it tells me to watch out for the cartel lol.

 

Oh yeah and also there was a huge riot the other day right next to our house on the other side of the wall. People were screaming at each other and like wrecking cars with baseball bats. It was crazy! People were like getting shot and stuff. I still don't know what was the fight was about but if I find out I'll let you guys know.

 

Anyways that's all I got for this week. 

 

Love you all!

Mexico MTC - Jacob is right in the middle - 2nd row

Jacob and Ryan Seal.  Ryan is a friend from Brighton that is in the MTC with him.

Week 1 at the Mexico MTC - I Made It To My First PDay!!

Ah man, the first week done in the MTC feels good.

 

Mexico is crazy! They do fireworks all through out the night and they went crazy on the Day of the Dead with music and fireworks.

 

The MTC isn't that bad, it definitely took some time to get adjusted, but now I'm in a groove and everything is a lot easier.

 

We basically wake up and have classes all day long until we go to bed! But I actually love learning Spanish. It is super satisfying to like construct your own sentence out of words that you learned and actually have it make sense!

 

Around 9 pm is my favorite time of the day. I go talk to the Latinos that live in our house in Spanish for like and hour and it is way fun and good practice... well I should say I try to talk to the Latinos lol. I help them learn English and they help me learn Spanish.

 

I play basketball almost every day here which is awesome! It is a huge stress reliever. I see Ryan Seal and Jake Fisher all the time which is so nice. The other day me and Ryan were able to sit next to each other during a meeting and it was way nice to catch up for an hour.

 

Despite how bad my sleep schedule was before my mission, the first night I was so tired that I fell asleep right at 10:30 and woke up at 6:25 a.m. I remember that when I woke up I checked my watch and saw it was 6:25 a.m.  and I just started laughing because I thought it was hilarious that I some how just showed up to the MTC already on the standard missionary sleep schedule!! haha So thanks a ton Mom your prayers have worked.

 

Despite how much we do throughout the day the days actually are starting to go by pretty fast. Also the food here isn't bad at all. They say the average weight gain here is like 10 or 15 pounds and I can see why lol.

 

I get to go to the temple at noon today which I am so excited for. It'll be nice to leave the walls of the MTC for like 5 hours. The temple is like 7 miles away and it takes an hour to get there because of how ridiculous the driving is here haha.

 

Anyways I love you all and I can't wait to update you guys again next week.

 

Elder Lignell