First Week in the CCM

Hey all!!!!!!

Time in the CCM is weird. It goes by more slowly, but more quickly than anything else I have ever experienced. One of the other elders explained it like this- the days are like weeks, but the weeks are like days. You'll look at your watch and think "Ah man I'm exhausted, when's it time for bed???" Haha that's usually at about 11:30ish.(am) But waiting for Pday to be able to write has been like waiting for Christmas!! We got here in Guatemala at about 6, and jumped right in. (I can see what they were saying about the mail system being corrupt- one of the elders picked up his bag from the baggage claim, and all of his zippers with locks on them had been broken off, and they used about three and a half cases of Saran Wrap to close his bag again)

 We got all our paperwork out of the way, had our interviews, then started having spanish classes. My interview was a little interesting... There is one latino president, and he came out in the hallway and asked if anybody spoke spanish. Elder Beardall (or elder Billboard as our District calls him) being the great friend that he is told him that I spoke fluent spanish!!! He dragged me into his office and bombarded me for twenty minutes with spanish that was coming so fast i thought for sure his mouth would catch on fire! I had to just keep nodding and looking like I knew what he was talking about...

Oh, and they cut our hair! Everyone's hair. Elder Merrifield and any other guys coming down to the Guatemala CCM, get ready cuz it's comin off. They really don't care how long it is, they just cut it to say that they cut it. But the barber cut everyone in mass, so there's random clumps of my hair that are about two inches longer than the rest, which means I get out of the shower and I look like Alfalfa from Little Rascals.

My Companion is elder Shipley from Orem, and he's been awesome! Our room is the only one out of our district with two bunkbeds instead of four, and we have our own bathroom and shower. (And two fans instead of one!!!!) The beds actually aren't as bad as I thought they would be. I'm the third tallest person in the CCM, and the way I sleep (on my stomach with no pillow) I usually only hang about an inch or two off the bed each way! And we've always got a little piece of home with us, cuz the morning director of the CCM looks EXACTLY like Frank Jackson! Everytime he walks into a room, all of us look at him and say 'das Frank' with a Tow Mater accent and he still can't figure out why. 

Spanish is fun cuz there's a lot of words that sound really similar. Like the words pescado and pecado. Pescado is fish, and pecado is sin. Haha I started out our class last saturday by bearing my testimony that through Jesus Christ, we can overcome ALL fish. Another elder made the same mistake by talking about his girlfriend that he didn't think was going to wait for him, saying that 'hay muchos pescados en el mar,' or there are many fish in the sea!

I never thought I would be in a place with such a perfect blend of spirituality and Nacho Libre. Every elder in my district has seen Nacho Libre, and knows every line by heart. Haha no matter what we do, there is a healthy dose of Nacho Libre quotes mixed into it! All 12 elders in my district are all absolutely incredible. I feel like I've known each one of them for years, On the second day here, I was called into President Morris's office and asked to be the District Leader of Distrito Lucas!! It has really been a blessing. Out of the whole time we've been here, my two favorite experiences have been the district meetings that we have. Our teachers all leave, and we are left by ourselves. For the first meeting we went into our classroom thinking we were going to have spanish class, but instead learned that I was in charge of the lesson and we had an hour and a half to fill. I started out with a discussion of the atonement of Christ, and began taking the discussion a certain way. But the spirit is so incredibly strong here. I had a feeling to go off on sort of a tangent, and the discussion went a different way. After breaking the ice a little bit more, the other elders got involved and began sharing experiences and insights, and it turned into one of the most incredible and inspiring spiritual discussions that I have ever had in my life. The same thing happened with the second meeting, where we had just watched a devotional by President Holland. (That man is to Satan what Chuck Norris is to us) We were supposed to meet to discuss the devotional for about half an hour, read the Book of Mormon for half an hour, then go to bed. We ended up talking for close to an hour and a half again, with this discussion being just as powerful as the first. 

The leaders keep saying that we'll never have this chance for the rest of our lives to be constantly this close to the Lord for this long. From 6:30 when we get up to 10:30 lights out, every second is scheduled out and every moment we're either doing something to get closer to the Lord, or preparing to do something. And the gift of tongues is real. We had basically two days of spanish instruction, and then that night we were able to teach an 'investigador,' or our teacher in a hoodie. The lesson may not have been the smoothest thing in existence, but we got our point across and were actually able to have a discussion in spanish! We've taught here every day since then.

The latinos are extremely nice. (even though they speak REALLY fast) But they are always willing to help you with your spanish no matter what, and never make fun of you for absolutely butchering their language. Through our broken spanish and what they know of english we are usually able to communicate pretty well!! Overall they LOVE dabbing, and their favorite english phrase to use is "What's Krackalackin?" 

Guatemala is great, but it ain't America! Love you all, thinking about you a lot! It's gonna be a short two years! 

-Elder Tadje