Surprise! Traveling to Torreon!

Hello from Torreon!!!­! San Perdo to be exa­ct... It is a little ­north east of Torreon­ and it is my first a­rea. I met my compani­on Elder Conejo yeste­rday and ofcourse he ­is latino and speaks ­zero english. I know ­eventually this will ­be good but right now­ it is very difficult­ because i hvae no on­e i can really have a­ conversation with. W­e are the only one´s ­in our casa and our w­hole district besides­ me is latino. i gues­s this means ill be l­earning spanish reall­y fast haha. I alread­y feel like ive learn­ed so much in the 24 ­hours i have been wit­h him. The travel to ­Torreon was really re­ally really long. I d­indnt go to bed sunda­y night because we ha­d to pack and stuff a­nd had to be ready at­ 1 in the morning any­ways. We traveled all­ night, got to the mi­ssion home in torreon­ at about 9. We ate b­reakfast and sat thro­ugh a bunch of meetin­s. Before lunch they ­have us a half an hou­r to go nap at the be­ds they have there, b­ut that didnt help al­l that much. We ate l­unch and then parted ­ways. i had to say go­odbye to elder blackh­am which was very sad­ but i will see him e­ventually again. We r­ode in a bus for like­ 2 hours to our new a­rea. We live in a nic­e little casa that ha­s running water (bare­ly). It is an alright­ set up as far as mis­sion housing in mexic­o goes. No washer or dryer, just a bucket!­ I am excited about i­t all though

    Last night we had­ a district meeting. ­We walked to the chur­ch, about 20 minutes,­ then had our meeting­. I didnt think we we­re going to be able t­o be out past dark bu­t we were. i was terr­ified because it was ­halloween in down tow­n san pedro in the da­rk of the night but t­he others didnt seem ­worried and they said­ we would be fine. Im­ not too worried abou­t it. Halloween here ­was basically just a ­bunch of kids in mask­s running around. The­y dont trick or treat­, they just run aroun­d. I am excited to se­e what dia de los mue­rtos is like today an­d tomorrow. Today we ­have a lunch appointm­ent and a lesson toni­ght but besides that ­we are just planning ­on contacting on the ­streets, should be in­teresting. Lunch is t­he big meal here so w­e always have lunch a­ppointments with memb­ers. We are on our ow­n for dinner and brea­kfast, which should b­e interesting. None t­he less, still excite­d for it all!

So if you want to kno­w what my area is lik­e, watch Nacho Libre.­ No joke. They ride t­he little bikes aroun­d everywhere and ther­e is a big catholic c­hurch with nuns appar­ently. I think it is ­hilarious how similia­r it is. So far it is­ pretty hot and very ­dry. My shoes are goi­ng to be the collor o­f dust for the next t­wo years because they­ get dusty everytime ­you step outside.

Leaving the CCM was k­ind of hard. I got co­mfotable there and ha­d a lot of friends so­ it was hard to leave­. I am excited to fin­ally be here in the f­ield though. Me and m­y companion and three­ other guys sang in f­ront of the entire CC­M our last day there ­and i think it actual­ly went somewhat well­. People said it soun­ded good so i guess i­ll take it. The latin­os here love american­s, everytime we pass ­them they laugh and s­ay something about ho­w im a gringo. My com­panion says that they­ all like americans t­hough and that they a­re saying good things­. So i might come bac­k with a wife, sorry.­..

I dont really know wh­at more to say. I fee­l like there is so mu­ch to say but at the ­same time i dont know­ what to say. I am so­ exctied to be here. ­I am excited to mmet ­the people. I am very­ excited to be able t­o speak spanish so i ­can talk to people mo­re. Mostly, i am exci­ted to finally preach­ the gospel. We are a­bout to go out and kn­ock doors and contact­ people so this shoul­d be intersting. Pray­ for me... haha!

I hope you are all do­ing well! I love you ­all and i miss you al­l. I am excited to be­ here preaching the g­ospel. Keep working h­ard in everyting you ­do and so will i! Unt­il next monday!!

                     ­              Elder, ­Wright

One Month!!

Hello everybody! It has officially been a month and i only have one more week here at the CCM! It is crazy how fast the time flies here! Everytime i look up it is friday again and it is P Day. I can't believe how fast everything is going by! I am so excited to be in the field though. I am starting to feel pretty confident in my spanish. Well, i feel confident until i talk to a Latino and we make it past the usually small talk conversations and i have no clue what they are saying... I am starting to do better though! We wear a sticker on our name tag that says "solo espanol" so everybody talks to us only in spanish which is good practice. Unless you try and go get your pants hemmed and they won't speak to you in english. Then it is just frustrating and very humbling. i just told them nevermind and didn't get my pants hemmed yet. I'll try again in the field haha. 

On Tuesday we had a really cool devotional. Bonnie Oscerson, the young womens general president, came and spoke to us. She did really well and it was really enlightening experience for me. Everybody was running around like their heads were chopped off because someone important was here... I can't even imagine what it is like when an apostle comes here. Any day is a good day when you get to eat pizza and hear the General Young Womens President speak in the same day. I continue to feel the spirit every day and have so much fun. I am growing to love this place so much fun and it will be a little bit hard to say goodbye, ecspecially to my companion. i am very excited for the field though so i don't think it will be too hard. Plus my companion is serving in Torreon as well so ill probably see him again sometime!

I already love the Latino people so much. They are so funny once you can actually talk to them. They are all trying to learn some english and we are oobviously trying to learn spanish so we teach eachother at meals. They are really funny and ive grown to love talking to them. I am excited to serve the Latinos in Torreon and i know that i will have the same love for them!

It was a pretty normal week. Weather is still nice, food is okay but starting to get a little old. I'm having lots of fun and learning so much. Overall, just another awesome week but i don't have much to tell you guys. I will finish with a funny story that happened this week!

So there is a cat that lives here with in the walls of the CCM. It is a very beautiful cat but we have notice that it is super skiddish. Me and my companion had a goal to try and pet it while we were here. One night while studying outside the cat ran by us into the bush's. We went over there and lured it out and eventually it came close enough to the point where i could pet it. Everytime i got close enough to touch it, it ran away though. After like 5 minutes of making friends with the cat it finally liked us enough to the point where we could pick it up. We took a picture real quick that i will send you. We are so proud of ourselves because we have never heard of anyone that has been able to hold the cat. We are in a very exclusive club of people that have held the cat. Who ever said that hard work doesn't pay off!

I love you all and hope you are all doing awesome. Thank you for your support. Keep working hard in everything you do and never forget "nunca dejen de tratando!"

Can't wait to be able to write you all again next week!

Elder, Wright

1. The cat. AS you can see i was very happy to see the cat..

2. We decorated for halloween

Hello All!

Hello to all!!!! Things at the CCM are still awesome. I hope to be able to start off all of my emails that way. This week was another awesome week of learning and feeling the spirit. Time is flying by so fast now. I feel like last P Day was just a few days ago. I am more than half way done with my time here at the CCM and i will be in the field in just over 2 weeks! That is crazy! The language is going really well. I can now pretty much teach all the missionary lessons, on a fairly basic level, in spanish. Which is really the main goal of the CCM. Now i need to focus my language a little more on just everyday conversation because i can tech someone about the restoration of the Gospel but i can't have a very in depth conversation with them. That is my goal for the next few weeks. Me and my Companion, Elder Blackham, had an awesome expereince. We were teaching a fake investigator and the lesson went really well. After the lesson we both just looked and eachother like "wow what just happened" We both felt the overwhelming feeling of the gift of tounges. Words were just flowing out of our mouths in spanish. I am finally geting to the point where i can think in spanish when im teaching and not just translate in my mind. It is one of the craziest feelings ever and i don't even know how to explain it. It motivates me so much to keep working hard and improving my langauge skills.

Let me tell you all a little bit about how we learn here. First thing in the morning we have Personal Study by ourselves. Then our teacher comes to our classroom and teaches us both about the langauge and the gospel. Then we have time where our morning teacher pretends to be an investigador and we all have a chance to teach here. We basically repeat the same thing in the afternoon but with a different teacher. I love the teachers i have so much but we are getting a different afternoon teacher because our old one got a promotion! That is good but im going to miss him a lot. Then at the end of the night we have time for personal language study and planning with our companions. It is a jam packed day but i learn a lot everyday. We have devotional's twice a week where we meet together with all the missionaries in the CCM. Those are good becuase we usually here from members of the quorum of the 70. This week we watched a live broadcast from provo where Elder Bednar spoke. It was awesome! My favorite part of the week is Sunday night. We call it movie night because we all go to the auditorium and get to watch church films for an hour. It is an awesome little break time we get at the end of the week.

The weather was amazing this week. It didn't rain once and it never really gets above 75 degrees. It gets to a pretty cool temperature at night which i like becuase it gives me an oppurtunity to wear my "winter" gear because everyone says i never will in Torreon.

So i got my first haircut here at the CCM and it was a very intersting experience... The lady that cuts your hair speaks no english and i speak very little spanish. So you can imagine where this went bad. If any of you don't know i have scars on my head from when i had surgery as a baby. They look like lighting boolts that go all the way across my head. You usually don't see them because my long hair covers them. Well i tried to tell her that i have scars so my hair can't be short on the side. She clearly didn't understand me and basically buzzed my hair on the sides. Don't worry, i have pictures... People all week thought that the scars were a design in my hair and so i had to tell like 500 diferent people they were scars. Fun stuff... but the hair is growing back in and i almost look normal now!

Things are flying by here at the CCM. Everytime i blink it is another week gone by. I love it though. I am learning so much and getting so excited to be in the field. I am sad to have to leave my companion in a couple of weeks though. Me and him have so much fun together. I am a litle worried that because i have such a great companion right now, i am going to have a pretty bad companion in the future. Oh well, i just will enjoy it while i have it.

I hope you are all doing awesome! I think about you all and how grateful i am for your support. Keep working hard in everything you guys do. And remember "nunca dejen de tratando!"

Love you all and goodbye until next Friday!!

Elder, Wright

General Conference!

Hello freinds and family! I hope you are all doing amazing!! Things here at the CCM ( "say/say/emaye" there is your spanish proununciation guide because it sounds cooler in spanish) are just amazing! I am continuing to progress in everything. The spanish is going pretty well, it is easy to stop working as hard at this point becuase you feel like you know a lot of vocabulary but I am trying to keep working hard. We are still teaching fake investigators in spanish and we are starting to be able to do it without notes and just by memory, which is an awesome feeling. I feel like i grew spiritually a ton this week! General Conference was awesome and i hope you all got to watch it! Check out the talk on Joy by Russel M. Nelson. It was my favorite because it focused on the joy this gospel can bring into evryone's life, even in hard times. I had lots of question going into Conference and so many of them were answered! We also got to sing Called To Serve in english for the first time here becuase they sang it in conference. We sing it all the time in spanish but it was so cool to do it in English. Singing Called to Serve in the MTC has always been a dream of mine and i finally got to do it. Also i got to go to the temple again today with my district and that was awesome! Overall, it was just an awesome week spiritually.

Me and my companion get along perfectly, it is amazing. Everybody asks us if we knew eachother before the mission or something becuase we get along so well. I think they are all a little jealous that they don't get along with their companions that well. We have a handshake that is like a minute long and it is famous in our district, zone, and kind of even around the whole CCM. It is pretty awesome, I am not gonna lie. We both decided we miss music A TON because we can't listen to it here. So, we just sing songs all the time to give us a little taste of music. Elder Wood leaves in a couple of days and that is going to be sad. It has been nice having him here, i see him all the time and he makes everything so fun.

I guessed i jynxed the weather because it hasn't rained since like Sunday and now it is kinda hot. We don't have air conditioning in our house so we jsut leave the windows open, but it is still really hot at night. It makes me feel like I'm at home because that's how hot mom liked to keep the house at home haha!! There is also like a mosquito infestation here. It is really weird, they don't bite us though. I have only gotten bit like twice and i probably see like 500 mosquitos a day. I guess they don't like my greasy american blood or something...

I forgot to tell you all this last week but the sounds you hear here at the CCM are awesome. There is constantly loud bangs going off and we play the game called "Guess that sound: Canon, Firework, or gunshot." Im convinvced we have heard all three multiple times. The catholics like to shoot off canons and fireworks everytime it's a Saints birthday (which is everyday, I am not even joking). Some Saints get more love than others though, i think it's kind of funny. Our house is also by a busy street so we here honking at all hours of the night. You just get used to it and youre so tired you fall asleep right away anyways. The best is on Friday and Saturday nights there is ALWAYS fiestas going on and they just blare music. So we get to fall asleep to the sound of music and it's so loud it sounds like its coming from right outside our window. Gotta love Mexico!

Things are still awesome here and i am loving every moment of it. Even when i have been in the same classroom for 13 hours with the same 10 people, i just think about what i am doing, and im still glad im there. I hope you are all doing well and loving life. After all that's what life is for, to be happy. I have never been happier than my time here at the CCM. I know that the gospel is respondisble for all of my happiness and it blesses each and every one of our lives everyday! Keep doing awesome things and "nunca dejen de tratando" ("never stop trying" at least im pretty sure that's how you say it) I love you all and I'll talk to you again in a week!

-Elder Wright

1. My comp and some elders from my district

2. There is this awesome garden in front of the dinning hall so we call the "garden of eat'n"

3and6. my favorite tie because most of you have your names on it

4. City of Mexico

5. Awesome sunrise (reminded me of Colorado)

WEEK ONE!

HELLO EVERYBODY! Greetings from the CCM (that is the spanish translation of MTC pretty much, so thats what I'm going to call it). First i just want to let you all know I only have limited time to email, and this keyboards are diferent so there is probably going to be many spelling mistakes but I am not going to worry about them for the interest of time. Hope that doesn't bother to many people! There is no spell check and i don't have time to proof read so I am really sorry! I am doing so awesome! This place is amazing. It is beautiful and spacous. I live in a house with like 15 other elders. My companion's name is Elder Blackham and he is the coolest dude ever. I got so lucky for having as my first companion. We get along so well and have so much fun together. He is from Memphis and I am so excited for the next 5 weeks with him. He is serving in Torreon as well so maybe we can be companions in the field! Anyways, there is like 700 missionaries here at the CCM and it is about 3 times as big as the provo MTC. That means we have room for things like Tennis Courts, Basketball, Volleyball, Cage Soccer (it's the best), ultimate frisbee, ping pong, anf fooseball. Needless to say, we have lots of fun on P Day and gym time. Today we got to go to the temple in Mexico City! That was a super awesome expereince to have with like 40 other missionaries there at the same time! The food here at the CCM is actually really good. There is all sorts of authentic mexican dishes that are really good, and then once a week we get pizza night which is the best! We get three solid meals a day so i have eaten A LOT of food the past weeek and a half. Lots of fruit, nutella, things drenched in ranch, and exotic drinks that are really good! The weather is also amazing! It ranges from like 60 degrees to 85 degrees everyday, so it's actually a really comfortable temperature. Although whoever told me Mexicos was dry, lied. It has rained literally every day i have been here. Sometimes it's only 20 minutes but soemtimes it is all day.​​ Regardless, still nice weather. My first few days were so long. I was up at 6:30 and in meetings all day, except to eat, until 9:30. If it was like that everyday, I wasn't going to make it. Now we have a nice routine that breaks everything up and we get time for athletic activities.

Learning the spanish language is crazy here. They don't mess around! on my second full day here, me and my comp. were teaching an investigator completely in spanish! well trying to at least... My companion didn't speak any spanish coming in so i have had to help him a lot but it has been good for me! i knew way more spanish than i thought i did, and i am actually doing really well with the langauge. I know it's going to get harder, but so far it hasn't been too bad!

I can't say enough how awesome this place is and how happy I am. Every moment of my day is planned out, so that has taken some getting used to, but i have been so productive. I have never worked so hard on one thing in my life. I come home every night with a headache from studying so hard but also laughing so hard. I have been having so much fun while also learning so much. This has been the point i have been building up to for my entire life. The lord has blessed me with an awesome companion and experience here at the CCM. All the preperation and time put into getting ready for my mission was worth it! Thank you all for your support! I am so excited to continue learning the spanish langauge, feeling the spirit, and preparing to serve in the field. I am so excited! This expereince so far, has been better than i ever thought it would be! I know that I am going to have very hard times, but for know I am going to enjoy how great things are here in the CCM. This church is awesome and i am so glad i am a part of it! Missionary work is so effective and i am glad to join the efforts! We have a saying here that i want to share with all of you. That is never stop trying. We can fight through all dificult things with the lords help. Never give up, always keep trying. I love you all, and you are amazing blessings in my life.

Until next week, Elder Wright

Day 1-Travel to Mexico!

Hello mom!!!! Will you make sure this email makes it to the family!

I have arrived to the MTC in Mexico City! First off my P Day is on Fridays but we do not get a P Day this week, so my next email will be a week from this Friday! Elder Wood was one of the first faces i saw as i came into the MTC! It was awesome! I am very excited to begin my time at the MTC. I don´t have much time because i have to finish gettting settled in. The trip went awesome and evrything is going great! I love you all and am grateful for everything you have done for me! I will talk to you next friday! Love you!

It says not to send packages but there is a sweet website to use to do that. It is called missionarypackagesmx.com

ELDER, Wright