Third Letter from the CCM...more than half way...

Hola Familia y Amigos! I can´t believe it has already been a week since I last emailed! Time is going a lot faster now that we have gotten into a routine and that we know what is going on now. My companion and I are getting a lot better at teaching in español :) Our first few lessons we had to have either preach my gospel or a full page of notes to teach our lesson but now we just go in with a Libro de Mormon and the Spirit and we can teach for over 30 minutes about something. The Spirit is the most important thing in our lessons and so we always sing a hymno and say an oracion before we teach and to begin our lessons. Our mission presidente told us "The Spirit doesn´t withdraw from us, we withdraw from the Spirit." I know that to be true. Sometimes it can be hard to always feel the Spirit but I just have to stop and think of what I´m doing wrong that had made the Spirit withdraw from me. Everyone that is baptized has the gift of the Holy Ghost to be with us ALWAYS, as long as they are following God´s commandments, so I have been trying to remember that especially when I take the sacrament. So I guess I should tell you about my week. Well last Friday I weighed myself and I´m 152 pounds which means I´m almost back to normal yay :) We had an amazing lesson with our district that night. Our teacher told us we were going to find something that we could do better as a district and she told us to get down on our knees and pray with a sincere heart to find out what we needed. After we prayed the Spirit told me to go to Christ like attributes in preach my gospel and Patience stuck out like crazy. The teacher then said we were all going to share, starting with me and so I talked about patience for a minute and my companion was just looking at me with him jaw down because the only thing he could think of was patience. (my companion and I have a saying throughout our district that we are of one heart, one mind, one foot, and one tie because we always think the same things, feel the same way, and we have the same shoe size and so the hemana´s said they want to buy us matching ties) Anyways, as we continued throughout the class almost everyone was directed to a scripture or a thought about patience and wow it was amazing how strong the Spirit was and how true it was that we needed patience. This week we have all been trying to work on our patience and wow I have needed it this week because I have been pretty sick all week, a companionship isn´t going very well in our district because this elder is a jerk to his companion and won´t treat him well at all, an elder locked my companion and I´s room as a joke but neither of our keys could open it and he had to try and kick the door down and eventually broke the handle enough that the door opened and many other wonderful things. Back to Friday, after our amazing lesson, all 4 hermana´s needed a blessing and so my companion and I gave them blessings and it was another great experience with blessings. We then felt prompted to go to the companionship that is struggling and challenged them to stay with each other and try and find common interests and just help each other. We promised them that if they would do that they would be blessed and would become a close companionship. They both agreed but the next day they were right back to not trying :( They frustrate me a lot haha This weekend we celebrated Mexico´s Independence Day and it was crazy! They have a tradition in Mexico to go outside and shoot your gun into the air and yell "Vive Mexico"!! So the nights were way loud and pretty crazy. On Saturday we got to watch a big celebration with a lot of performers dancing and singing and going crazy! Too bad missionaries can´t dance because we all wanted to haha On Sunday night we all gathered in the gym to watch live TV of the celebration of Mexico´s Independence, which started at 11pm and was just the President of Mexico saying vive and then a persons name and then we woull repeat it back and then he ended with vive Mexico three times. It was interesting, and it was manditory to be there so we all broke mission rules that night and we didn´t get to bed until midnight. When we left they told us to get to out rooms as quick as possible so we wouldn´t get hit by falling bullets. Yes falling bullets from all of the crazy people shooting into the air that night especially because of the live thing we watched on TV, that made us feel safe haha The rest of Sunday was amazing of course, we had a really good leadership meeting and got to talk about the companionship that is struggling in my district and the President had to meet with them twice that day for at least an hour each time and they seem like they kind of get along now....kind of. Also on Sunday my companion and I taught a lesson on the plan of salvation which went really well, We had a devotional that night which was Elder Hollands 2011 January devotional. Elder Holland is amazing and his talks to missionaries are amazing just like his conference talks are. Monday started off a little late for me because my alarm clock changed time in the middle of the night and my comp woke up at 6:30 and went right into his prayer and didn´t realize I was awake until he ended his prayer at 7:22. So I slept in until then, which was nice because I was sick but I felt way bad for not getting up on time, and he said a nice prayer for 52min. His prayers are getting longer almost every day, I can´t believe it haha The rest of the week has been pretty hard to study and teach because I have felt crappy but we have had some of our best lessons. One of our investigators is our teacher and usually our teachers play an investigator that they had on their mission or someone they know, but this time she is being herself. They don´t tell us who we are teaching so we went into the lesson asking what she knew and were figuring out she knew everything and then she told us she had been baptized in the LDS church. So we thought, oh a less active member and asked her to come to church and she was like yes I love church I go every week. So we were stumped, she was a member, went to church every week, she told us she was going to be married in the temple in December and we realized that she was playing herself. So our second lesson we had no clue what to teach her. What are you supposed to teach the person that teaches you??At first we felt like she wasn´t a missionaries responsibility and didn´t know what to do but we just planned a lesson anyways. So we had this lesson planned and then 2min before we were supposed to teach I felt like we needed to change our whole lesson so that´s what we did, we decided we needed to talk about temples and then what she was gonna do after she got married and we found the problem. She really wants to go to medical school but she also wants to have kids and she doesn´t know what to do. We had a way emotional lesson and we were all almost crying by the end and when we ended we asked her to pray but she couldn´t speak so we had to say it. Wow I love the CCM and the many experiences I have had here already! We went to the temple today and I understood so much more than the first time and I was able to do so much more by myself it was a great feeling. Today I finally feel like I´m getting over my sickness and this morning I got to see Elder Vierkant at breakfast and that was fantastic!! I´m glad he made it and I can´t wait to catch up with him soon but I´m not sure how often we will see each other because while Elder Kimball and I had similar schedules, Elder Vierkant and I don´t :/ Well I hope Blake had a wonderful birthday! Happy Birthday this week Kelsee! I love you all and love your emails! adios :) Love, Elder Hyde