Week #1

It was exciting to get our 1st weekly
e-mail from Danielle.

She is doing so well and having

a great experience at the MTC.

We hope you will join us in praying for Danielle,

and all the Missionaries who are serving.

Just a little bit more about the day she left!
  
We watched Danielle go through security, all alone. However, after going through airport security, she and all the other missionaries headed for Mexico were met by Brother and Sister Kirkham.
(I think at the gate.)
The Kirkham's were sending off their son, and had tickets to travel, so were able to gather the missionaries who were leaving that morning.
They fed the missionaries "Pop Tarts"
and took lots of photos.
By that afternoon, those 257 photos
were sent to all the families of the Missionaries.
It was fun to open our e-mail and see
Our Missionary! 

Thank-you, Kirkham's, for giving us a
glimpse of our missionary leaving for Mexico City!

From Danielle

Mexico city is beautiful! The streets are crazy.  They are so narrow and the drivers are crazy cutting in and out of each other.  The CCM is very nice it is surrounded by a huge wall with a barbed wire fence on top of it, so we have our own little safe town.  So don't worry about my safety we are protected by that wall. My teacher actually said that the area we are in is actually a really safe area, even for gringos.

My companions name is Hermana Ralph, from Hawaii. She is very nice and actually

knows quite a bit of Spanish,

 so she helps me with my Spanish a lot.

My teacher and everyone else here do not speak much english at all, so I really have to work hard and learn the language fast.  My teacher is this tiny little guy who walks faster than anyone I have met.  Seriously some of our tallest elders in our district can't even keep up with him.  He is really nice although his English is very little.  We have been very lucky to get some other teachers to come in and help us with our Spanish.

The food here is definitely  different then I expected although it usually isn't terrible.  I have learned to eat a lot of cereal and nutella and peanut butter sandwiches are definitely my favorite food, as you can get them at breakfast and lunch, if you don't like the food.  Tuesdays are the best though because they get the pizza that is just like the pizza from Costco.  They do randomly serve some American foods though like last night they had KFC.

 Weather here is amazing.  It is cooler in the morning then it warms up in the afternoon, but it doesnt get too hot so it feels amazing.  At night you can almost always plan on a rainstorm, which is kind of fun so I am getting a lot of use out of my coat, umbrella and my crocs (my favorite shoes to wear here because they do good in the water and they are super comfy).  The first night we got here it rained so hard that all the streets flooded and it was like walking through a river just to get to your house.

We had a lot of fun in the rain.

My Spanish is really not very good, but I have already taught 4 lessons in Spanish! Crazy right?

My companion, however has a lot of experience with Spanish, so she is able to help me

a lot during the lessons.

Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays are the best  days here.  On Tuesdays we don't have to teach investigators because we have devotionals which are amazing!  Thursdays of course because there Pdays.  Sundays are nice because they are kind of laid back, although they are a little scary because you can be randomly be selected to pray or give a talk in Spanish at any moment.

We are asked to prepare a talk in Spanish every week and our Branch President has asked us to give it from the heart without much written down so that is a little difficult and scary when you have to do it in Spanish.  I have grown to love

singing hymns in Spanish.

Sacrament meeting was amazing in Spanish the spirit was so strong.  Luckily it was fast Sunday, so no one had to give a talk (my friend Matt Johnson said that he was called to give one his first week!) but we were asked to share our testimonies and I was very excited that I was able to bear my testimony in Spanish WITHOUT any help from notes.  It was an amazing experience and i was so happy because it was a goal of mine to be able to do it in Spanish without reading it.

I love it here and I am having a lot of fun and have felt like I have grown so much.  I can't believe it has already been a week.  It all goes by so fast,

yet I feel like I have been here forever.

Love you,
Hermana Stringham