Week 1

It was so incredible to hear from you! Oh my, what a great/stressful/exciting/tough/spiritual last couple of days. Life in the CCM is amazing and it is sooooo great to feel the spirit so much. I really have never felt closer to God or more at peace in all my life. I know that this is exactly what I need to be doing and that the Lord is on my side. Its been incredible to see how much spiritual growth I've been able to experience the past couple days! I've gone from kinda struggling to really STUDY the scriptures before I left to seeing an hour go by without even noticing while I've been intensely studying!! Its amazing to see the growth that's already occurred. My companion, Elder Davison, is great and we get along incredibly well. He has such a strong testimony and I really try to follow his example of constant prayer and study. So from our district there are 8 elders headed to Kennewick, 1 hermana going there as well, and 3 hermanas  going to Denver South. Our district leader, Elder Watkins is actually the cousin of Brynnley Watkins (one of my friends from WX). He´s an amazing example to all of us. So, here´s all the stuff that´s happened the past few days....

Wednesday

     Walking through security after leaving my family was very very very tough but I made it to the terminal and met up with the other missionaries a-ok. The flight down to Phoenix was strange but fairly uneventful. I set next to Hermana Jaccard from the Provo area and she´s headed to Kennewick although ended up being in a different district. In the Phoenix airport the 10ish of us from Utah were all sitting together when suddenly missionaries started appearing left and right!! I think the flight down to Mexico was probably at least 1\2 missionaries! We made it to Mexico City and the airport was strange with some really nice parts and then others that were a leetle bit sketchy.... We all made it through security and then lined up to get ready to get on the buses. We must have looked so weird as just 170ish young kids all lined up in the airport. We then got on buses and headed through Mexico city which was really an eye opener. The houses are crazy colorful here and there´s grafiti everywhere. (outside the CCM that is) After getting to the CCM we got nametags and had orientation. That night I might Elder Davison and the other Elders in my room, Elder Mercado and Elder Watson.

Thursday

     The first full day was a lot more orientation and meeting and was pretty dang hot since we had to wear our suits for the meetings. President Pratt really stressed exact obedience and I´ve been try constantly to live up to his challenge. Not a whole lot more happened but twas great to finally be here! (oh and there are nearly 900 missionaries here with 200 more coming next week!)

Friday

     Oh buddy, friday was one of the toughest days of my life but I know I grew from it a ton. We taught our first investigator in Spanish and I kinda blanked on even the stuff we had learned a few hours earlier. Luckily Elder Davison took Italian last year at ASU so he was able to get some things out. I know that even though learning Spanish has been the toughest thing of my life, the Lord will help me! Another tough thing was that we had one of the Biblical portion sized rain storms and my bag got all wet and kinda ruined a lot of my books and scriptures. But I was sooo grateful for my rain coat!!

Saturday

     Today was certainly better in terms of the doom and gloom thoughts I had on friday but it was still super tough to remember things we had learned as we taught Gabriel our investigator. Singing hymns in Spanish has really become one of my favorite things to do and has been when I´ve felt the spirit the strongest. I really expected learning a language to be more like learning Calculus but it´s so different and sooooo much harder. It´s really caused me to have to put my trust in the Lord and know that he will help me so that I can help families come unto Christ. Fun story, some guy in the neighborhood behind us has a cannon and fired it 17 times in a row while we were studying....

Sunday

     This was probably the most spiritual day of my entire life, and I pretty much felt the spirit all day long. For sacrament meeting everything was in Spanish and even though I only understood about a fifth of it I really knew the spirit was there. We had a devotional from the director, Hermano (brother) Cates, sunday night and it really helped me to have hope in learning and progressing. Here´s a few things he said

´´We as missionaries have front row seats to the greatest miracle on this earth´´

´´Nothing is as close to pure joy as bringing families to Christ´´

Monday

     First day of the first fully week en la CCM!!! Woot woot! We taught Gabriel again but I still have lots of work to do to teach up at the level Elder Davison´s at... I know the Lord will provide for sure!

     Well, I´m just about out of time and will have to get to more of the individual email next week, I promise! Life here is good, and I know the Lord is watching over me and you always! The Lord loves each of us and wants us to live up to our full potential!! I´ll try and send some pictures in a letter next week and hopefully it gets through the crazy postal service here! You guys are the best and I love you all. Adios!! 

Elder Spackman