I'm so excited to finally be here. The flights down only had a bit of turbulence, and people were fairly helpful with any and all questions I had! Ana was there waiting for me when I got to the airport, and Jane and Piper were along shortly afterwards. They were very sweet and took good care of me on my last day :) It's so much warmer down here! Everything is green already, and the MTC has beautiful gardens
everywhere! I am off in the Wayview/Raintree campus, which is purely Spanish and used to be part of BYU. I did run into to Elder Fitzy on my first day, but I doubt I'll see anyone else really as we rarely go over. We actually take a bus to get to the campus and to the temple.
It's actually a bit of a pop-up campus, with portable-like buildings for the cafeteria and the bookstore. Our classrooms are all in the Raintree part of campus. We actually have our classroom in the bottom floor living room of an old residence. But it's beautiful, and we get a lot more freedom then at the main campus. We have an artificial creek in the center of our classrooms. We also are aloud to go to Brigham's landing to Burger Supreme and to go to Jamba Juice. (I've never heard of either before...)
My companion is a really sweet and witty girl from Seattle. She is a semester away from graduating her public health program at BYU-I. Neither of us know any Spanish to start, so we're starting at basically the same level. We've been getting along pretty great :) She was nice enough to take the top bunk, and our personalities seem to be a good mesh. We are trying to speak as much Spanish as we can with each other, but so far this basically consists of Hola, Si, Como esta usted, Gracias, Es veridad... and just whatever else we've managed to pick up conversationally. Our teachers are all very patient and understanding, but sometimes I can't help but feel a bit overwhelmed with how very much I have to learn. I know everyone said that french would help me, but so far it's just managed to confuse me more :P A lot of the words are fairly similar so I get confused about which language I actually am speaking! We taught our first investigator last night, and I managed to include all three languages. So one of my goals is to get it down to two...
Other than feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of it all, I love the language already. If you read the title, it is fairly similar to the word confidence. Yet it actually means With Faith In God. Just a little fact for you... but really, now that it's starting to make more sense to me, I am beginning to really appreciate it. It's just hard, because I have a desire to share the gospel with others, and all that I have studied and learned through out my life. But now I have this simple barrier that until I am able to be more fluent, I feel as though I won't be able to communicate as effectively. I am also grateful for this as it forces me to rely more on the Spirit, as we are to simply teach with power and with authority, and not so much with fancy wording. But from growing up with so many books, I do love diction.
My district is so very easy going. We have 4 Elders and 4 Hermanas in total. One is going to Tijuana, my companion and I to Hermosillo, and the rest to Guadalaraja. Sister T. in the other companionship is from Calgary, and we are the only two Canadians of the 45 who reported on Wednesday.
Today has been a pretty productive p-day. We have service project (cleaning) at 6:15-7:30, and we also got to go to the Provo temple :) It really is beautiful in there! But Saturdays are my p-days from now on, which is kind of cool because we basically get a weekend!
It's actually a bit of a pop-up campus, with portable-like buildings for the cafeteria and the bookstore. Our classrooms are all in the Raintree part of campus. We actually have our classroom in the bottom floor living room of an old residence. But it's beautiful, and we get a lot more freedom then at the main campus. We have an artificial creek in the center of our classrooms. We also are aloud to go to Brigham's landing to Burger Supreme and to go to Jamba Juice. (I've never heard of either before...)
My companion is a really sweet and witty girl from Seattle. She is a semester away from graduating her public health program at BYU-I. Neither of us know any Spanish to start, so we're starting at basically the same level. We've been getting along pretty great :) She was nice enough to take the top bunk, and our personalities seem to be a good mesh. We are trying to speak as much Spanish as we can with each other, but so far this basically consists of Hola, Si, Como esta usted, Gracias, Es veridad... and just whatever else we've managed to pick up conversationally. Our teachers are all very patient and understanding, but sometimes I can't help but feel a bit overwhelmed with how very much I have to learn. I know everyone said that french would help me, but so far it's just managed to confuse me more :P A lot of the words are fairly similar so I get confused about which language I actually am speaking! We taught our first investigator last night, and I managed to include all three languages. So one of my goals is to get it down to two...
Other than feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of it all, I love the language already. If you read the title, it is fairly similar to the word confidence. Yet it actually means With Faith In God. Just a little fact for you... but really, now that it's starting to make more sense to me, I am beginning to really appreciate it. It's just hard, because I have a desire to share the gospel with others, and all that I have studied and learned through out my life. But now I have this simple barrier that until I am able to be more fluent, I feel as though I won't be able to communicate as effectively. I am also grateful for this as it forces me to rely more on the Spirit, as we are to simply teach with power and with authority, and not so much with fancy wording. But from growing up with so many books, I do love diction.
My district is so very easy going. We have 4 Elders and 4 Hermanas in total. One is going to Tijuana, my companion and I to Hermosillo, and the rest to Guadalaraja. Sister T. in the other companionship is from Calgary, and we are the only two Canadians of the 45 who reported on Wednesday.
Today has been a pretty productive p-day. We have service project (cleaning) at 6:15-7:30, and we also got to go to the Provo temple :) It really is beautiful in there! But Saturdays are my p-days from now on, which is kind of cool because we basically get a weekend!
Hermana Crawford
Note: P-Day is short for preparation day, which is when Hermana Crawford can catch up on letters, laundry, grocery and personal shopping and attend the Provo temple shown above.
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