September 2, 2014- Last Week in the CCM

September 2, 2014

Last Week in the CCM

Hello Family and Friends,

I can´t believe that in less than 11 hours I will be leaving the CCM in Mexico City for the airport to fly to Virginia!

On Thursday, Elder McCall and I taught the new district how to make a language plan and how to prepare a lesson. I think it went pretty well.

On Friday, we had meetings all day to prepare us to go into the field. There were a lot of interesting things to learn in the meetings, but the day was so, so long because we had so many different meetings to attend.

On Saturday, Elder McCall and I taught an actual member of the church from Mexico City in the CCM. We gave her a lesson and we were able to get some referrals to pass on to the missionaries here in Mexico City. Here are her comments. 

The questions were:

How did you feel during the lesson?

She responded "Very happy that the missionaries can radiate with the special spirit of peace and happiness" 

What more did you learn in the lesson?

She said, "To know that agency is a gift but that if we have been bad, the Christ’s atonement can have an effect on our lives. 

What changes will you make in you life after being in the lesson?

She said, "Help the missionaries receive references from people I know."

After the lesson, we asked her for any referrals and she actually gave us one!!!  Elder McCall and I gave the name to the CCM, who will give it to the missionaries in Mexico City. Once again, I want to stress how important member missionary work is. I have never realized its importance until I arrived here at the CCM. A missionary’s success really depends on the members in the area and their willingness to help the missionaries.

I will miss my morning teacher, Hermano Castellano, because he has really changed my life. He has taught me so much, and I have never met a person besides my family that has cared about me and has wanted to help me so much. He helped everyone in our class become more like the Savior and therefore better missionaries.

On Sunday, our district sung the “Army of Helaman” in our sacrament meeting in Spanish. But since none of the people in our district are vocally inclined, we brought a few more people in from other districts in to help us so that we wouldn’t sound really bad. I think it went really well. 

These past two days haven’t been very fun. I have had to say goodbye to most of the people in our district as some left on Monday morning and others left this morning. It’s been really hard to see them all go because our district has grown really close. For the whole day today, only Elder McCall and I are left out of our district here in the CCM, which has been a little depressing when its meal time or gym time.

I get to wakeup at 1:00 a.m. tomorrow (Central time) to be able to leave the CCM at 2 to be able to get onto my flight which boards at around 5:30. I will arrive in Atlanta Georgia around 11:30 and then arrive in Norfolk Virginia around 4:00 pm Eastern time. I´m really excited to get out into the field and begin to teach people!!! Nos Vemos!!

Elder Cannon

Note:

On September 3^rd, 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, Jared arrived safely in Chesapeake, Virginia.  He will find out where he will be assigned on September 4^th.  He will let us know what his new address will be on Monday, his new Pday.

                      

                         Here is a picture with me and my morning teacher Hermano Castellano.

August 27, 2014- My First Talk in Spanish

Week # 5- August 27, 2014

Hello family and friends,

In exactly seven days from now, I will be traveling to Virginia. I’m really excited to start preaching the gospel but I will also miss Mexico City and the CCM.

Here is what happened this past week:

Last Preparation day I got a haircut from a lady who spoke absolutely no English. Lets just say I don’t think she really understood what I wanted when I tried to explain it in Spanish, so I ended up getting a super short haircut.

I have found a new hobby. Shining shoes is one of the best activities ever. I just felt so accomplished when my shoes were all shiny. To those who have the time, I would definitely suggest shining your shoes. Ha Ha

Rugby got banned here at the CCM. We were only playing two- hand touch but some guy twisted his ankle. The past few weeks there have been a lot of kids who broke their noses during soccer. I guess the president of the CCM realizes that if he were to ban soccer here, it would create a problem with the Latinos.

Our morning teacher´s last day was last Saturday. He got another job in Mexico City so we will have a substitute teacher for the rest of this week.

Since we are in the heart of Mexico City its easy to hear the things that are going on outside the CCM even though you can´t see it because of the high walls. The past few days there has been some really good quality Mariachi Bands playing. We can hear the music while we’re walking to class, and it has been pretty fun to listen to.

Both of our teachers told me and Elder McCall that they thought that we are the best teachers in our district, so they both asked us to go teach one of the new districts how to plan lessons to teach an investigator and how to create a language plan. We are going to teach them tomorrow.

This Sunday I gave a 5 minute talk about the el don del Espirtu Santo, the gift of the Holy Ghost, in Spanish in our sacrament meeting. I think that giving a talk in Spanish is easier than giving a talk in English. It was cool because even though I had to read a lot from my talk, there were definitely some parts in my talk where I was able to look up and just speak in Spanish like when I was bearing my testimony.

Sunday night one of our latino friends got really sick. So he asked us to give him a blessing. His companion gave the blessing but he asked me to anoint the oil, and of course I had to do it in Spanish. I have never done an anointing before so it was really cool to try to do it in Spanish.

Here in the CCM I have been trading one-dollar bills for bills from the other countries that are equal to the dollar bill in the US. So far I have money from Columbia, Honduras, and Peru.

This week has been a really good week but it has definitely gone by fast. I´m really excited to get out into the field and to start preaching the gospel to the people in North Carolina and Virginia. 

Elder Cannon

I am pointing to Virginia on this map.  This is where I'll be sharing the gospel next week.

August 20, 2014- Two More Weeks in the MTC

August 20, 2014

Hello family and friends,

I can’t believe that I am going to be in the mission field in Virginia in two weeks. The days here in the CCM go by slow but the weeks just fly by. It’s so strange to think that I have been away from Arizona for almost a full month.

Last P-day, Elder Mann, from New Zealand, and I taught a bunch of Latinos from Mexico and Colombia how to play two hand touch rugby. After we played with them for a little bit, they said that they really liked it and they thought it was as fun as soccer. Now that´s an accomplishment to get a Latino to say that another sport is just as good as soccer, or as it is called here, futbol.

The guys Brazil and the Dominican Republic wanted to arm wrestle me because they thought they could beat me, but I ended up winning both times.

There has been a package being sent around our district that includes a bunch of treats from a mystery friend.  There are also 50 pesos in the package with instructions to buy treats and then send the package to another person in our district. Elder McCall and I were able to figure out that it was Elder Schwartz who started it all, but we haven’t told him that we know it is him. Elder Schwartz is so selfless.

It has been hard to sleep at night in the CCM, lately. It’s always too hot in our dorms because there is no air conditioning, so we have to open our windows at night to at least get some air circulation. The problem is Mexico City is busy like New York City is. It’s a party all night long. You can hear lots of traffic noise because there are over 20 million people here in Mexico City, and the people here really like to honk their car horns and set off fireworks all night long so that you end up trying to sleep with a ton of noise going on around you. Thursday night, Elder McCall and I were sleeping and then we woke up at 1:00 a.m. to this super weird noise coming from a speakerphone. We honestly thought there was some type of alien invasion or something because the voice coming out of the speaker was so distorted and they were saying the same thing over and over again. One of our Latinos friends in our dorm was awake so we had him come listen to the noise. After he listened for a couple of seconds he started laughing and said it was only a tamale truck driving by the CCM and the person on the speakerphone was just saying “'Tamales, get your tamales here,” in Spanish.

On Friday, Elder McCall and I went to purchase something at the tienda, or store, here at the CCM. We get 100 pesos a week to spend at the tienda.  When we got there we found out that they weren’t accepting credit cards or the cash cards that missionaries receive each week. So, Elder McCall went over to get some pesos from the card machine but instead of pulling out a 100 pesos he ended up pulling out 1000 pesos, about 70 US dollars.  The card machine wouldn’t let him deposit the money back in.  I guess he’ll have to spend it all before he leaves.

On Saturday I had a couple of really cool experiences. In the morning our teacher had us do this activity where he paired us up with someone in our district. Then we were instructed to talk about what we each felt like we were struggling with here in the MTC. Then we were supposed to receive revelation for that person to help them become a better missionary. I was partnered up with Elder B. He told me about himself and then explained that he had been struggling with learning Spanish, since I’m district leader I already knew this but, and he felt like it was because of a lack of faith. After he told me all the information, I prayed that I would be able to receive inspiration on how to help him with his problem. Instead of receiving an answer on how to help him with his faith, I felt impressed that faith wasn't a problem for him at all but it was his works [work ethic]. So I showed him a bunch of scriptures that talked about how it was important to have faith but it was also really important to have works. Ever since we did that activity, Elder B. has been working really, really hard to learn the language. I think that what I told him was definitely what the Lord wanted him to hear.

Later in the day on Saturday, our district got the opportunity to teach a person that was pretending to be a less active member. However, our teacher came up to Elder McCall and I and told us he wanted us to teach a REAL less active member. Elder McCall and I were really worried at first because all the other lessons we had taught had either been with a staff member here in the CCM who was pretending to be an investigator or one of our fellow missionaries was pretending to be an investigator, so we prayed before we went in to teach her. Elder McCall and I taught a woman named Taynia who was lives in Mexico City.  After we talked to her for a little bit, we felt like we needed to teach her about the Plan of Salvation. Even though we were teaching in our broken Spanish and we had a hard time understanding her because she was speaking so fast, I feel like the lesson went really well.  We got her to pray at the end of the lesson, which is always a good thing.

Our zone leaders for the past two weeks left for the field two days ago so we got two new zone leaders. Every day we teach three lessons to investigators, two of the lessons are with our two teachers who are pretending to be an investigator and the other lesson is with one of the other missionaries of our district. On

Monday night we were teaching one of the missionaries from our district. Elder McCall and I had a lesson prepared and as we started talking with them we felt like we needed to abandon our previously planned lesson plan and talk only about El Libro de Mormon[the book of Mormon] Elder McCall and I spent twenty minutes teaching him about El Libro de Mormon and then we bore our testimony. The spirit was so strong during the lesson especially when Elder McCall and I were bearing our testimonies. When I was bearing my testimony I felt the spirit so strong and I have never felt the spirit so strong before in my life. It was an amazing experience and I definitely learned from that lesson that it is so important to follow the spirit and teach what the spirit tells you to teach.

On Monday morning we had to say goodbye to our Latino friends, which was really sad because I’ve really grown to like all of those guys. Yesterday night we got a new group of Latino friends.  This is our third group because Latinos stay here only 2 weeks whereas we are here for 6. The new Latinos that share our dorm are so amazing. One of the Latinos knows English really well and he speaks Spanish really fast so its going to be a really good opportunity for us for white guys who are staying with them because it will help us to understand Spanish when people are speaking fast.

Every Tuesday night we have a devotional. Last night Elder Piper from the Area seventy came to talk to us. He talked about the importance of missionaries and members working together. He said, “To have success as a missionary in bringing others to Christ and to hasten God´s work, depends on our ability to be one with the members.” I never realized how important it is, as members, to be close to the missionaries and work together with them to bring souls to Christ. I would like to encourage every one back home and anyone who is reading my letter to work closely with the missionaries in your area so that you can bring souls to Christ.

Sincerely, 

Elder Cannon

Here is a picture of me and the Latinos who have been in our dorm that past two weeks. They are Elder Alvarez on the left and Elder Santamaria on the right. They left Tuesday morning. 

Picture of me and Elder Nascimiento from Brazil (left) and Elder Alva from Mexico (right).