Week 3: 3 Weeks Down!

Me and my district! 

Over halfway done with the mtc! It is flying by right now I honestly want it to slow down because it's honestly so fun right now. My district is hilarious and we all have a ton of fun while still getting everything done and staying obedient. Perfect combo! This past week has legit been so awesome.

Our District :)

So on Friday we had our first TRC. That stands for Teaching Resource Center, and it's where REAL recent converts, long time members, and sometimes real investigators volunteer to come in and get taught by us. It's crazy because you have no clue who these people are and you're supposed to teach them the restoration right off the bat and they speak super fast, but it's all good! Such a dope experience honestly. We actually didn't realize that the first girl we taught was already a member, so we invited her to be baptized.... whoops. But she played along and said yes haha. I had no idea, but apparently it's normal for missionaries to try and set a date on the first lesson. It's hard to do but awesome if you can get one.

Part of Mexico City on our way to the temple

On Sunday, me and my companion Elder Sanders were in charge of teaching our branch priesthood meeting, and it went super well. It was all about the oath and covenant of the priesthood, which is in D&C 84. I didn't know a ton about it before, but there's one part that I absolutely love. It says something about honoring our priesthood by magnifying our calling. That struck a cord with me, and helped motivate me to give 110% with all my missionary responsibilities. 

Gym time!

This past Monday, we were all just hanging out in our rooms doing some personal study, and all of a sudden heard 3 gunshots right outside the mtc. Sorry mom! Crazy but pretty cool honestly, except the cops here roll down our street literally all night every night blaring their sirens. After the gunshots and sirens though, I had one of my best studies of the book of Mormon. I was reading in 1 Nephi chapter 16, about when Nephi breaks his bow while hunting. Everyone in his camp (Lehi, Laman, Lemuel, and the family of Ishmael) is starving, and eventually starts murmuring. Even Lehi, which surprised me because Lehi is the one who trusted the lord enough to bring his family out in the wilderness. A few verses later, after Nephi calms all of them down, they all repent, but the Lord scolds Lehi. He forgives him though, and continues to bless them with food and the Liahona. This story was super cool because it shows that literally no one is perfect, but when we make mistakes we can be forgiven by our always loving Heavenly Father.

Outside the Mexico City Temple

Guess what my favorite holiday is? The 4th of July! I legit love the 4th, and was kind of salty I couldn't be in America for it, but they made it awesome here. All the tables in the cafeteria were red white and blue, and we ate American food for lunch finally! Real beef burgers, chips, pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, root beer. It legit was sooooooo good oh my!  This rice and beans stuff isn't working for me so this was much needed.

 And then during our meal, all 300 missionaries were all eating, then a hermana started playing our National Anthem. We all stopped eating, stood up, and started belting it with our hands on our hearts. Legit never felt so inspired from our National Anthem haha. I got crazy chills cause it was so awesome. Being outside of America and seeing how other parts of the world are run (not all obviously) makes you appreciate how awesome our home is. To cap off our day, we all shotgunned some root beers (3 of them). We also got like 175 new missionaries, so that's awesome. We have a devo every Tuesday night, and that was really good too, the speaker was Presidente Johnson, who is the president of the Mexico city temple. Our final song in that devo was soooooo good and all the missionaries stood to sing it, and the spirit was insane. 

Celebrating the 4th in the CCM!

Last thing, so about a week ago our district made a goal with the mission president for churros, if we completed a bunch of goals. One of them is speaking Spanish our whole 4th week, which is this week. So since Monday morning at 6:30, ya boy has been speaking only spanish. It's super hard and I Google translate a bunch, but my Spanish is getting so much better already. We also are going to the temple again this p day, so that will be awesome. I'm planning on doing the whole session in Spanish, just to see what I can understand. Should be an awesome experience!

Well I love all of you, feel free to shoot me an email, and I'll respond asap! Love hearing about what's going on in your lives! 

Hasta luego!

Elder Allen

Video of us downing our Root Beer!