P-Day Update Week 5, 03/17/2022

¡Hola!

This week has absolutely flown by! It feels like it was just yesterday I was writing my letter last week. But there were still plenty of things that happened this week that I will impart to my loyal readers!

The rest of my P-Day last week went pretty well, we went to the gym and just enjoyed the day before heading to bed, not being aware of what lay ahead DUH DUH DUUUUH!!

On Friday a few of our district members had to go to the downtown Mexico City Immigration office to receive green cards. The visa that I received prior to my mission runs out in July so we need to get a little more "permanent" authority to live here. Ergo, greencard. So we had to be at the reception building on the CCM compound at 7:00, we got up a little early to make it on time, received a box breakfast and got into a very not sketchy looking unmarked white van. From there we had a 1hr long drive to Immigration through the monstrosity that is Mexico City traffic. Mexico City traffic is muy loco, people don't really use turn signals and basically just drive into the lane they want and hope for the best, size always wins. But I also haven't seen an accident yet. Anyway after our rollercoaster to the Immigration office, we learned we were an hour early, so our driver took us to some alleyway to park and just nap for an hour. Also downtown CDMX is very different from the rest of the city, we saw lamborghinis, ferraris, and basically all the other expensive cars you can think of. After our little break we went to the office, I was first and it was mostly waiting in line and signing documents, which lasted about an hour and a half. After me we had to wait an incredible amount of time before the others could go. But eventually it was their turn, they went and it took about 2 hours, because they actually were given their greencards, I was not, I have no idea why and neither do they haha! I am supposed to return in two weeks which will be great (not really). After our appointments we had a 2 hour long drive back to the CCM thanks to that traffic! We got back at 5:00 in the afternoon and we were all just very beat, I don't remember much of what happened after except that when I lay in my bed it was like Heaven!

The rest of the week was fairly calm, except for the fact that I found out the stomach bug that has been sweeping the compound has found a nice home in my body; a lot of Sunday was spent staying near a bathroom and trying to still get things done. My companion Elder Ashton gave a great talk about the Holy Ghost, he was followed by an Hermana [Sister Missionary] in our district, Hermana Petersen. She talked about her experience going to the Sacred Grove. They both bore wonderful testimonies. By the way, we are assigned to give talks about 30 seconds before the meeting begins, so everyone has to prepare a talk and then they just choose people day of, and it's all in Spanish. These two factors made them just a little stressed out while giving their talks, but my MTC teacher once told me that you are called to the language you can best testify in, and they are truly testaments of that!

After our priesthood lesson, which was about the Holy Ghost as well, and a very good class (on the Doctrine of Christ given by one of the senior missionary couples, the Sanchezes where they talked about how we need to live the Doctrine of Christ in order to better teach it), I decided it would be best to ask the Zone Leaders if I could go back to the house and "give up the ghost" at least that's how I felt at the time. After we got back, I took a nice long nap, headed to reception to get some medication from the doctor, where he also set up to have my liquid dinner delivered to me. We got back and just waited for our dinner to be delivered. When it got there we found out this "liquid diet" was a VERY big plate of jello with some orange juice, suffice it to say, I was not ecstatic. We also had to stay home from the devotional, so we took that opportunity to watch this Thomas S. Monson movie we downloaded earlier in the week, That man is legendary!!

The rest of the week was fairly normal, I had the bug beaten by Tuesday and we just got back into the grind. This week has been much more of applying Spanish to teaching the Gospel rather than just learning conjugations, which has been a much more fulfilling learning experience for me. I feel like my abilities are getting stretched and the rest of the district is growing so much everyday! I feel like a proud mama bird seeing her hatchlings learn to fly. I was a little nervous about the District Leader calling at first, but just seeing the improvement of my district and knowing I had some part (small as it may be) in helping, has been an incredibly happy experience for me! I've also been learning a lot about the power of this calling, for missionaries that are worthy of it, Elder Jackson shared with us this week a document called "the Ricciardi letter" which is just purely incredible. It talks about a missionary serving in England and basically the things he learned from his Italian companion "Elder Ricciardi". It was wonderful and has a lot of little tid-bits to help the mission experience and make it better for yourself and those you teach!

To finish off I want to leave you with a quick spiritual thought. In Alma 36 we read a little more about the conversion of Alma the younger, and the wrestle he had before God, before he received a remission of his sins, I've been reading a lot about repentance and the process of purifying yourself in the face of God. The thing that stands out to me in this, is in verses 18-19 he says he "cried within his heart" to the Lord and pleaded for forgiveness, and then it says "when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more." I like this because there was no other special stipulation, when he asked the lord with a broken heart and a contrite spirit to be forgiven, he was. End of story. I find it comforting to reaffirm "ask and ye shall receive". I implore you all to take your concerns to the Lord and ask for help, I can promise that with faith in Jesus Christ you will receive an answer to your prayer!

¡les amo mucho!

-Elder Garnica