Hermana in Houston: Week 4: I am loving it here!

It's time for P-day letter writing!!

Hi!

I love you all so much! Thank you for your incredible love and support. I am so grateful to have you in my life!

It is so hard figuring out what to write! So much happens every day, and my brain is half Spanish half English right now, and let's not even mention this bizarre keyboard. haha! I misspell everything and can't punctuate. IT KILLS ME. This week was great, and today was literally the very best day that I have had so far.

Today we woke up and studied, ate a great breakfast, cleaned our casa, did our laundry, took a nap under the palm trees, ate the best lunch so far, tried crazy candy from the tienda, took pictures, played tennis, and tonight we have the devotionals which I LOVE and have a girls night where we eat chocolate and paint our nails.

How happy are people that switch to Geico? Happier than a missionary on PDay! ''P DAY!''

Last Tuesdays devotional was the quote from Richard G Scott that Mommy sent me about receiving answers to prayers, so that was really neat!

This week every single person in my district has been sick with either the stomach flu or a bad cold, sickness spreads like wildfire here. Luckily I have been super healthy ever since we got here. I eat healthy, I exercise hard, and none of my clothes that we tailored to me even fit anymore! I am getting the worst tan lines though, pictures to come. haha!

The language is coming along! Our teachers make us speak all in Spanish now and it is great to see how much I know, and I learn so much by having to look up every word I need. On Sunday our Branch President spoke and I understood every single word he said! Best feeling ever!

Teaching is going really well. I am really, really grateful I have conversational skills. I may not know every word, but I know how to say it in a way to touch them. I love love love teaching. Some lessons go better than others because Hermana Jensen and I have very different methods of preparation, but we are both learning patience and compromise.

It's been really funny because Hermana Jensen and Hermana Zindel are very similar, and Hermana Zamora and I are very similar so we balance each other out. haha The other sisters are very loud and both did drama and choir, and Hermana Zamora and I are much more reserved and quiet. Our district gets along so well though. There is one Elder who is still twelve years old, but we are all learning patience. haha We all balance each other out and so many people ask how we got so close. We depend on each other! We're all each other has right now and we make it work! We all write letters to each other to express love, resolve conflict, and help each other through hard times. I love it. I've gotten some of the sweetest letters from our elders that I will keep forever.

I literally cannot tell you enough how much I love our teachers. They are the BIGGEST BLESSING. The are all probably five feet tall, not even one hundred pounds, and they are seriously the cutest. They love us so much and go so far above and beyond to help us. I had a really hard couple of days, and little Hermano Trejo pulled me aside and said, 'You... are... a... great person. You... are... really... beauty. You... are... my... family.' haha Their broken English is the best. I love it.

The natives are my favorite! The hermanas are the sweetest people on earth! We never have any idea what each other is saying, but they always make sure to say hi! And the elders are hilarious. They always yell "te amo"and "mi esposo" to me, probably because they don't realize I know what they're saying. They all give you their emails when they leave on little napkins from the comedor. hahah

The district that just left passed down 'The Book of the CCM'. it is absolutely hilarious! Kids from the first generacion of the CCM write their experiences in scriptural language and we seriously roll on the floor, tears streaming down our face laughing. We can\t wait to write in it!

We got a new district on Wednesday and I seriously just want to pull out my hair even thinking about them. They are all really young, like just barely turned 18 or 19 the day they got here, and extremely unprepared and immature. It's frightening. Late to everything, leave early, don't pay attention, don't take it seriously, SLEEP IN, goof off... it is a serious problem. As leaders we are supposed to be helping them and loving them, but even their teachers don't know what to do with them. What a mess. We planned a whole lesson for FHE last night to try to help them and they didn't even show up, so I guess I''ll share it with you...

READ THE FOURTH MISSIONARY. It will change your life. My favorite parts were...

"Your life's greatest work is YOU. The purpose and central blessing of life is change. it is to be changed to become more like Jesus Christ. It is to incorporate into your character the qualities of His character. It is to move from one degree of intelligence and capacity to the next.

The truth is that our nature can change. That is what this is all about. You may permit the Lord to change your nature if you give yourself to Him and to His work. He cannot work on what He does not have and He cannot have you unless you give yourself to Him.

Do you see that only in losing yourself may you find yourself; only by enriching others may you be enriched; only by giving may you receive; only in surrendering may you become free?

The Lord says, "Let me make of you all that you can be."

The realization of your amazing, astounding, and true potential happens only in the hands of the Lord. But you and only you can place yourself in those masterful, loving hands.

The only way to win is to lose.

Lose yourself in the work."

I love being a missionary. It is the single greatest decision I have ever made in my entire life. I am the happiest, healthiest, best self that I have ever been. This is hard work, very hard work, but I love it. This is the single most important time of my life, and I am enjoying every second of it.

I love you all more than I can say, and think about you every day!

Please send me pictures! I have a special connection to photos and they get me through the hard days.

Hermana McOmber

Here are more pictures from the first day leaving from SLC to this week at the CCM (Mexico MTC)