Elder Zach Snyder Obregon Mexico Mission: Week 2 at the CCM

Hey Everyone,
Sorry about not emailing yesterday. They had to switch our P-Day because we went to immigration today to get our visas to stay in the country. But next week I will be back to emailing on Wednesday again. It was pretty fun to escape from the CCM. From both the inside and the outside it looks like a very nice prison. There is a large wall with a chain link fence on top with barbed wire on top of that, that surrounds the entire place. And the only way in, is through a large gate that is operated by guards that only let one car in at a time.

Thank you so much, Mom and Dad, for that package and the letter you sent to me. It literally came the very next day you sent it. If you can please use that letter service again. It is really nice to read your letters when it is not my P-Day, haha. Also, thank you for the pictures you sent of everyone. It is really nice to see everyones' smiling faces.

So the fourth of July was really fun here. All the chefs made a special "American" dinner. They made us hamburgers and fries, and they served us apple pie with ice cream for lunch. Later at night everyone in our house sang the Star Spangled Banner at the top of their lungs. It was a lot of fun to be reminded of what a wonderful country the USA is. It was fast Sunday the next day and the way they do it in the CCM is that you don´t get dinner on Saturday and you have to fast until lunch on Sunday.

So we finished teaching our first investigator and now she is our teacher. Her name is Hermana Sanchez and she only speaks to us in Spanish. So, sometimes she tells us what we need to do, and we have no idea what she is saying until she repeats herself slower. But I really like Hermana Sanchez. She is really kind and loving towards all of us.

We get quite a bit of time for personal study but it never seems like enough. We have personal study in the morning and then class. Then we have lunch, gym, more personal study, language, dinner then more class and language with a progressing investigator every other morning and night.

It is so nice to hear that Jacob is home and that you were all able to see him. And Josh told me before I left that their family had decided they were going to move this summer. Glad you all had fun helping them fix up their house. haha. So, the service we did at the CCM was actually really fun this week. Our task was to replace all the big water bottle jugs that they use so that we don't have to drink the tap water. So we loaded the back of this truck with about 60 of the huge jugs and then we had to drive around the CCM and replace the empty ones with full ones. Then when we got back we had to take all the empty bottles and stack them in a warehouse they have here. It was pretty fun at the end, because we had this assembly line that consisted of us just throwing empty water bottles from one person to the next.

So the other district in our zone left, and I am really going to miss those Elders. They were just so funny. And now with the other district gone, they made our District Leader and his DLC the new zone leaders and they made me the new District Leader of our district. So now I have all the fun responsibilities of a DL :). And since I am the new district leader, the Hermanas in our District asked if I could give them a blessing of comfort and strength. And that was truly an amazing experience. Never before had I felt the spirit so strongly guide my words as to what I should say. It truly was amazing afterwards because both of the hermanas had tears in their eyes after each of their blessings. I felt so blessed to be able to use my priesthood authority to help others.

My Spanish here is starting to go amazingly well. I can understand almost everything that my teachers say to me. In our lessons, I am able to talk without using our written script, and I can say my prayers almost completely in Spanish. But when I try and talk to the other Latiños about something, I can never understand them because it is usually about something that is not in my Gospel vocabulary and they speak super fast. So that always reminds me that I need to keep working.

So last P-Day something very unfortunate happened to me. Me and my companion were going to do laundry and we had bought a little bottle of detergent from the tienda to use to wash our clothes. So when I went to the squeeze the bottle to put the detergent in the washer, my bottle exploded and some of the detergent went straight into my eye. I can easily say that that was one of the most painful things that has ever happened to me. I then had my companion get me some water so that I could wipe my eye enough so that I could open it again. I then went to the infirmary to wash the detergent out over the sink. And that helped a little but my eye was still stinging so much. Then they put some eye drops in my eye that were supposed to take away the pain. But instead, for the first 5 seconds they were in, they made my eyes hurt even worse. Then after that my eye felt better for about 10 minutes before it started to hurt again. By the end of the day, I was so happy to go to bed. My eye ended up being soar for the next 3 days and it hurt if I closed my eyes to quickly. But happily all that is over and I hope to never experience that again. Don't worry about me, Mom. I´m fine now. I just hope that you all get a good laugh.

I am running out of time but it was so nice to see all your emails and the pictures that you sent. I love you so much and I hope that all of you are doing well.

Love,

Elder Snyder