Casi completo

Hola!

It is my last week here at the CCM. This week has been a crazy one. This week I got a new companion, new beedroom, new roommates, new teachers, and a new classroom. We are now the oldest group here in the CCM, which is very exciting. One week from today I will be leaving from here with all the other Rancagua missionaries and going out to the field. A new batch of missionaries came last week, including lots of Latino missionaries (in the 2-week program) who are also going to Rancagua. It has been cool to meet some of them. I hope my first companion in the mission is from South America.

Anyway, this week has been great. It has been good working with my new companion and teaching with him. I am actually kind of still in a trio, because we only have one Hermana in our district and she teachers and does class activities with Elder Nolan and I. Hermana Porter and Elder Nolan came to the CCM knowing no Spanish at all, but they have progressed incredibly in 5 weeks. In our lessons, I have been doing most of the talking, but we set a goal for them to say more and for me to hold back a bit. Yesterday, we applied that in a lesson and it went really well. The pace that these and other missionaries have learned Spanish has been a miracle! I came in knowing a lot, but I have also progressed a lot. I am getting better at actually expressing my normal personality in Spanish, which is difficult, and feel that I have progressed a lot in the last week. It used to be difficult to listen to Spanish all the time, but I am pretty comfortable with it now. I even mostly understand the present and past subjunctive!

Anyway, the rest of the week has been good. My new roommates are Elder Eyre and Elder Buhler, two brand new missionaries from Utah (where else?). They're great kids, and really getting into the work. Getting back into playing soccer every morning has been great also, of course. Yesterday we had a Utah vs Not Utah soccer game, and it was actually a pretty even number of people haha...

On Saturday there are always a ton of people at the Temple here on campus so we spent most of our breaks going and talking to people (instead of playing Hackey-Sack). It felt great to go and talk to lots of Chileans and missionaries. We saw one missionary who left the CCM only a week ago, which was great. I also saw a sister missionary that was in my EFY group back like 3 years ago. It's a small world.

Oh, and I bore my testimony in Spanish on Sunday in Church, so that was cool.

It's great being a missionary. Every day is another confirmation that I am doing the right thing, and serving the Lord. 

Have a great week!

- Elder Richards