# 6 Letter from CCM Mexico City

I am so sad to be leaving my beloved CCM, but I´m starting to get more and more excited to go, little by little. We watched the MTC devotional live from the Provo MTC. It was Dallin H. Oaks and man that guy is bold. Bold and bald. I loved it. It was all about why we say we are the only true and living church in the world. In case you were wondering, it´s because we have the fulness of the gospel, the power of the priesthood, and a unique and complete testimony of Christ. It was so interesting and just got me pumped!

Guess who´s the new sister leader/trainer/whatever it´s called?!

Not me! My companion is though, so I get to sit in on the zone meetings and get to know all the girls in my branch! It´s been pretty fun.

I have one final story about my choir leading experience. So, this Sunday was when we sang the musical number. On Saturday we practiced for 40 minutes, and it sounded pretty good. Then, Saturday night, we sang a closing hymn with our teachers. Hermana Martinez is studying vocal performance, so I wanted to see what she had to say. So we sang Conmigo Quedaté, Señor as the closing song without a piano. I encouraged the Elderes beforehand to sing their parts (the hermanas are doing soprano and I was the only alto so we were good). It was awful! Our teachers smiled and told us that it was good, but that´s just because they are nice. It was so bad, and I got so nervous, especially because we wouldn´t have time to practice before singing in sacrament meeting. So I went over the parts again without a piano and hoped it got stuck in their heads.

Sunday morning, we line up, and the first verse is kinda rough. The elderes weren´t hitting their parts and I thought I was going to pop a vein in my forehead, especially because we had practiced so much! But then the second verse was okay. We planned to end the last verse a cappella, and I almost wanted to motion to the pianist somehow and tell him to keep playing. The piano directly faces a wall though, so I would have looked really ridiculous. So the pianist stopped playing for the final chorus - and it was gorgeous. Seriously, it was so perfect. The wives of our branch presidency teared up, so I think that´s a good sign. They came up to us and told us how great they did, and I acted modest but secretly I loved it when everyone would say "It was all Hermana Rust!" I gotta work on that whole pride thing....  But teaching teenage boys to sing parts a cappella is no small task!

On Saturday, during coaching time, the main suggestion that Hermano Rangel gave me and Hermana Fox was to express love for our investigators, both the love that Heavenly Father has for them, and our love for the as well. I am fine saying that Heavenly Father loves you, but you know me, I feel weird saying anything remotely like that to anyone. That night (I believe it was Saturday night), Hermana Martinez and Hermano Rangel stood outside the door and Hermano Rangel hugged all the elders and shook all the sister´s hands and Hermana Martinez hugged the sisters and shook the elders hands, and they told us they loved us. It doesn´t sound like some big revolutionary thing, but I loved it, and we were all pretty giddy on our walk home. Granted, we´re always giddy on our walk home, just because it´s finally bedtime, but we had some extra pep that day.

Anyway, Hermana Martinez was teaching us Tuesday when we had a little bit of extra time. She gathered us around the computer and had us watch a video on the LDS website by Sister Madsen about expressing love to her students. Sister Madsen would stand at the door and tell each individual student that she loved them. She told us that she had never seen that video until Sunday at church, the day after she and Hermano Rangel stood at the door and told each of us they loved us.  So.... moral of this story is expressing love is important, and Hermana Martinez is awesome.

Oh yeah, I finally got called on to speak this Sunday in District meeting. We have to prepare a talk every week, and then just announce who will be speaking. So I spoke, and afterwards, the counselor came up to me and told me that my Spanish was very impressive. So that was great!

I still get down on myself from time to time when things don´t go perfectly or when I can´t express myself as well as I want to during lessons, but I´m doing so less and less. Progress! 

The temple was so wonderful! That´s really all there is to say about the temple, that it´s wonderful and peaceful, but that´s what keeps on going through my mind right now. I love it so much. There was one little latina there who looked just like Grandma Skousen, same hair and similar faces and everything, she was just a bit shorter (who would´ve thought it was possible to be shorter than Grandma Skousen?). So that made me happy too. I just got the letter of your talk from Grandpa´s funeral. I loved what you said so much! In the temple I saw a cute little man who´s tag said Sellador on the bottom (I think that´s what it said, and I think that means sealer, but I could be way off). What a great title and opportunity to have. I love the temple!

I love you all, thanks for sending me emails and letters!

P.S. If Brooke reads this, let her know I JUST got her letter and it made me happy and I´ll try to have a response sent out within the next two days.

This first picture is for Brooke... ¡Alto en fibre!

These are two of my favorite hermanas, Hermana White and Hermana Eastman who will be serving in Ventura, California. They came and visited our classroom yesterday so we had to take a picture. Also, there are rumors of moms of people I mention in emails finding my blog, so here´s a picture. I love these Hermanas so much!