Conference, Cleaning, and a Cold

Posing with the Nicaraguan flag

Well, we watched General Conference this past weekend in English. The satellite feed was in English and we had the same English voice-over guy for all of the speakers who spoke in their native language, even the Spanish ones. There wasn't any way to have us listen to just those few in Spanish. The CCM leaders told us they wanted us to get the most meaning out of conference and be able to take notes without having to worry about vocabulary and translating things and stuff, so they gave it to us in English! I think this Conference I've gotten the most out of it than ever, for sure. I actually took notes on every talk, and I really enjoyed watching, and they did allow us to take our suit coats off after we sat down, so that was nice. But including a video Sunday night, which was 2 hours, we were in the one auditorium for 16 hours over 2 days......rough stuff. However, I never fell asleep this time while watching conference -- we all stocked up on snacks from the tienda on Friday to help keep us awake. 

A zone activity between sessions of Conference on Sunday

Our district sharing a package of Oreos -- yum!

It looks like my little brother and sister finally got my letters, thats super cool. They took over 1 month to get to them. I was sad to hear that the little keychain I sent in my sister's letter had fallen out and she didn't get it. I feel bad, but my brother's letter still had the little missionary tag in it:) It was only 5 pesos, so thats like 50 cents....everything is so inexpensive here. Guess how much we get on our debit cards each month in Nicaragua??? Our Mission President's wife in Nicaragua, Hermana Russell, she emails us and checks on us and stuff. Well, she said we get 6 American Dollars per month to live on...AWESOME!!! I can't beleive you can live off so little there....Cordovas are not worth very much I guess. I will definitely have to buy another pair of shoes in Nicaragua, the super glue didn't stay very well.

Me and Elder Bronson doing a little studying.

OK, so a LOT happened this week. I'll start with the worst part: I am VERY sick right now as I am typing this. It actually started Saturday during the Priesthood session. I felt a little achy, but I took some ibuprofen and I was fine the rest of the night. I woke up Sunday morning.....I felt like Death!!!! My back and neck were incredibly sore, my head hurt and I was dizzy....I stayed in bed until 10:30 AM but I was able to make it to the morning session of Conference still (it started at 11:00 AM our time). Elder Ruiz didn't mind getting the extra sleep. I took some more Ibuprofen and I felt fine until the afternoon session of conference, the ibuprofen started not working very well, and it became suuuper miserable. But I was gonna tough it out, and I did. On Sunday nigts we watch a movie in the auditorium and we watched the Brigham Young building the SLC Temple that we watched for family night once. I was dying.... After we went to our Casa at 9.30 PM, I found the cold medicine I had packed, and took that and went to bed. Well, let's say these last 4-5 nights have been somewhat the worst sleep that I've had. I woke up yesterday morning, feeling the worst I have ´probably ever felt.....I didnt know how bad my back and neck could hurt from a cold, so I had to stay in bed again, but after a little while I tried going to class and I was soooo miserable, so my teacher told me to go to the Infirmary and the doctor said it's a virus and I wasn't running a fever anymore (I had checked my fever the night I found the cold medicine and it was 102.5) but I was on the medicine when I went to the doctor and that has fever reducer in it. But last night, I had to go to my casa early because of how bad I was feeling. Hermana DeBuck gave me some Melatonin, or whatever that chemical is that we naturally have to sleep, and last night was probably the worst night of sleep yet.....The dang sleeping pill couldnt even work!!!!! When everyone else got to the casa, I asked them to give me a priesthood blessing. I woke up this morning feeling TERRIBLE again....nothing is working....I had to have Elder Bronson bring me breakfast, and I only got up to come write home this morning. I am on drugs right now though, so im actually not suffering LOL, but I  definitely need to take it easy. If anything, this has sure made me miss my mom!

Writing in my journal

So I participated in my first tie swap with another district
of missionaries who were headed to Chile. Many deals
were made in our district, and I must say, I think
I got the better end of my tie swap.

My new tie matched almost perfectly with Hermana Capp's skirt.

A cupboard full of Hermanas.

Me in the sweater while our district writes in the log book.

Me in the district hand-me-down sweater.

So this is our last Preparation Day in the CCM as this will be our last week here. I have to get my suit dry cleaned today and get my haircut. We also did a deeper clean of our room today. I have TONS of info about Nicaragua now too! I got my flight itinerary yesterday and guess where I'm flying to first? San Salvador!!! We are leaving the CCM next Monday, October 13th, at 2:30 AM! Our flight leaves the Mexico City Airport at 6:40 AM and its about 2 hours to San Salvador, El Salvador, with a 45 minute layover, and then on to Managua, only a 55 minute flight! We will land in Managua about 9:45 AM, and have a whole day of work ahead of us! Our first two days we will spend at the mission home for interviews and training, and then Wednesday we will all meet our new companions. They already told us that we will be assigned a native-Spanish-speaker as our first companion to help us with the Spanish LOL. So that's everything thats coming up for me! I feel so old being the oldest generation here at the CCM.

So there is a 'secret' book and sweater that gets handed down from district to district in Zone 5 at the CCM. We are the 68th district to receive it, and we hand it down to another district in the zone before we leave. Because I am the District Leader, I had to wear the sweater for a whole day! It's suuuper small as you can see by my picture. We also left an entry in the book, which is hilarious. All of the entries are written in scriptural language and are dang funny to read.

Well, that's about all I have time for today with all of our cleaning and preparations. Thanks again to everyone back home for their emails and letters. Next week's emails should be from Nicaragua!!!

This is Elder Hepworth. He is in the district from our zone that left to Chile yesterday, but he went to Cyprus High School and he served on the Seminary Council last year with my cousin, Jenna! He says Jenna was his favorite. He was super cool, probably the best at spanish in our zone, and his nickname was the 'Joke' because he had a lot of them lol.

Elder Bronson and myself after our final P-Day haircuts today -- stylin'!