HOLA FAMILIA!!

Hola!
Sorry, I forgot to give you my email. It is marci.johnson@myldsmail.net (just in case you couldn't figure it out, haha)

I am doing really well here at the MTC, or the CCM in spanish. I LOVE my district and zone. We have so much fun together. I love my companion, Hermana Naatjes (Notches). She is from Minnesota and has such a strong testimony. She kind of reminds me of Emily and Laura Peterson. I love teaching with her though because she always has a strong testimony to bear. Well, this is how it works here at the CCM. You come in on Wednesday, meet everybody, and then go to a bunch of workshops to introduce you to the CCM. Then on Thursday you study all morning, go to a bunch more workshops, and then you find out that you are teaching your first investigator the next morning. At this point, I still don't know ANY spanish. But, you spend the rest of the night on Thursday preparing to teach a lesson in Spanish the next morning. I was sooo nervous. I am in an intermediate district, but everyone else in my district knows WAY more spanish than me. I was super intimidated at first. But I did it. I taught an investigator in Spanish without knowing the language. And we still continue to teach everyday, and I still don't really know the language. Even though it was frustrating at first and really nerve racking, I love the way they do it. I am here at the CCM to learn how to teach the gospel to the spanish people in Carlsbad, I'm not here to learn Spanish. And they get that point across from the very first day. I'm sure our investigator gets a kick out of the things I say though, but it is almost always conjugated wrong, or just completely wrong, haha.

I have seen sooooo many people that I know here. A ton of people from PG, a ton of people from soccer clubs, and just a lot of other random people. I think my district thinks I'm crazy cause I always leave randomly cause I see somebody else I know and I want to say hi to them. I see Anita and Taryn a lot. Well actually Taryn is gone now, but I saw her a lot when she was here. Luckily the spanish people and the german people eat together usually so I see ChaiDee almost every meal. I love it! I don't get to talk to her a ton, because we have NO time, but I always see her and I got to talk to her a couple times.
Hey Brian, I heard that President Hinckley in a conference talk one time promised that if you read the Book of Mormon out loud in the language you are trying to learn, by the time you finished it you would be fluent in the language. So read the Book of Mormon before you go! I know you are already trying to, but in case you didn't know about this promise, I thought I'd let you know. :)

Well, I am doing great. One week down! Everyone says that once you hit your first p-day, the time flies after that. Which is good, cause even though I am loving it, it feels like I've been here for a year. My spanish has already improved a ton, and I am really excited to see how much I continue to improve. Before I left everyone was asking me how I was going to do with going to bed at 10:30 and waking up at 6:30, well....I'm still working on being good at that. :) I don't think our room has actually been asleep at 10:30 once since we have gotten here. We usually go to bed at like 11 or 12...but we are getting better. It is just kind of hard to stop talking sometimes when there are 6 girls in one room! But don't worry, we still get up at 6:30 everyday! Well, my time is up, but I hope everything is going good at home! I love you and I miss you!

~Hermana Marci Johnson