Week 4 in the CCM!!!

Hola Amigos y Familia,

I just want to let you all know that I really am enjoying my time here at the CCM.  I am blessed to be here with the people that I am.  We have all had the opportunity to grow close and go through similar things together.  There are lots of laughs that go around while we work on our language and teaching skills.

Typical lunch: rice, beans, two kinds of
meat, and lots of fruit.

The big event that happened this past week was we went contacting at the local university.  Pretty much we walked to the university our teacher gave each companionship a couple Books of Mormon and some pamphlets on the Restoration then they turned us loose.  We really didn't know what we were doing, but we seemed to hand out quite a few pamphlets and both of our Books of Mormon.  The people were really nice even if they did reject the message, so I'm just glad they are kind people!  After we were there for about an hour and a half our teacher took us to Krispy Kreme.  It was in this one part of town where there are quite a few American food places, which is the nicest part of town.  To cross the street they have traffic cops all around and even if you are 20 feet from a crosswalk they will just jump in from of traffic and let you cross.  The traffic here is insane-no rules!

Many people have asked about the food here.  In the CCM it is pretty good and somewhat normal.  Every day for lunch we pretty much have the same thing: rice, beans, and two types of meat and lots of fruit.  They don't eat a lot of vegetables here-we mostly just have salad.  This week we got to try the famous mangu; which is plantains mashed up with onions on top.  It was actually quite good minus the onions.

As for my spiritual thought of the week we had a devotional by Elder Martinez who is the 2nd counselor in the Caribbean Area Presidency.  He spoke a lot on repentance and the Atonement.  He spoke on his conversion story as well which has a special meaning hearing it as a missionary.  But he quoted Elder Holland when he said, " Missionary work is hard because the Atonement was hard."  This was really profound for a lot of missionaries here and we know it is going to be hard, but Christ did the ultimate hard thing.  The days are great here, but some are harder than others, but we keep pressing on and supporting one another and we pray a lot!

I hope each and every one of you is doing well and I want you all to know that God loves you and wants to hear from you each day!

Love,

Hermana Steed

One of our teachers wife, who is also a teacher came in yesterday and started to
braid all our hair. Her name is Hermana Martinez and she is in the middle