The Atonement

Hola,

Hey guys! This week has been busy and I have learned a lot. This week I have truly learned a ton about the atonement and my relationship with my Savior was greatly strengthened. I can not express how much the Savior has done for me and for everyone. Promising every investigator that God sent his son to the Earth to die for our sins make me feel so much gratitude for my Savior. I am so greatly for repentance and the opportunity to promise investigators that if they will repent and recognize those sins that they have made they will be forgiven of their sins and be able to be baptized. What greater blessing than that to be able to return with our Heavenly Father again!

It has been a busy week with a lot of learning. I am currently teaching Sheila and Victor here in the CCM. They are both interested in the gospel and they have both agreed to be baptized if they pray and find out for themselves if this church is true. That is where the conversion process starts, you must first have a testimony yourself that this church is true. We had many opportunities to listen to several general authorities this week in devotionals. The main message has been the same in each of the devotionals. Elder Oaks Tuesday night talked a lot about the Atonement. It was such an awesome message! I have spent a lot of time this week studying and getting to know my Savior better. I have tried to strengthen my relationship with my Heavenly Father every day. Elder Bednard talked about the importance of putting out the middle man. Turn outward not inward! How important is that? Heavenly father is always lending a hand in our lives and the adversary wants us to stray away from that helping hand. It has been such an awesome week getting to know my Savior better in all that I do. 

The days here are fairly repetitve but I learn something new everyday! My days consist of a lot of class, gym time, and more class. The food here is actually pretty good. There are some things though that are not the best but you will find that everywhere. It would be so awesome to learn how to cook some of these things!! Have been playing a lot of sand volleyball, it is a ton of fun! I have made so many friends here that I will definitely miss when we head our seperate ways. The CCM is awesome, I have learned so much and the language is coming well but I am so excited to head out into the field! 

This Tuesday my spanish was definitely challenged as we did splits with the Latinos. We had a latino companion for about 3 hours and taught an investigator with them. My companion was Elder Pedroza, super nice kid. Let me tell you though, it was so hard because he did not speak a single lick of English. Yeah you better believe it was hard haha especially at first. We were trying to prepare a lesson and he spoke so fast!! I felt like he was barely saying the words just mumbling. I kept having to say.... mas lento por favor. That is definitely going to be my most used phrase in the first few weeks of the field haha. It was starting to get frustrating that I could not understand him so I knelt down and offered a prayer and asked for help. It was the best part of my week as soon as I said Amen to that prayer. As soon as I said Amen, everything after that prayer I could understand almost everything he said. We got our lesson prepared and our lesson went fantastic. I understood everything that was going on in the lesson and actually contributed to the lesson a lot. It was such a cool experience and I want to do it more often. I felt like my spanish got a lot better after that split. The GIFT OF TONGUES is a real thing. I can testify that it is real if we are willing to put in the work ourselves. I have made a goal to try and speak 75% spanish the rest of my stay here in the CCM. My teacher Hermano Gonzalez and Canaales think that I will be super prepared for the field if I continue to speak spanish. Thankfully I have the opportunity to go on another split with Elder Pedroza later tonight and teach our second lesson. I am also going to the temple again today which I am super excited for!

More in my learnings this week about the Atonement. I encourage you all to read the talk The Room by Josh Harris. Please go read that talk. I learned so much from that talk! The spirit was so strong reading it. When you read it think about the files that you still have to make not the ones you have already made. I am so glad I chose to serve a mission, one of the absolute best decsions I have ever made. I am so excited for the field! Hope all is well!

-Elder McCain