Noche de brujas and El dia de los muertos

November 6, 2019

Hola todos! This last week has been kind of crazy, with holidays, and preparing to leave the CCM in a few days. Feliz noche de brujas! In spanish, that means Happy Halloween. It directly translates to "night of witches", which is so weird to me. For Halloween, my latino companion, Elder Olivas, and I switched name tags for the day. I also carved some cardboard boxes with Elder Davis to look like jack-o-lanters, and we put them in front of our house. AND, my awesome parents sent me a package with a bunch of candy and a trick or treating bucket. So of course, Elder Davis, Elder Booth, and I went around the CCM and trick or treated to other missionaries houses and hoped for some candy. We dressed up with white bed sheets and name tags. I was the ghost of Elder Davis. We got SO MUCH FOOD. Missionaries dumped all their food into out baskets because some of them were leaving soon anyway and didnt want to keep their food. I got a few containers of queso cheese, a big bag of tortilla chips, and lots of other candy. And instead of saying "trick or treat", we said, "podemos compartir una escritura con ustedes?" which means, "can we share a scripture with you all?". It was the one that says "Knock and ye shall receive, ask and it shall be given unto you". Its a perfect trick or treating scripture. It was also El dia de los muertos (the day of the dead), which is the holiday they celebrate in the movie Coco. I couldnt see much of a celebration, but I could hear loud, festive music all night and a lot of fireworks in every direction. It sounded pretty exciting.

I only have 4 more days in the CCM! The next email I send will be sent from NYC, which is so exciting! Except I am a little sad, because literally the day after I leave, 1 of the 12 apostles is coming to speak to us. Elder Soares will be here, and I will just barely miss him! But thats okay, I am just so excited to get to New York!!

Here are some small, interesting stuff that happend to me this week. 

-1 is, I was asked to say the closing prayer in spanish in sacrament meeting. It was kind of scary because there were a lot of latino people there, so I probably sounded really american, but I think it went well.

- I also got a haircut here, and they cut it super short! It looks kind of bad, so... pray for me.

-Yesterday, a lot of new missionaries entered into the MTC, and my companion and I made friends with some of them and showed them where there houses are, where there classes are, and invited them to eat with us. We were so busy helping new people that we accidentally missed one of our classes. But thats okay. One of the new missionaries I made friends with is named Elder Elder! How cool is that?!

-There was also an MTC Devotional broadcast from the Provo MTC by President Uchtdorf. It was so aweome! MTC devotionals are so awesome because they are written specifically for us. Its like a mini general conference but more personalized!

Anyway, I am out here in Mexico learning lots of spanish and lots about the gospel. I am grateful for being trained in Mexico, because I have been told that missionaries leave here more prepared to speak spanish than they do when they leave Provo. But I am not, by any means, fluent yet. That day will come later. I hope. Thank you for all your emails to me! Talk to you all next week, from NYC!

Elder Webster