Last week in the CCM

Hi everyone!

I have five days left before I leave the MTC and head to Ecuador. I still haven´t been given any flight plans or whatever, but we have our in-field orientation on Friday so I will probably get it then. It´s really lucky that I´m leaving when I am because after I leave there´s supposed to be a total of 800 missionaries here. We were told that both the Provo Perú and Argentina MTCs are completely filled, so they are going to be sending some here.

In class, we've been working on street contacting and sharing short messages. We will look and around and just walk up to missionaries here or teachers or the Latino workers and just start trying to talk to them. It´s kind of scary at first to go up to someone you don´t know and you want to be really polite, but we are able to do it very well.

This week, I have been playing a lot of soccer everyday for gym. They have basketball courts that also act as soccer courts since there are goals built in under the basketball hoops.It´s a lot of  fun and it´s a good workout and we usually play with the Latino missionaries who are very good. Hopefully it help me when I play soccer on P-days in Ecuador.

So as you know, we do have some really good food and interesting food. Almost every Tuesday when new missionaries come in, they give us Costco pizza. We have had flautas for dinner one week and that was really good. It reminded me of Red Iguana. 

I made a goal for myself to try to give out at least one Book of Mormon at the airport or on the plane to Ecuador. Every Thursday we have TRC which is where volunteer members from Mexico come and we teach them, and I´ve given out a Book of Mormon the last two times. I really like doing it and I think it will help prepare me for the mission.

Since we do the same things everyday, I don´t have very many new experiences, but this last week, I´ve really been wanted to finish off strong here and make it a good experience. Our teachers have been telling us that even though we are ready to leave the MTC that it´s important to stay focused and keep working hard, because those who do will be better prepared when the enter the mission field. I want to be as prepared as possible, so I've been making an effort to trying harder and finishing off strong here. I feel like my testimony has really grown as a result. I´m excited to go out and serve because I know that God loves all of us and wants us to be happy and the missionaries are here to find these people who need this in their lives.

Can´t wait to hear from you all! Next time you hear from me I´ll be in Ecuador!! :)

-Elder Gomez

Sometimes at night if we leave the front door open too long mosquitoes get in. I haven´t had a problem with them but my companion has been getting bit. Sometimes at night too they buzz really loud around your ear. Most of the time we won´t go to sleep unless we kill all the mosquitoes in our room.

I asked him if he was dreaming in Spanish yet:

I don´t really remember much dreams so I don´t know if I've been dreaming in Spanish. But I have gotten a whole lot better. I wanted to try to send you a video of me talking to you guys in Spanish but I think it was too big to send. But I´m able to say nearly everything I want to say in Spanish. It actually sounds really weird if I speak in English for too long at one time. We´re able to talk to our Latino roommates very well. All of the Latinos are super nice and love to talk to us. They always tell us that we speak very well and have good accents. We just got new Latino roommates today and talked to them for a few minutes and we can understand them very well. One of them is named Elder Gamez which is cool since it´s very close to Gomez.