¡Hermana Aubriana!: Week 3: Temple!

Hey!

I hope you all are doing well (: Things here are going great!

Today was especially fun because we were able to go to the Mexico City temple grounds. The temple is still closed for renovations, but there is a really nice visitors center and distribution center there that we were able to visit! The visitors center is so beautiful. People say that it is second only to temple square. It was a very spiritual experience!

the temple isn't open right now, but we do get to come back and work the open house! I am so excited. We made friends with a couple of the visitors center hermanas, and I cant wait to see them in a couple of months!

We also bought some cute authentic mexican shirts from a little store by the temple! I´ll have to send some pictures of us wearing them soon!

I really can't express how much love I have for my district and how grateful I am for them. These people are all amazing. And all the girls in our district love to sing! In the MTC no music is allowed, so we have all started to sing a lot. We love to do three part harmonies of hymns. Hermana Jones and Hermana Garner are really talented with sight reading and picking up harmonies so they sing the harmonies and Hermana Critchon and I sing the melody. It is so fun! I love singing because music has a way of piercing the heart and helping people to feel the spirit. We are actually considering singing for a devotional...

I think I told you about my teacher, Hermano Perez, last week? I probably already raved about him, but he has really helped me to progress as a missionary so much! Well, this week we realized that he actually lives in our mission!! I'm not sure how we didn't realize it until just a few days ago! I told him that if I ever serve in his ward he has to be the member in one of my lessons!

The language is coming!! It really is exciting because I can see that I am getting better. We taught 2 lessons yesterday with basically nothing written down, just a few notes of points we wanted to hit. And we were able to do it! The gift of tongues is real. My spanish is infinitely better while teaching lessons than at any other time. One thing I want to get better at is teaching with the spirit. I can be somewhat of an academic and I want to try to explain everything and just say what I want to say that I forget to let the spirit guide the lesson. It's definitely a gift that you have to pray for.

Actually, something that really struck me this week is that we really need to pray and be seeking spiritual gifts. Sacrament meeting this week was all about faith, hope and charity, and people kept saying that we need to be pleading with Heavenly Father asking Him for these gifts. I hadn't ever really thought of it that way, so that was a really cool insight for me.

I still haven't had to give a sacrament talk. I think I described how they select speakers already, but basically everyone prepares a talk and then they announce who is speaking right before you go up to give a talk. I thought for sure I would be speaking this week since I had yet to give a talk, but I wasn't called on! It seriously feels like the reaping. But at this point I'm a lot more comfortable with my Spanish (talks are all in spanish except for whatever member of the branch presidency is speaking) so I'm hoping that I do have the opportunity to try and give a talk.

I've been pretty lucky because I haven't gotten sick at all while being here. Pretty much all of the Americans have been sick. It's a bummer. But I've been okay... knock on wood...

It pours here almost every evening! Like full on thunder and lightening and torrential downpours. We run through the rain to dinner most every day. I love it(: But also, I realized I never got an umbrella. It's okay, my comp shares with me if I want to stay dry, but most of the time I just love running through the rain.

I love it here! Being a missionary is the best calling in the world. Thanks for all your love!

Love,

Hermana Aubriana Wolferts

They have these "safe places" for earthquakes. I was so confused at first because some of them are all cracked and wavy. I was like "there's no way these are the safest places to be." but it's just because they are away from buildings.