Bienvenidos a la Ciudad de Mexíco! First email dated 4/28/2015

My Dear, dear family,

This week has been so amazing! I hardly know where to begin! On the plane, Hermana Russell and I met three more sister missionaries! They are Hermana Anway, from Oregon, and Hermanas Millett and Carabine from Utah. We are the only hermanas in our district, and we only have one elder!! :O For class time, his companions are Hermana Anway and Hermana Millett, but for meals, and every other time, he has elder companions. I am in a trio with Hermana Russell and Hermana Carabine. These sisters are amazing! We have gotten to know each other so much in the past few days, it´s like we've known each other for years, not days!

The CCM is amazing. Mexico is so beautiful. We have three mountains to the north, east, and west of us with tons of houses crawling up the sides! The city is super noisy though! Every night there seems to be a party going on, and we've even heard fireworks a few times! (yes, they are fireworks) We live in a little house with five bedrooms that can house up to 20 sisters! Right now it's only us, but we're scheduled to get three more hermanas tomorrow!

The weather here is just beautiful. It's 80s and sunny every day, and it only rains in the afternoon sometimes. The night's are a little chilly, but they're a welcome change. The food is delicioso! It's mostly Mexican style food, but we did have hamburgers yesterday.

Okay, funny story time: we tried to start doing our laundry today when one of the washing machines broke (they're in our house). We called for someone to come and fix it, and so they came and said that they needed to switch it out with a different one. So, when the new one was brought in, we needed to test it, so Hermana Russell put some of her clothes in there and then went to put her detergent in. Apparently, the detergent that an elder at the tienda told us to buy was NOT detergent--it was fabric softener. So, we all had a good laugh, we couldn't believe that we had done something like that. We felt pretty silly. The handymen were teasing us, and we couldn't understand their Spanish, but we laughed anyway. Then, Hermana Russel said (teasing, mind you) "Cayete!" Then, we were all kind of nervously laughing, but the Mexicans thought it was hilarious. She had no idea that she had just told them to "shut up". We've all been laughing about it all day, and it will probably become District 12B legend! ;)

Learning Spanish is tough. I'm remembering a lot of what I learned in middle school, but I still don't know so much! We've started practicing teaching investigators, where we actually try to teach an investigator in our broken Spanish. It's crazy! But, I know that as broken as my Spanish is, the Spirit is the real teacher, and let me tell you, that is true. We've only taught them three times, and we aren't even sure if they understand what we're saying most of the time--but the Spirit is there, and it pulls words from my mouth that I don't even know the meaning of.

Each of the past days have been good and bad in different ways, except Sunday. Sunday was so, so uplifting. It filled my spiritual reservoir and made me feel armed and ready to take on the week. We had an awesome Relief society lesson, and the we had a little "hermanas" meeting with some of the hermanas from our zone who were leaving the next day. Sacrament meeting was in Spanish, but I felt the Spirit bear testimony to me through the speakers. Then, we had a devotional from the director of the CCM, and THEN we watched the Restoration video about Joseph Smith.

This campus is so beautiful and the people here are so amazing. We, as a district, have tried to talk to as many workers as we can and learn their names so that we can talk to them when we see them :)

I am learning so much, I can already see progress from when I got here less than a week ago! But I know that I have so much more to learn.

Love, Hermana Tycksen

P.S. It's kind of funny to hear the locals try to say my name :) one of them pronounced it 'chicken'!

p.p.s. I learned to say this phrase this week, and I can actually say it pretty fast! :)

"Soy una misionera de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultímos Días."

P.P.S. In the last picture, those hermanos are Gabriel and Jason. We introduced ourselves our first day and now we talk to them at every meal at the comedor (cafeteria) and Gabriel (on the right) is always trying to remember our names! :)