FELIZ NAVIDAD (Semana 17)

FELIZ NAVIDAD Y'ALL!!!! Hope everyone is having an amazing time!!! I don't have much time to email but just wanted to say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!! 

Spend time with the ones you Love!! 

We celebrated yesterday with a carne asada with the familia Garcia and yeah it was amazing!!! 

Here are some pics to prove it!

                                     

La Navidad? (Semana 16)

¿Comó han estado?

How have y'all been doing?

Well it is almost Christmas!! The next time I write will be the 25th of December!! That’s so weird to think that its almost Christmas and I will get to talk to my family so soon!! Ok so Navidad aqui in Mexico is pretty cool because they celebrate on the 24th AND the 25th!!! So that means a bunch of food and fun!! 

So this week we had the Ward Christmas Dinner and Elder Diaz y yo had the chance to act in a Christmas play that they put on. It was pretty fun and it gave me a little bit of embarrassment. We also brought Evan to the party with us and he wanted to bring his friends so we showed up with like 4 kids which was actually pretty cool to see and we are now teaching 3 of them!

This week we also had intercambios, where a missionary comes for a day and my compañero goes to the other area. So we had them with the Lideres de Zona, the leaders of about 30 missionaries. I had to stay in the area to lead which was my first time doing it with someone that wasn't Elder Diaz. It was quite the learning experience because I had to do literally all of the talking, which is kinda hard cause I still am not that great con Español but it went really well. We had about 5 lecciones and contacted a little bit and ended the day with campechanas because its tradition hahaha. 

We don't have much time but the last thing is that we ended the week with a carne asada with our friends, Laura, Cesar, Fanny y Edgar, y Justin. We ate so much carne and it was so so good. That is one of the customs here in Monterrey, Carne Asada. Everyone eats it about once a week and it is so amazing. The streets are just filled with smoke and the smell of carne haha.

Well I got to go!

Just remember to focus on Christ this Christmas. De hecho Christmas in Spanish means "more Christ"!

Les extraño y les amo!!

Con amor

elder mcclellan

fanny y edgar

con Laura (nuestra mama here en andalucia

Cesar

the tie I made

pretty sunset

Zone activity hoy

Hace Mucho Frio (Semana 15)

¡¡QUE TAL!! ¿¿Cómo están mis amigos??

Well this week was pretty great!! To be honest I feel like it just flew by hahah. We had a lot of fun and crazy things go down in Monterrey this week so where should I start?

Well first I'll start with the most important thing in Mexico...FÚTBOL, So this week was the final in Mexican Futbol, and the two equipos were from Monterrey!! It was the Tigres vs the Rayados. The Tigres ended up winning it all and let's just say the streets were crazy. We actually had to be in our casa antes de 7 on jueves y domingo because of how dangerous the streets are during games, especially when the game is against same city rivals. There were a bunch of crazy drunk people in the streets and we could here the gunshots ringing out too jajaj. Our vecino is a tigre so let's just say we didn't get any sleep that night jajaja. 

We also had intercambios twice this week, with Elder De la Cruz y Elder Fontana. I went to the area of De la Cruz and he is one of the funniest dudes ever. He is from the Dominican Republic so he was not used to the frió that we had. (oh yeah it was like -2 the other day) De la Cruz ended up wearing 2 pairs of pants, 3 pairs of socks, 2 sweaters, and a huge winter jacket. And good thing he did because it snowed here!! The second intercambio was with Fontana and I got to stay and lead the area. That was an experience haha. I had to do just about everything, start every conversation, talk on the teléfono, and it actually went pretty well. We had a Noche de Hogar with the famila Garcia and took some pics and ate some tacos. We ended the intercambios by finally cutting the forest we have outside haha. 

So the last thing that I have was that I had to give a 10 minute talk in church yesterday. I had a solid hour to prepare this talk too. Oh yeah, and it was in spanish. SO I wrote it all down but when I got up there I just started talking with the Spanish that I knew and it ended up being pretty good. I talked about how we need endure to the end. How we can't just wait till the end we must strive will all of our strength and effort, doing all we can to reach our goal. 

Sorry for the short email, we didn't have much time today. We went to another area to make ties as a district for our Cena de Navidad! 

les amo y les extraño

elder mcclellan

 heres some pics of us with the familia Garcia, just freezing while its snowing outside and the district

Diciembre...I think.... (Semana 14)

Wow it is already Diciembre...it doesn't feel like it at all though.

Two Reasons. 1. It's still pretty warm here in Monterrey. 2. It feels like I just left for Mexico like last week! Time is really flying and it sure is really fun out here!

This week was a pretty cool and exciting time. First, let me tell you about Evan, the joven that we are teaching thats from Texas. He is such an awesome person and his testimony is growing everyday. When we first met him he didn't believe in God and was living a pretty rough life. But now his faith is growing so so much and he loves to go to church with us and tell others about Jesucristo tambien. De hecho this week when we went to visit him he told his friend that he was with to join us and during the lesson Evan started teaching his friend, almost better than Elder Diaz y yo. When we invited Evan to be baptized and said a date in Enero he asked us if he could be baptized sooner. He is such an amazing joven and he is making so many friends in the church now too!

Ok so some super awesome and straight up crazy things from this week! 

Well the first thing is that I ate chapulin this week. For those that don't know what that is they are crickets. So yeah I ate crickets this week. They actually weren't that bad.

Second, I had some amazing carne asada with an amazing family and they had the futbol game on and the Tigres won! So now the finals here in Mexico are the Rayados vs Tigres. Both teams are from Monterrey. Its gonna be crazy here!

The last thing that happened was actually pretty scary. So here in Mexico there are wild dogs on the street like everywhere. Some are really chill and follow us around and stuff like that. The others are not so friendly and act like lobos. So we were walking at night down this street in an abandoned colonia de our area. Its almost pitch black with only the light from our cell phone. So we are walking and then all of the sudden we feel something strange and turn around and see two wild crazy dogs coming at us. We took our bags off and started swinging them at them trying to keep them away. They tried to take bites out of our mochilas but luckily nothing happened. They ended up running away and we walked very very quickly back to our house. We were literally shaking, haha.

Ok so before I sign off I would invite all of you watch this video and think of ways to Ilumina El Mundo this Christmas Season. Look for ways to serve those around you in any way possible. The best way to celebrate this year is to not focus on what you receive but to focus on the giving!!

https://www.mormon.org/?cid=HP_FR_24-11-2017_dMIS_fMORG_xLIDyL1-A_ 

les extraño y les amo!!

con amor

elder mcclellan

1. me admiring the beauty of Monterrey

2. mi compañero drinking his first Dr. Pepper

3y4. me cutting the grass with the machete