I’ve got less than a week left in the CCM. Next weekend, I’ll be in Argentina. Nothing too exciting happened this week. We’ve just continued practicing teaching in Spanish and learning grammar. My favorite part of the day here is my hour of personal study in the morning. I’ve been reading through the New Testament with commentary from an Institute manual. I’ve read through the New Testament before, but I’ve always just read a certain number of pages each day, so I would often just rush through it. Currently, I’m taking copious notes of things I like from the commentary with no concern for how much I get through each day. This hour of study […]
Mexican Independence Day
Friday was Mexican Independence. It didn’t affect life in the CCM too much, but we had a couple fun things. At dinner, there was a mariachi band playing. Everyone loved it. It made for a fun atmosphere. It’s a tradition for everyone in a town to gather and chant “Vive Mexico!” (Long Live Mexico) while the mayor rings a huge bell. So that evening, all of the missionaries got together and chanted while the CCM president rung a big bell. I didn’t understand the significance of it until the next day when our teacher showed us a video of the President of Mexico ringing a bell in the main governmental plaza and it looked like […]
Still Alive and Learning Spanish
It’s been a long (almost) two weeks. The way our schedule worked out, we had a preparation day on our first Saturday, two days later on Monday, and then no break for 11 days. It wasn’t actually too bad, but we’ve all been looking foward to today and opportunity to talk to our families. My best friend from West Point, Caleb Watson, got here last week. Our schedules are totally different, but somehow we still bump into each other at least once a day. I live in a house with Sam Furhriman, whose dad is the bishop of the ward at West Point. We all did our mission preparation class together, so it’s fun to […]
The First Week
Tuesday morning I woke up at 3am to head to the airport with my parents. I then had a flight to Salt Lake, where ~85 missionaries were on my flight to Mexico City. We then meet up with a bunch of other missionaries from the East Coast and had an hour-long bus ride through Mexico City. When we arrived to the Centro de Capacitación de Misional, The CCM, we had some orientation meetings, dinner, and got checked into our houses. The CCM used to be an American boarding school run by the church, but when the age requirement to be a missionary was lowered in 2013(?), They turned it into another Missionary Training Center. The […]
Online MTC
This week was my first week of missionary training. Since Covid, the first week has been online at home for everyone because the Church decided it helped missionaries assimilate better than just throwing them into the deep end. Every morning at 9:00 I had a 3-hour long Gospel Study class. This would be followed by an hour-long workshop for everyone doing the online MTC, with topics like emotional resilience, The Plan of Salvation, and becoming lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. The workshops would end at 1, so I would eat a late lunch, take a short nap, and then play a card game or bake with my mom until my 4:30 language class. This 4-hour […]
Starting my Mission
Today I officially start my missionary service. I spoke in my church congregation this morning, and we had a lot of family come over afterwards. If you would like a copy of my talk or if you want to reach out for any reason, you can email me: hansen.warren@missionary.org
Air Assault and Leaving West Point
I had the week of the 4th of July at home before heading back to West Point for two weeks of Air Assault School. The first day I was back, there was torrential rain centered right on West Point that flooded basements, blew out roads, and left debris everywhere. On the first day of training, we woke up at 2 am to do a run, an obstacle course, and a packing list layout. (There are several YouTube videos that show this in detail for anyone interested.) The next couple of days were spent in a classroom, learning all the helicopters the army uses and how they can be used. After that, we started “Slingloads” where […]
CFT Week 2 and Part of 3
This week was a bit of a doozy. We had some medical recertifications, learned how to use machine guns and Javelin missiles, drove tanks in full-sized simulators, and did a couple obstacle courses. Each of these took a full day from 5am until around 6pm when we would have a couple of hours to eat and get ready for the next day. Starting last Friday, we had our 5 day Field Training Exercise, or FTX. For the first two days of the FTX, we learned about patrolling, basically how you live and conduct raids in places where the enemy might be. For the last 3 days, we lived in patrol bases, staying hidden while attacking […]
CFT Week 1
After graduation I had a week at home before flying back to West Point to start 4 weeks of Cadet Field Training (CFT). Early Sunday morning, we loaded ourselves and all of our stuff onto huge trucks and moved a couple of miles away from the main campus to Camp Buckner. At Buckner, we live in Squad Bays, long buildings with lines of bunk beds and wall lockers. The next day we started three days of rifle shooting, bivouacking (military for camping) at the ranges over night. We had an evening and night back at Buckner before leaving for two days of Land Navigation. We spend a day getting used to the terrain before waking […]
Mission Call!
I got my mission call this week! I’ll be serving in the Salta, Argentina mission speaking Spanish. I have a week of online MTC starting August 21 then go to the Mexico City MTC for 5 weeks before finally making it to Salta, located in the northwest point of Argentina, bordering Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Between now and then, I have to make it through another month of school, 6 weeks of training this summer, and totally out-processing from West Point and the army. Opening my mission call on Zoom so my parents could be with me. My mom was visiting my Grandma, so she got to join in. And Jane was working a late […]