A Child and a Chapel

14 October 2013

Hey everybody!

I always write a quick outline for my emails before email time so I have my thoughts straight, and the first thing on the list this week was "literally nothing has happened this week". Okay, maybe not literally, but either I am not remembering anything from this week or it was very dull. I suspect the latter. :)

 

We did get a couple new "investigators" to work with this week. The first is Antoin, and I am teaching him by myself. We are doing something called Missionary-Missionary, where you make a profile of an investigator, are paired up with a missionary from another district, and take turns teaching one another. I am teaching Elder Glover from District Samuel (Antoin). I will be teaching him for the second time in about 2 hours, so wish me luck! The other investigator was a youth from the local ward, who was close to mission age, who my companionship and I taught, but it was only a one time thing.

 

Tomorrow we get to leave the CCM for 6 hours!!! We are going to go into the city to see a huge relief map of Guatemala, and then to lunch at WENDY´S, and then to a Guatemalan market! I am so excited to leave here for a while; you get so stir crazy cooped up in a fenced complex all day.

 

This last week we have gotten to have class in the capilla (meeting house, or chapel), but today was the last day we got to do that. The walk there was wonderful: we went through the gates, down the street, across the street, past the temple, across the temple parking lot, down the stairs, across the capilla parking lot, and into the capilla. Highlight of my DAY. However, tomorrow all the viejos are leaving, and we get their old classroom in the CCM, which is the nicest classroom here.

 

Why? Because tomorrow we become Viejos!! That means I only have 2 more semanas in the CCM (thank goodness). We are getting about 20 North Americans and 50 Hispanos tomorrow, which will be the last batch I watch come in to the CCM.

 

IMPORTANT. I will be leaving the CCM early in the morning on Tuesday, October 29. I will not have the opportunity to email the week that I leave, which means that next week is my last email in the CCM. I may or may not be able to email quickly from my Mission Home, which is about 20 minutes from here, but I have a feeling that I won´t be. So, that means that there will be a 2 week gap between next week´s correspondence and my first in the field. Lo siento! :( I will be sent somewhere in the Guatemala City Central mission (most likely Solola, Chimaltenango, Antigua, or Porte San Jose) for 12 weeks to be trained in. I will write as soon as I can! Just know that I will be safe; it is not that long travel-wise.

 

If you send me Dear Elders, or letters, or anything, now would be the time to stop sending them to the Guatemala CCM, and start sending them to the Guatemala City Central Mission. Please keep them coming, I absolutely LOVE them! Physical letters are also nice...:)

 

Oh! When we were over at the capilla one day having class, we heard some kids outside playing football (soccer), and we saw that District Samuel was out talking to them through the fence. One of the kids, 13 years old, spoke English AND Spanish AND German AND Italian. Kid genius, I tell you....

 

I don´t think I´ve really said much concerning the weather here in Guatemala, so I will now. Surprisingly, it is NOT very humid. When I got here, the first thing I said was, "Wow, this feels like Minnesota, only less humid". FOR REAL. It is actually fairly chilly right now, probably high 60s, low Seventies (just found out the number seven doesn´t work on this keyboard). It rains like clockwork every day around 1, except now rainy season is nearly over so it´s becoming less and less frequent. Even though we are above the Equator, our summer is their winter, and our winter their summer, because the rain cools it down here. So we are about to go into the hot season! There are thunderstorms here in the afternoon quite often, and the thunder is SO loud.

 

Quotes:

"A person is like an orange. When you first bite into him, he´s gross." - Elder Johnson, referring to a hard-to-crack investigator

 

Thank you everyone for sending me letters!! Talk to you soon!

 

Hermana Judd

Cockroaches and Conference

I apologize ahead of time, but the enter key on this computer is not
working! So I am going to do this (/) everytime I break a paragraph. /
Alright, let´s start off with the cockroaches! Hna Baugh and I both
found one in our closets Monday night! I screamed, hit it with my
hairbrush, threw my hairbrush on the floor (shattering the brush),
then ended up throwing away my hairbrush and my toothbrush which had
been in close proximity to said cockroach. EW. Speaking of bugs, I got
my first Guatemala bug bite on Thursday! It was during sports, and I
felt a pain on my leg, so I looked down, and saw blood (but no bug).
It is still swollen and red and itchy and disgusting. I have no idea
what bit me, but oh man, it it the worst bug bite I have ever gotten.
/ We got to leave the CCM bubble last Tuesday! We went to the stake
center to play some basketball, and then we went to Walmart! It was a
legitimate Walmart, only you had to go through guards to even get in
to the store, and the prices were in quetz. I had to pick up some
candy (yeah, had to...), a hairbrush (see above story), etc. etc. But
they had really everything that a usual Walmart would have, just weird
brands. After Walmart, we went to the mall across the street and I had
SUBWAY! Did that ever taste good. It kind of throws you off when
things cost 40 quetz here, but in actuality is only like 5 dollars.
After our outing we had a devotional on missionary work by my favorite
apostle, Jeffrey R Holland. Considering we don´t get much media here
in the CCM, we crave devotionals. / So before last week, we got to
leave the CCM grounds and walk a block over to the CRE house to do
computerized language learning. However, they just moved the computers
to the CCM, right across from my classroom, so as of right now we
NEVER LEAVE THE RELIGION PRISON. But, starting tomorrow, our class got
moved to the church a few blocks away! So now we will spend most of
our time OFF CCM property!! :) / My district has been trying to speak
solo español, but as you can guess, it has been going terribly. I try
so hard to only speak Spanish, but I don´t speak very much any more
anyways, so by the time I do open my mouth, I have forgotten that I am
not supposed to speak English! Oh well. Really the biggest problem
right now in the CCM is learning the language. Slowly but surely.../
So there is this adorable little Latina in the CCM. Her name is Hna
Guidos and she is SO adorable. She is so tiny and little, with the
appearance of a 12 year old, and the voice of a 6 year old. I cannot
understand a word that comes out of this girl´s mouth, but everytime
she speaks, it´s so cute that I am captivated. Then she asks me a
question and I just stare at her like a deer in the headlights. :) /
So my compañera, Hna Fisher, thought she had learned the term "we
killed it", like we did a good job. Anyways, at snack time we have to
say a Spanish word or phrase to get our food. So Fisher went up to the
teacher behind the counter and said her phrase. The teacher stared at
her for a good 10 seconds before muttering, "what"? Turns out, she had
said to the teacher, with an entirely straight face, "I am going to
kill you." / CONFERENCE! Conference was sooo good in the CCM. The
girls got the front row, and we watched it in English! I particularily
liked S. Gifford Nielson, who not only quoted my mission scripture (O
that I were an angel...), but also told a story about a missionary
from Guatemala! Shout out! :) I also liked Holland, of course. It was
cool seeing Adrian Ochoa give a talk (Sunday second session towards
the end) because not even two weeks ago, he was at the Guatemala CCM
giving us the only live devotional we have gotten since I´ve been
here! / Two nights ago I cut about 5 inches off a girl´s hair! Hna
Camargo is from Arizona and her hair was waist length. It was really
heavy and hurting her head, so she had me chop it off! Talk about
nervewracking but I think it looks okay...lol./ Quotes! Overheard in
the comedor: "it smells like my burning flesh!" / "Hey baby, give me
your snack!" - Hna Ovalle (doesn´t speak English) / "Did you know it´s
easy to learn a third language after you have learned a second? I want
to learn Taliban. Is that a language?" - Hna Fisher / Love all of you!
I´ll be emailing on Monday next week!