Navidad en Guatemala

Christmas down here is nuts. NUTS. I was fortunate to talk to family on Christmas Eve for 40 minutes, and after that, we went to the Bishop´s house for a Christmas Dinner. We had permission to stay out until 1230AM Christmas Eve, so we got to watch the most insane firework show ever. We went to the roof of the Bishop´s house, which looks down into all of Villa Hermosa. 

Imagine this - Every single person in Guatemala has access to professional grade fireworks, and a lot of them. Then, at exactly midnight, everyone sets them off at once. PUCHICA. It was absolute insanity. There were fireworks going off above us, below us, to our right, left, front, back, everywhere. My companion asked me if we do that in the US, and I said, well, this would definitely be illegal. 

We moved our PDay to Wednesday this last week, and nothing was open, save La Torre (local grocery store). We didn´t do anything that day, except for sleep! 

We didn´t get all that much food on Christmas, but the days following we had 2 back to back lunches every day. I thought I was going to die. We were stuffing handfuls of food in our backpacks and clothes when people weren´t looking, but we didn´t do a good job of hiding that fact, because we couldn´t stop laughing. I felt so sick after every meal, but you just gotta eat it.

My companion should not be allowed to use superglue, ever. Ever. She is constantly getting her hand stuck on things. A few weeks ago, she glued her fingers together. Friday, she glued her hand to the toilet while trying to fix the handle. The next day, she glued her hand to the superglue bottle. I have pictures of every time, but the toilet one was definitely the best. 

I taught a lesson to a canche (WHITE PERSON!) the other day. We contacted her in the street by her house, and started speaking Spanish, and she interrupted us and said she doesn´t speak Spanish. We found out she has lived here for 2 years (but she doesn´t know Spanish...) and is from Denver. My goodness, it was the worst lesson ever. I can´t teach in English PARA NADA. I think I told her 20 times that God has a plan for us because I just didn´t know what else to say. 

Feliz Año Nuevo!!!

Feliz Navidad, Prospero Año y Felicidad

Feliz Navidad a todos!

The youth in my ward are beyond INCREDIBLE. Five of them organized a Noche de Hogar (Fmaily Home Evening), invited 2 nonmembers, invited my companion and I over to teach them, and all this by themselves. The lesson went so good, and they are now 2 of our new investigators!

On Friday we woke up at 230AM for our zone´s Actividad Navideña! We staggered to the church, got on a bus, and headed to the city to do a Temple Session! President Brough and his wife were even in the session with us! After the temple, we went to El Frutal to the Meetinghouse there to play sports, have lunch, and a devotional. Lunch was awesome! The cooks from the CCM came with ham, turkey, stuffing, cranberries, rolls, green beans, and brownies for us. Best lunch I have had in weeks. After lunch we had a devotional with President Brough, his wife, and daughter. After everything, we got our packages (yes I got all my packages!), and went home to work for the rest of the day. We had a really good day that day, with 8 new investigators and 10 lessons with a member!

There was one really sad thing that happened this week. We were supposed to be baptizing Maury, Keler´s brother, on Sunday after church. But as we were walking to the church for his baptism, we got a call from the Elders that they couldn´t find him. We called him and he was in Zona 1 (The capital). He said he was with his mom, but his mom was in his house. So...we don´t really know what happened. We are hoping for this Saturday now as a date for him, but we aren´t sure what will happen!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE. It is really weird to not be at home for Christmas, and especially to be in tropical weather for it instead of freezing conditions! I love you all and am so grateful for you, and want you to know that I am happy here. 

By the way, my companion and I had lunch at a member´s house yesterday, and her daughter is an RM from the Las Vegas Mission, and was one of my instructors in the CCM. It was really weird eating lunch at her house. It was like going over to one of your high school teacher´s houses. Weird. 

Anyways, I am looking forward to talking with my family tonight! Love you all and stay safe!

A Testimony of Obedience is Written on my Face

Wow, what a week!

To start it off, we had transfers. There are two companionships that live in my house, and last week, the companionship was one latina and 2 nortes. Well, both the nortes got transfered out, one to La Gomera and one to Chimaltenango. Now, there are 3 latinas and one norte in the house - me! 

Well, you may be wondering what in the heck I am holding in the picture I attached. Well, it is the remnant of the GROSSEST LUNCH I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE. It was soup. However, the broth of this soup was basically only cooking oil. It had onion that had been quartered into pieces the size of potatoes, and...chicken giblets. I was lucky, I didn´t have much giblet-wise in my soup, except one thing. A chicken heart. I nearly hurled when I unearthed this thing in my soup. Luckily, I happened to be wearing a skirt with pockets, so I did a sleight of hand and got the thing into my pocket when no one was looking. NO. NO. NO. 

I taught my first lesson in English this last week! It was basically just as horrible as in Spanish haha. This less-active family in our ward invited us over to teach them, and turns out, they lived in the US for a very long time. Their son is 11, so we were teaching him about the Priesthood. It was weird because my compañera would speak in Spanish, and then I in English, but it went well. 

Speaking of my compañera, she gave a 12 month old boy a piece of hard candy during one of our lessons and he started choking (duh). So she learned a valuable lesson about babies and candy that night!

We had a Christmas Activity in our ward on Saturday, which was really well attended. One of our investigators came, even! His brother was an absolute terror throughout the activity, though, and even punched another kid in the face. We ended the activity with a dinner, including weird chicken (well, everything always includes weird chicken here). 

I gave a talk on Sunday. It was about missionary work, and was supposed to be 5 min. I talked about the apostle Paul and his ministry and related it to a talk by Elder Holland. About 4 minutes and 59 seconds of my talk was just reading his talk haha. Bullet dodged. 

Well, Sunday I was really, really sick. I couldn´t eat anything and had a fever of 101. I felt awful, but we had to keep working. Sometimes I thought I was just going to collapse in the middle of the street, I was so achey and exhausted. I woke up the next day better though! Still some stomach pain, but that is a daily thing here. 

Saw  my first scorpion ever! Ew. My companion killed it in the street, and I just stood back and made faces at it. 

So the reason for the title of this letter is because, for some reason, everyone here is fascinated with the scar I have on my face! They are always asking if it hurts and what happened and everything, and I never know how to answer them in Spanish. However, the thing is is that I have to learn how to tell them because it is a good story of the importance of obedience. It´s kind of weird to me, though, for all these people to notice it, because it has never been something I have ever really been aware of, since it has basically always been with me. (For those wondering, I think the story goes that I fell off a Lego sculpture when I was 18ish months old and hit my face, because I wasn´t being obedient to my parents in letting them help me down). 

Anyways, Merry Christmas and have a good week!

Day of the Devil and Christmas Devotional

So I´ll start this letter with a funny story from a couple weeks ago that I keep forgetting to include! So 2 weeks ago, we had interviews with President Brough, and got packages and letters while we were there! Nearly everyone got a Halloween package, including myself, that was filled to the brim with candy. Except for one Elder. Yes, he got a Halloween package. But instead of candy, his mom filled it with canned soup. 

Yeah. His face when he opened it was really one of the funniest things I have ever seen. 

So last week was the first time I was ever mad, really MAD with my sweet companion. We were in a lesson, at 852pm, 3 miles down a hill away from home, teaching members, not investigators, about prayer. We had 8 minutes to get home, and we did not have our contacts. I was fuming. If we don´t get our contacts, we have to call President. We had already had 7 lessons with a member that day, and we really needed to contact. We got a ride back to the house, and I looked at her and said, ¨follow me¨. I turned and started sprinting to the closest tienda, ran inside, contacted the 6 we were missing, turned around, and sprinted home with her trailing behind me.

The thing is, I really shouldn´t have been that upset. We have a mission phone, we could have called people to contact them. We did make goals for contacting after this happened, but I definitely overreacted. 

We had 26 lessons with a member this week, thanks to Kati, one of the local youth! She came out teaching with us every single day. She is preparing to go on a mission, and is doing a very good job at that! We even gave her parts to talk about in the lessons. 

So, Day of the Devil is a ¨holiday¨on December 7 here in Guatemala. Everyone buys Devil Piñatas, but these aren´t piñatas for candy. No, these piñatas are filled with all sorts of explosives. At 6pm, everyone hangs their devil in the street and lights him on fire. Oh. my. gosh. You would think the world was ending because of the thousands of explosives going off. Nuts. 

We watched a live Christmas Devo from Salt Lake City on Sunday! It was really cool to see, but it was in Castellano (Spanish), so I didn´t understand a WORD, other than a few typical gospel terms. We heard from the Prophet, from the President of the Primary, and from Elder Nelson. We had to have an investigator with us to be allowed to go to the Devo, so we brought Eddy, one of our best. But, while we were there, he leaned over to my companion and told her he is going to Spain this week. For 3 months. NOOOO. 

The transfer call happened yesterday! Yes, tomorrow is transfers already! In my district, 5 people are leaving, including the District Leader and Zone Leader. One Elder has finished his mission and is going home, and the two Gringa sisters from my house are leaving. But....I get 6 more weeks with Hna Sol! Yay!

Okay, so there really are no rules for the road down here. The other day we saw a kid who couldn´t have been more than 7 YEARS OLD, driving a van. It was a little scary. 

Anyways I love you all, and thank you for your support and prayers!

Chuchos in the Chapel

Yeah, IN. I´ll get to that story in a minute. 

Anyways, hi! Can you believe it is December already? I sure can´t!

I hope everyone at home had a wonderful Thanksgiving - we don´t get dinner here in the mission field, but for lunch I had Ramen and McDonald´s french fries. Living the dream!

So, as soon as I said that it is really warm here last Wednesday, it got COLD. Really. Really. Cold. Like, 2-sweaters-on-while-out-proselyting cold. Like, 4-shirts-3-sweaters-2-sweatpants-socks-and-2-blankets-at-night cold. It finally let up yesterday, but man alive, we are within the tropic lines, you wouldn´t think it would happen! Okay, yeah, it was probably in the mid 60s during the day, and 50s at night, but STILL. Brrr. 

Alright, so the chucho! Hna Sol and I got to the church building last on Sunday, and we saw the girls who live in our house waving for us. ¨Hna Judd! Do you have any food on you??¨ Well, duh, I always have food in my backpack. Anyways, turns out that a huge, fat, chocolate lab chucho got into the chapel! We tried luring it out with snacks, but he was much more interested in being at church (the opposite problem we have with our investigators...). It took forever to get the thing off the property, and it just kept coming back! I don´t know what happened in the end, because we had to go sit down, but when we came out after Sacrament meeting, it was gone. 

We had a district PDay yesterday, where we all went to the chapel, and watched 17 Miracles on the projector. The elders even cooked us French Toast! I´m pretty sure the French toast wasn´t all that great, but I haven´t been in the US for almost 3 months now, so it was good to me! 

Spanish is still a major frustration, since I feel like I am not participating much during lessons. However, every once in a while, a miracle happens, and I just start talking to them, without even really any idea of what I am saying, but it just...happens. Really cool to experience. 

Alright, speaking of Spanish, time for Favorite Guatemalan Spanish Words with Hna Judd!

1. Vaya (means sure, yeah)

2. Cabal (means exactly, perfect)

3. Puchica (Puchica is probably my all time favorite Spanish word, because it has about 17 different uses, but nobody knows what it actually means. You would use it while starting a story, to say dang it, and like 15 other different ways)

4. Saber (it is used in the verb form, meaning to know, but Guatemalans actually use it to say I don´t know)

5. Eso (means perfect, excellent, always done with this weird finger snap they do down here)

6. Chambon (lazy)

7. Shuco (gross)

8. Perdon pues (ah, I see)

Anyways, hope everyone is doing well!