| bjlapray@yahoo.com |
Mission life in Guatemala is great! Well... MTC, CCM, life is great! I finally know what CCM stands for! Centro de Capacitación de Misioneros or Center for the Teaching of Missionaries (That´s a loose translation of Capacitación). I´m still trying to get used to these Guatemalan keyboards, some of the stuff is in a totally different place! I don{t even know how to start a new paragraph because the enter key doesn´t take it to a new line, and neither does tab. Bytheway, if you see { where you think there should really be ´ it´s because that{s where the apostrophe is supposed to be in my head, but it´s really not and sometimes I{m too lazy to go back and change it, like right there. New paragraph. The flight to Guatemala was routine, nothing there. When we were stopped in L.A. we went and grabbed some food at McDonald´s and there was a teacher from BYUH there and so he went up to Elder White - the 6´9 elder, and gave him 20 bucks to help pay for our dinner... we didn´t realize that we weren't supposed to accept that money... oops. But it covered the cost of dinner for 3! I was really tired when we got here to Guatemala! I didn´t get a whole lot of sleep on the 4 hour flight from LA to Guatemala, but I got at least 2 hours... and to top it all off I felt sick (stupid acid reflux!) But we got our luggage and things went off without a hitch. New Paragraph. Driving through the city was nothing like anything I imagined! I expected it to be pretty similar-ish to Nevis... nope. There were soldiers all over the place, as guards, with machine guns! They were rocking M16s and AK-47s. That was pretty scary. And the CCM has guards too! but they only rock sidearm pistols, not nearly as cool. Anyways, we got to the CCM somewhere around 7ish maybe and after we got everything figured out and went up to our rooms, they let us sleep for a couple hours before things got started and I was THRILLED, because sleep almost always helps with my acid reflux! So I slept until probably 9 or 9:30 and then got dressed and what not for the day. New Paragraph. We got the lowdown of how things are in the CCM, then I think someone else met with us, and then we had lunch, and then we went to class... I think? Hey, I just found the good version of the apostrophe! It's on the same key as the question mark. Sweet! We have 3 teachers here and they are all Guatemalans... Hna. Ayala 2 (her twin is Hna. Ayala 1) and she served in Ohio, Hna. España and she served in Nicaragua, and Hna. Ibañez and she is only sort of a teacher, more like a guide for when we translate lessons and write talks in Spanish. My companions here are Elder Willardson, from San Diego, and Elder Heaps, from St. George, I'm in a trio here. They are both learning Spanish pretty quickly. We all have Latino companions as well. My latino companion is Elder Hernández from El Salverdor. He's <tan chilero> (way cool). He was a dance teacher in El Salv. The first day I didn't understand a whole lot of what he said, but now I understand him probably 80-95% of the time, it's fantastic! He's 19 and comes from a member family. I absolutely love Elder Hernandez. I'll read you what I wrote about him in my journal last night ''I really love my Latino companion, Elder Hernandez. He is a great example to me of a representative of Jesus christ. He is always willing to do what is aksed of him, things that are't asked of him, and I feel like he is truly filled with the pure love of Christ, to help everyone no matter what he might sacrifice'' Elder Hernandez is wonderful! and after the first day, he gave me a present, a toy from El Salvador that I'm working on getting good at the game! There's another really great Latino here named Elder Barrera. He is from El Salvador too. He speaks English pretty fluently and he is way awesome! He is probably one of my best friends here in the MTC, he's great. AH!!! I only have 4 minutes left and I've only written about the first 2 days! We have a lot more opportunities to teach people in the CCM. I'm pretty sure I've taught over 8 lessons in less than a week here, it{s great practice for me! Oh, another way cool thing about the CCM, we have snack time every night! It's called <refacción> and I love it! Crap, 2 minutes! I love teaching experiences and feeling the spirit! Gah!!! Time is running out so quickly! I{ll try to sum it up really quickly! My companion Elder Willardson and I got made zone leaders over the two new Norte districts that came (two districs came to Guatemala when we came. Okay, less than one minute, I'm sorry. I love you all and I miss you! I have so much more I want to write about but it will happen next week! I love you. Love Elder LaPray. Don't forget to post this to my blog!
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