I’m in Guatemala

July 07, 2022

This last week has been awesome! We woke up at 3 and flew out at 8 am on Thursday. There was like 21 of us and a few of them were latinos from América so they translated and helped all of us. It was really easy. We went to a hotel on an old couch bus. Guatemala city is wayyyyy nicer than I thought. So many nice cars and the roads were nice. Lots of nice building too. It was wild. We got to the hotel at 11 and just hung out all day. We were all super tired. They fed us lunch and dinner. It was very good food. The hotel was really nice in general. We left left Friday after breakfast and went and did some paperwork for our visas and then went to our missions! Saying goodbye to everyone was a little sad but the ones I was closest with came to my mission so it wasn't too bad . 9 of us came to Antigua, 5 were from my district.

We met the mission president (his wife was sick:/) and the trainers. I love my mission president! He is very loving and I’m excited to learn with him. We have two assistants and 4 secretaries. We had Interviews and ate Little Caesars for lunch. After all the Interviews the mission president made the assignments with the assistants. I got a really awesome trainer from California. Elder Laplante. He's been out a year and has very good Spanish. My area is called Comalapa. It's in the mountains and soooo cool. I love it up here.

President Probst and my trainer
Elder Laplante

The missionary work is slow but not as bad as other missions in the world so I am grateful. The other companionships in our zone are a 45 minute bus ride down the mountain to the big city, Chimaltenango. We will also meet our district there for district council. The branch is really small, only like 20 active members. Basically just two families haha. Monday we had zone council so I got to go meet everyone in my zone and we ate lunch at a mall. Chimal has two malls that are literally like malls in Canada or the states. So cool. They have lots of American food too so I got panda express :).

My first area, Comalapa

Tuesday was my first normal day. We got a membership at a gym, it's actually really nice so we did that then studies. The afternoon we went out contacting. I don't like knocking doors but we kind of have to here haha. Got a few new contacts !!! My Spanish is slowly getting better haha. We have one progressing friend at the moment named Danny. We have met with him once already but he's had a few lessons in the past. This next week we are hoping to get more progressing! This area has a lot of inactive members that we are working with. My area has lots of small towns around Comalapa. Some we can walk to but most we have to take a tuk tuk.

Things about Guatemala: the houses are either dirt floors or tile/concrete. Really cool and humble. Also pretty much everyone uses wood to cook and heat homes so it almost always smells like smoke. Reminds me of camping which is a little sad. They have little shops everywhere so we just stop and get a drink or snack whenever we want. They also have tuk tuks here. They are 3 wheel car things. They rip around town haha. It's so fun to be in. Soooo many Toyotas here. Older and some newer. It reminds me of home haha.

Also a ton of motorcycles and scooters. The food is unreal here! The only thing I remember the name of are chuchitos. They are mini tamales. Soooo good. The public busses are just school buses haha. It's fun. All of the farms are just on the side of the mountains, it's very cool. The weather is perfect in my area. It usually rains everyday but for the week I've been here it has been mostly sunny. Rains for a little in the afternoon. One day it did rain all day though.

I've been a little homesick and struggling with Spanish but I will get better soon. For p day today we went to some nature park thing. I'll send pictures! It was sooo cool.

I can't wait to know Spanish and get to work here!!