3-26-12

Moms,

Can’t believe it is already spring break. That’s so weird, just feels like summer here. Well,… sometimes,… during the day it is blazing hot, I am getting soooo dark. I have a great farmers tan going. But at night it gets really really cold, plus we are getting a little closer to the rainy season so it’s started to get a little nasty in the afternoon, and when it rains it is freeeezing. It even hailed a little bit on Saturday, everyone was kind of freaking out and saying it was snowing, but no, just straight giant balls of ice. Yeah we got totally soaked on Saturday, we were probably about half an hour from anywhere and it just started pouring. Seriously raining like I have never seen before, we just ran for cover and waited for like half an hour, didn’t stop at all so we just went for it. I keep a plastic bag from the grocery store in my backpack now for the rain, and for instances like the cow stomach, its my all purpose emergency bag. But yeah, just put my scriptures in that and trekked home. So that was fun. But apparently the rainy season is ten times worse, I heard there are times when your just walking in water to your knees for days... should be fun.

Oh and we had changes this week. So I am done being trained I guess ha-ha. Yeah Conte has a herniated disc in his spine, they don’t know if he has to go home or not so they sent him to Xela and he is in a trio just waiting to hear what the mission doctor decides to do with him. So now I am with Elder Celis, he is 22, from Guate City, and has about 18 months in the mish. It is a little weird because  I am the junior comp, but I know the area, people, investigators, and he was only baptized a year before he went on his mission so he kind of knows things about the church, but not a ton, so I basically am the senior comp. I make all the plans, talk to all the people, I’m in charge of our Sunday school class, and teach pretty much all of the lessons. It’s been a crazy week. My Spanish has really come a long way,  for almost having two months in the field, everyone tells me I speak waaay better than most of the missionaries with a few changes, so that is always really nice. I wouldn’t say I am totally fluent whatsoever, but I know enough that I can do everything by myself. I dream in Spanish now too. So so weird.

Celis doesn’t speak a word of English either, it has been really nice. Two comps of just perfect Spanish, that helps a ton. We had a meeting and interviews at the mission home this Tuesday; I definitely can tell a difference in the Spanish of elders who have had English speaking comps.

That is brutal with Alex, he would absolutely die here. We eat soooo much bread. Probably eat a full loaf of bread on the daily. Especially because the semana santa (crazy catholic holiday here) is next week, so apparently to celebrate Christ people just eat bread for a month. Also we are not allowed to leave the house next Friday because people walk around town carrying crosses and stuff. This is a national holiday, everything closes down so people can walk around and carry crosses. I heard some people are really intense about it too and actually nail themselves to the crosses. Whaaat....? 

I don’t get the holidays in this country; they celebrate in the weirdest ways possible. Like for cumpliaños the whole family wakes up before the sun comes up to light off fireworks. That sounds like a terrible way to me to celebrate my birthday, I want sleep, not to wake up at 4:30 in the morning, no thanks, sleep is a good enough present. So on almost a daily basis we get woken up by someone lighting off a thousand black cats at about 4:30-5 ish in the morning. They do it for even infant babies too. Like yeah, your 1 year old baby really really wants to wake up and light off fireworks. 

I was definitely sent here to learn patience ha-ha. I am still working on it... About the dentist though, it was probably the scariest half an hour of my life. It was in Xela, and when I talked to the mission nurse she told me they had just fired the mission dentist. So they were looking for a new one and I was the guinea pig. Soooo reassuring ha-ha. Not kidding she actually used the words guinea pig in our phone call. I almost cried. So we sit down in the little house in the middle of Xela and I can just hear a drill going nuts in the backroom, like the squeally high pitch drill from movies or something, not going to lie, I was sweating. When I got called back I was feeling a little weak in the knees and juuust a little nauseous. I sit down and the dentist starts talking. He is super friendly and really nice, and just kind of poking around in my mouth, then just jabs a needle into my mouth ha-ha, didn’t say a word, just went for it. It was some crazy numbing stuff too because I couldn’t talk for hours after that ha-ha. But at least I didn’t feel a thing. He just drilled a little bit more of my tooth (yeah I was worried) and then filled it. He did a really good job ha-ha, its smooth, hasn’t given me any problems, not sensitive at all. I was a little awestruck that a Guate dentist was that good.

The best part too was when we were done, he told me he was a bishop in Xela, and that he was giving me the ¨member discount¨, I paid 125 Quetz, that’s about...16 dollars ha-ha. I paid 16 dollars to get a tooth filled in Guatemala. I laughed pretty hard about that. Love this place. Anyways, good luck with all the stuff for Alex, sounds cool, send pictures. I don’t know if you have sent that care package or not yet, but if you haven’t, please send some more CD´s too. Like soundtracks of movies and stuff that don’t have words. Maybe like Titanic or something (you can leave Celine’s my heart will go on, that song speaks to my soul), but yeah I have the soundtrack for Pearl Harbor, things like that, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, I love stufff like that. Also more nutella, apparently the grocery store in Xela is the only place with it. Oh my I loved that last bottle you sent. Nothing like eating something where the first ingredient is sugar, and the second is butter ha-ha. Anyways, les quiero, talk to you all next week.

Adam