2010 Oct 27

2010 Oct 27 PM

¡Hola familia!

That`s so crazy to hear that Grandpa Tom was barely scathed from an event that ultimately burned down one of the biggest houses ever. That is so great. When I started reading that part of your letter, I was preparing myself for the worst so it´s good to hear that everything is doing okay.

And now with your questions:
I`m still in the Quetzaltenango mission. When they gave me my mission call, they had just barely announced it or something. Basically, it means that I won´t have any coast which is good I guess because that means that I won´t have to worry about having 100 degree weather with 100 percent humidity. And from what I´ve heard, there are a lot less diseases. So that´s good.

I like my new Spanish class a lot. I´m learning a lot more than I would be if I was just in a normal class, so that´s really great. I don´t think it`s because I`m smart though. I think it´s just because I got half a year of it in high school along with the fact that God is blessing me majorly with the gift of tongues.

Ha, and it´s weird to think that you guys just barely got the info about the plaza (because I couldn´t send a letter last week.) It seems like such a long time ago but such a short time ago at the same time. It´s crazy to think that I`m leaving the CCM in only 2 weeks. I can´t even really imagine being on a mission without being in the CCM. I´m excited because one tends to get pretty stir crazy in here. :)

And my scripture covers: Just imagine the coolest looking things that would match my personality but still looks authentically Guatemalan and that´s what they look like. They are kind of a blue/yellow/brown striped thing. They are way cooler in person, I swear. :)

And it´s kind of weird, because I do kind of feel like and "old" missionary when I am here. When I was back in the Provo MTC, the missionaries who were in my zone who had been there for 8 weeks looked so much older and more mature than I was, even though I had more years than a lot of them. And now a lot of the missionaries that just came from North America seem younger than me. It´s wierd/cool. And there are about 103ish missionaries here at the Guatemala CCM. It`s split pretty equally between Latinos/Latinas and North Americans.

And I probably won´t be able to go back to the Supermaercado again, so that´s kind of sad but there will be other mercados in the future so oh well I guess.

People receive Dearelder’s here daily. After it gets into the country, it takes about I think 5 or 10 days to get here. So if anyone wants to send me a dear elder, they should probably start sending them to my Quetzaltenango mission address.

And my pday is still Wednesday but if you could send the emails on Tuesday before 3 then that would be good because they are letting us print them out and read them before so that we don´t have to spend time reading them during our 30 min email time. But if you´re not able to then that`s okay because I usually end up running out of things to say before the end of the letter anyway.

Spiritual exp: Read Alma 11 and read on ponder on it and pray about it. It answers a lot of questions that I had.

I love you all!

2010 Oct 19

2010 Oct 19

¡Hola mi familia!

Sorry that I didn´t get a letter sent off to you last week. You guys were probably worried sick (or else I hope you were worried sick. The more sick with worry you were, the better.) Also, I don´t have any idea how to do emoticons on these keyboards so you´ll have to bear with me. Also, sorry about having to send an email today rather than sending it tomorrow. Some things took place that required the new schedule which I will go into more detail later...

This week has been really great. The group of Latinos and old Americans just left so now it´s just the Americans that I came with that are here. Some more Americans from the Provo MTC are coming in later tonight. So that will be exciting. It doesn't even seem like that long ago that I was the one getting off the plane in Guatemala to see a sketchy-looking bus driver waiting for us in a red school bus with a sign on it that said CCM (That´s Spanish for MTC) So that´s crazy. And in only double the time that I've been here, I´ll be in Quetzaltenango (also, called Xila (Shae-la)) bringing the gospel to all the people there. So that´s really really exciting.

This week has been really good. In my other Spanish class, we've been going over subjunctive tenses (there are like 50 of them). And while I was kind of complaining to a roommate of mine who was from Mexico (who also happens to be really fluent at English) he said that there are 4 different subjunctive tenses in English! 4! And we just use them all day every day without even thinking about it! That will hopefully be me in 3-5 months except in Spanish.

Today, though, we went to the market next to the capitol building. It was really fun bartering with people though I've basically just accepted the fact that I´m never going to be very good at it. Why? Because, according to them, all Americans are rich and what kind of a non-American would be more than 2 meters tall and have white-ish skin (which, by the way, is starting to darken up). There isn't too much that I will be able to do about the height though. Pero esta bien.

Anyway, today: So we started out just like any other ordinary day. We got up at 6:20 went to gym at 6:30, I was kind of tired today so I decided to only get my heart rate up to 161 instead of 175 and then I took a shower and went to breakfast and went to do personal study for an hour and then everything changed! Not really changed because I've known since I got here that the Tuesday after everyone left that it would be different... I´ll just cut to the chase. WE WENT TO THE SUPERMERCADO! It was really awesome. First, before we went there though, we went to some place that has Guatemala all mapped out and everything and it´s about the size of a small park... like the size of the area of 3 of our church building put together. It was pretty really cool. Also, I didn't take my camera on this trip because I was scared that it would get stolen so I didn't get any pictures. Which is kind of sad. But anyway, on the way from the big map thing to the Supermercado, we crossed over this bridge (it may have been on the way back to the CCM from the Market) and there was this really big river (or maybe glacier but it´s Guatemala, so probably river)-formed gorge with the poorest looking community of people I've ever seen in my life. It was insane. Look it up on Google maps. Anyway, it was really humbling and I felt really grateful that I was blessed to be born in America to a Dad with a great work ethic and a great education and a great job. So that was good to see. I´ll be seeing that for the next couple years. But, anyway, the market. That was great. I bartered this one guy down from 50 to 45 Quetzales (which is only like a 60 cent difference but I felt pretty good about myself). And then I bought some crazy looking fruits with like spikey things coming out of them. They are red and, apparently, you are supposed to peel it to get to the white fruit in the middle. But that was really cool. Look them up and put a picture of them on the blog if it isn't too much trouble.
I have to go soon...

So I haven´t been getting any dearelder.com s and they are free so if you could send them then that would be amazing. It would seriously make my life. :) Also, I know that Heavenly Father loves us and that, through Christ we can return to go again.

2010 Oct 13

Here is Nathan's letter from last week. There was a problem when he went to send it. :)

2010 Oct 13

¡Hola Familia!
First things first, I miraculously just realized that the keyboard that I am using lets me do the enter bar! So that´s great! And I got to go to an English session at the temple today and that as way nice. Last time when I went to do the Spanish Session they offered me headphones but I told them that I didn´t want them. It was nice not having to think too much during the session though.

And it sounds like everyone in the family is doing really well! Janeen will be a professional harpist playing at Carnegie Hall by the time that I get back from my mission in two years! That is really awesome!

The weather here is pretty good. It isn´t nearly as miserable as I thought it was. The first couple of days it rained lightly every day all day but lately it´s been clear blue skies. It hasn´t even been that hot either! So that´s really nice.

Oh yeah! And I keep on forgetting to tell you guys that the Quetzaltenango mission was changed. They made a new mission called Retalhuleu (SP?) that just about cut our mission in half and took all of the coastal parts of the mission. I heard that that is the hottest, most miserable part though. Quetzaltenango and the mountains north of it, on cold days, get down to freezing. And I asked a native Elder who is from here (in Spanish!) if I would need any warm clothes and he
said that all we would need is a sweater which I packed with me. So I should be good.

The Spanish is coming pretty well. They just made a new Spanish class for people who feel like they could learn a little bit faster in Spanish and I´m in it! It´s really exciting. I´ve only gone once but I learned a lot. Did you know that Subjuctive tense is ridiculous? I didn´t until Tuesday, but I guess that it is and there are like 6 different kinds of it. Pero, está bien because I´m gonna have to learn it some time.

Also, on Tuesday I got to go to the square just outside the capitol building and go contact real people! It was really great! There weren´t that many Latinos to go around so I was just in a companionship with... I forgot his name but it wasn´t my companion. It was really cool though. I didn´t know too much Spanish which means that I kind of got to take the lead in all of the conversations. Sharing the gospel is so much fun! The first guy that we walked up to (i.e. the first person that I had ever contacted for real in my life) totally talked to us for like 15 minutes and bore his soul to us about... well, let´s just say he talked about a lot. So we gave him una folleta about the restoration of the gospel and I told him the first vision when Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ from memory! (vi una columna de luz, mas brillante que el sol...)SO GREAT! I felt the spirit so strong that it did happen and that Joseph Smith really was a prophet of God! And then he totally told me that my Spanish was coming really well and that he understood everything! So that was really good. And then we talked to an old (anciano, not viejo) guy in the plaza right across the street from the Capitol building and I couldn´t understand what he was saying but we gave him a pamphlet and right after we did, he said something about basura (garbage) but my companion thought he said buscar (to search) so we just left. I don´t know that anything will come of that but it´s all good. Not everyone is ready to hear about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ that will bring happiness to their lives. After that, we ran into a lady while we were walked and she looked at me the same time I looked at her so we talked to her and she was so ready! It´s like those practice ones that they give missionaries to build their confidence except that she was real! So we gave her a Book of Mormon and a pamphlet and she was like (no tengo dinero) and I was like (este es un don para usted!) because I didn´t know how to say free. Anyway so that was really great. And while we were there, we ran into some missionaries who were leaving in 10 days! That´s pretty crazy to think
about because that will be me soon! What else... Oh! I bought the coolest scriptures covers today! And my time is almost up soo...

I love you guys! have a great week! and write me letters! (Sorry I just realized that when I pushed the send button last week, it didn't actually send. So you guys get two this week.

2010 Oct 13

Hi Everyone!
It must have been a busy day at the MTC in Guatemala, no letter this week. He probably got delayed at the temple or something. I will post as soon as he does, until then...

2010 Oct 6

2010 Oct 6 PM

¡Hola Familia!

I still couldn´t figure out how to push the enter button.  The one that they have here doesn´t do the same thing.

Sorry last week's was so disjointed and short.  With all of the confusion of having a million new missionaries, I only had 4 minutes to write and send a letter.  This is week is better though.  I went to the temple this morning and that was really cool.  The English session of the temple filled up with the person right before me and so I got to go to do the session in Spanish instead.  The rooms in the temple are a lot smaller here too than anything that I´ve seen before.  It was good though.  I didn´t really understand very much but it was all good.  I didn´t fall asleep or anything.  I also liked conference a lot too.  I liked that one from, I think, Elder Christopherson(sp).  I don´t really remember what it was about but I liked it a lot.  I thought it was really cool that a lot of the talks in conference were directed to the missionaries.  Right after the Sunday sessions in General conference, the MTC mission president gave us another little fireside on obedience.  I like him a lot.  What I got from it was that all of the commandments and rules that we are given are really just for our freedom.  Disobeying them never brings long term happiness and by having rules, God gives us more opportunities for him to bless us.  He´s a really great mission president.  There seemed to be a lot of talks in conference on obedience which I thought was cool because obedience to all of the rules is really what they try and pound into your head here at the MTC.

It´s really humbling to try and speak Spanish in another country because even when I think that I am doing good at speaking Spanish, you see all of the native Spanish speakers talking to each other and not being about to understand what they are saying.  Pero, esta bien because humility is a good thing.

Guatemala is really great.  This MTC is way smaller than the one in Provo but that means that we get to have more time with the president so that´s definitely really cool.  I have two Latino roommates- Elder Guillon and Elder Monroy.  Elder Monroy is from Mexico and is really good at English. He just pronounces some words funny but it´s really good.  And Elder Guillen is really fun because he tries to learn English words all the time and then say them to us.  The MTC is really close the temple because it doubles as kind of like a hotel for people to stay at while they go to the temple.

Elder Steele is really great.  He´s from Salt Lake and we are at about the same level of Spanish.  He´s a lot like me.  He´s really funny and crazy but he´s got a really good testimony of the gospel and he knows when to be serious.  He went to University of Utah.

I am just about out of time but know that I am doing well.  I hope you guys are doing well too! Anyway, have a great week!

I love you guys!