Que
Pasa?!
Life here at the CCM is super great!!! haha!!!
let me just start off by saying that I apologize for the bad spelling but I’ve
been noticing that as I have been writing in my journal that i have been switching back and forth between Spanish
and English so it’s a whole bunch of spanglish and none of it makes sense and
so when i try to write in english some spanish is coming out and the spelling
is awful!! ha! but the CCM is lots of fun! it kind of feels like we’re in a
prison because we’re locked in here and we have about 15 guards patrolling the
outside of it at all times and the two times we’ve been let out to take a trip
to the temple (one the other day for a picture at the temple and one this
morning for a temple session) we had guards following us the whole way over and
back! i kind of just want someone to try to do something to us so we'd see what
they would do but it hasn’t happened yet!!
Wow!
i never thought I’d look forward so much to writing an email! But this feels like it’s been a long time
coming because this last week has felt like an eternity and now that i look
back it flew by!!! When we first arrived at the Guatemala airport we heard Taylor
swift, which was weird because it was in English, but apparently they listen to
the same music here as we do in America!!! Then we went through customs, grabbed our bags
and headed out to the street to wait for our buses! I flew out of the salt lake city airport with
11 other elders and no sisters but met up with 8 other sisters once we reached
the L.A. airport! There we had around 50 missionaries and our plane for that
trip was pretty late because it was slow getting in from a previous trip! The landing in L.A. was crazy!! i haven’t
flown much but even i could tell that it was a pretty bumpy trip. The Guatemala plane flight felt like
forever!! The whole time on the screens all over the plane, the flight said
that we were getting farther and farther away from our destination because it
for some reason thought we were headed to china so we didn’t know how much
longer we had and it made it feel even longer!! Everything was in Spanish and
the slc flight i was sitting by Spanish ladies who had no clue what i was
trying to say so i eventually gave up, and then on my next flight i sat by
elder Garry and elder Sabey and we didn’t know how to fill out the customs
forms because they were all in spanish so we had no clue what we were doing!! It
was the best!! My companions and i (well, my roommates and my comp) were trying
to figure out how to say the struggle is real and when we looked it up in the
dictionary it said the word for struggle is luchar so we went around saying el
luchar es real and all the Latinos were giving us the weirdest looks so we
asked our teacher what it meant and apparently it means that the fight is
real!! haha! which i guess applies a little bit but whatever!!
We
arrived at the airport and waiting out on the streets and this guate comes up
and starts shining all the elders shoes so they ask him how much and he just
says tip if you like so they start giving him like 3 or 4 $ and one of the
elders had 30 cuatqseltez from him grandma so he gave those to him and then the
guy picking us up was like what are you doing?
If you gave him a quarter you would be generous! haha! so basically we
have no concept of money down here! Every American dollar gets you 7.55 dollars
down here! it was pretty funny!!
We
rode on a bus all the way to the CCM and they were old school buses and can i
just say the guates are insane!! their driving is ridiculous!! They have alto
signs everywhere- which means stop and the guates don’t even slow for
them!!! They just speed on through
like they’re not even there! So a road will be merging and you just gun it and
force the people behind you and the whole line behind them to slam on their
brakes or to hit you!!! You swerve
lanes whenever you want without warning so they would just cut you off with
about an inch to spare and almost ram you to get in front! Also they love to honk. It will be a stand still and the whole line
of them are laying out on the horns!!
We
saw a dominos, McDonalds, and a Wendys on our way in! ha! but i hear their
sandwiches are like 10$... maybe guate money. so yeah, we get to the CCM which is just on
the side of the street and there’s a three way road going past it and three
going the other way so we’re in the far right lane and our driver swerves left
and cuts off all the cars and backs in the gate and we’re all thinking we are
going to die as everyone is getting as close as possible to not hitting us and
honking like hooligans!! So we get
inside and everything is in spanish! All
the workers talk in spanish! the teachers!! NO english ever!! so i felt crazy
lost the first couple of days because they gave us a schedule.. in spanish! what
the pansies!! So we didn’t know where to
go ever!!! the temple is super pretty and we can see it outside our window and
the CCM is in the middle of a block that likes to party! Every night there are
loud noises and music coming from this building a bit away and our teachers
joke that it’s the great and spacious building!! ha! It’s funny because sometimes
we show up in the wrong place or we don’t show up because we thought we were
supposed to be somewhere else but we don’t know and so they get all upset and
we still don’t know what they’re saying !
One of the ups to not knowing the language!!
Every
single prayer we are supposed to ask for the gift of tongues so i would
appreciate it if you guys would also mention that in your prayers! We learned how to pray in Spanish and now
they all have to be in Spanish!! As well as songs, scriptures, and meal conversations!! Its super funny because we'll try to talk to
the latinos and they have no clue what we’re saying so they'll say something
back and we have no clue so we all just look at each other and say no se or i
don’t know! ha! and the few questions i do know are what’s your name (and
they’re all wearing name tags! HA) where are you from, which I’ve asked a
billion times, and how many siblings do you have!! ha! but i didn’t learn how
to say do you watch the disney channel and i found a whole bunch who do and who
love phineas and ferb which made my day!!
The
workouts that Linley gave me are the best because you can’t play soccer because
of how intense elders take it so the only things left are volleyball and
basketball but all the balls are flat. I asked for a pump and they said they
can’t fill them up more so if it hits someone in the head it wont hurt them so
those aren’t much fun. So i just run and do abs and wall sits and such!
Sunday
was the boss because it was in English the whole entire day which is the first
time I’ve heard teachers/ everyone use it since getting here so it was way
nice!! Super dang spiritual and everything
and i really loved it!!! We watched a
devotional given by elder Holland in march 2008 to the provo mtc and it was
amazing!!!! He’s such a great, funny speaker!!! like he said quote: "i
know a lot of you think that old men woke up angry, ran through cactuses and
drake pickle juice before writing this white hand book but that’s not true!! It’s
written by inspiration and a whole lot of experience! so obey it!!! and he tied
in the atonement sooo cool—it was amazing!!
Foods okay even though they believe in having beans every single meal
but the cooks are really nice and there’s always lots of fruit!! Singing in Spanish
is lots of fun because half of us don’t know the tune and the other half can’t
pronounce the words that quickly or the changes and such so its dang
funny! Look at a spanish hymn if you get
the chance and look for a swish between words which means you combine it
quickly and it never sounds how its supposed to!! ha!! we also learned how to
bear our testimonies in Spanish this week so here goes—yo se que nuestro padre
celestrial es amado y merciful, yo se que jesucristo es nos salvdor y redeemere
y el es todo amado! yo se que la evangelio es verdado y que nosotros familias
es eterndad. te amo mi familia y mi el salvador jesucristo y mi hermanos! te
amo dis evangelio y la oportunidad nosotros quiere con la inglesia! estoy
agredicido por mi familia y por la expecion y por la oportunidad por sevicio un
mision. en el nombre de jesucristo, Amen.
I love
you all so much and am so grateful for the love and support you’ve given me!!! I
know this church is true!! Thanks for everything!!!
--
Love
Sister Josie Morris
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