The bathroom is... different. I am definitely not in the U.S. anymore

Hi !

My companion is Elder Barnes. He is from Texas and is a really good elder. I am not sure how long he has been out  actually.  He was not always active in the church but  I would have never known that he was an inactive member if he didn’t tell me. He is such a cool kid. My first meal while being in Guatemala was... Burger King. We then had stuffed chicken and I have had a lot rice, tortillas, chicken, beans, and I had pasta once.  We have a cook and someone to do our laundry (the church is giving members jobs when they need them) so she  makes us good food and lemonade and horchata. We are teaching quite a few people. The problem with all of them is that they won’t leave there work to go to church or read or anything really. Everyone wakes up early goes to work and then goes directly home and to bed.  We teach some people at work because they just work at stores that are there houses or on carts outside. Everything here is super cheap or really expensive. My area is San Antonio. It is in the mountains and it is the coldest part of the mission. It is just me and my companion living in a house. It is really big, it is actually two houses. One is for sleeping and the other has a kitchen in it. It is really nice and we have an amazing landlord. We have one of the only places that have hot water to shower with, but the bathroom is... different. I am definitely not in the U.S. anymore. It rains all the time but only after lunch, never in the morning. I have pictures but I am not sure if the computer will or can take them. The mission president is a really strong member of the church. Most active members are, but there is not really a lot of active members in my area. He really emphasizes that all Spanish speakers learn English so they will have opportunities after the mission  and he is trying to learn English too to be an example. They put gringos with native speakers all the time because of this. He constantly calls our mission the most powerful mission in the world (or at least that is what is translates to in English). It is not as humid here in the mountains, but when I was in Reu and the capital is was super-hot and humid. It constantly smells like the 4th of July here because no one takes care of their cars and burn everything. I have ran into 3 mobs already and what they do is fill the street with tires and set them all on fire so no one will move them. This happened the way to my area and we were in the bus for an extra 4 hours because of it. We were able to decide and watch three movies on the way back to our area. (By the way, we can watch almost any movie on my mission. on the way  we watched Thor 2, and i checked to make sure if it was ok, and the mission president  himself said that he approved the movie.) I thought that was kinda strange, but no one else did. I can speak a lot better than most people expect me to be able to, which is a good sign, but I cannot understand the native speakers. I can understand the gringos and they can understand me but I cannot understand the native speakers and they have a hard time understanding me. It is super hard to write home because the computers are sticky and the translation is in Spanish so I have said is underlined indicating that I have spelt it wrong (shout out to Christine for being my auto-correct).

 

Hermosa- Especially at night

El Capitan- protects us wherever we go

People just leave their doors open here.  Mi Casa es su casa.

Our hotel room my first night here.

Thanks Christine for the scripture you sent. (Helaman  13:3)  I love that scripture too. I want to give that scripture to an investigator when they feel the spirit to show them how the gospel changes your life. Most people here just don’t want to do things, which I don’t blame them because there livelihood depends on it. Kids don’t have school on Sunday so for some people Sunday is the best day for business. They have to put so much trust in God to give away a day, especially Sunday. But from the families I have seen do it, it is so worth it. Their families are so close because they have a day when it is not just pure work. By the way, my ward mission leader is 18. Tell dad that, I forgot to tell him. I usually will give stuff to the kids, especially the 5 cent coins. I have done the math and it is about 1.2 cents. They love it though. I am not so sure how well the mail works here because from what I have heard most stuff doesn’t make it or takes forever, but what I do know is that sometimes it works just fine and those are the ones with religious pictures on them. So yes, send the package, but put stickers on it.

Love you,

Bret