Week 4: SURPRISE!

Elder West (top row, 2nd from left) with his district at the Guatemala City Temple!

Yes, surprise surprise!  

I'm emailing a day early this week!  The reason for that is that tomorrow I won't be in the CCM for most of the day.  They're kicking us out to clean again, because we're getting 100-ish more Latino missionaries in for the last two weeks that I'm here.  So tomorrow morning we're going to the temple bright and early at 7:30, and as soon as we're done there we're hopping on a bus and going to downtown Guatemala City!  From what I've been told, we're going to a park that has a physical relief map of the entire country of Guatemala, then going to one of the big markets downtown.  I'll let you all know about that next week.

Things here at the CCM have been interesting this week.  I've told you about our practice "investigators," and that they can be a bit difficult.  This week they ramped up the difficulty for us, so much so that we actually lost one of our "investigators." And by lost, I mean that he decided that he doesn't want to meet with us any more.  Two hours later, we found out that we're getting the same investigator back, but with a twist.  We have to pretend that we've never met him before, and pick up where another set of missionaries left off two years ago when he stopped meeting with them.  We have our first lesson with our new old "investigator" today.  Here's hoping that all goes well.

Learning the Spanish language continues to go well, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's easy.  There's so much to learn, and so little time to learn it in before I'm out in the real world.  The thing that has helped me most with learning Spanish is reading the scriptures in Spanish, without using the English scriptures to translate.  You might think that doing that would be a good idea, but it's not.  When you do that, you try to directly translate phrases that don't have a direct translation, and it doesn't actually teach you the language.  Translating with a Spanish-English dictionary lets me learn the language and figure out some of the more idiomatic ways of saying things.

Interesting Spanish fact of the day: Spanish has three different ways to say the scriptural phrase "and it came to pass..."

Elder Colton West

El Salvador San Salvador East Mission

(Note from mom aka blog admin: I think somehow the end of his letter got cut off. It ends rather abruptly and he always signs off with an actual ending!  I will ask and add anything that got cut off next week. The big SUPER JOY is that we got pictures this week!!!! YIPPEE!!!!)

Elder West (top row, left end) with his zone at Guatemala CCM (MTC)

Week 3: "Parangaricutirimicuaropsicologia!"

Hola from the CCM!  

Week 3 is well underway and things have been interesting here.  
We now have somewhere around 110 missionaries in total here.  
I still don't know where they put most of them, because the 
second floor dormitory hall doesn't look that big.  But apparently

it is.  We all managed to escape the rumored room changes, thank

goodness.  So I'm still roomed with 5 other Nortes (North Americans).

Since I know you're all wondering what in the world the title of this 
email means, I'll go ahead and tell you.  According to one of the 

Latino Elders, "parangaricutirimicuaropsicologia" is the Spanish 
equivalent of "supercalifragelisticexpialidocious."  I'm pretty sure

that it translates into something in English, because it ends in

-psicologia (psychology), but I have no idea what it would be.

We didn't get to go to the mercado this week.  But we did get to do

something better.  We went street contacting for a little while on

Saturday evening!  For those of you who don't know what that means, it

means that we left the CCM and talked with people out on the streets

of Guatemala City.  And by streets, I mean one side of the block that

the CCM is on.  It's maybe a third of a mile long.  But in half an

hour my district (12 missionaries in total) managed to give 11 Books

of Mormon to potential investigators, with a challenge to read the

book and pray about it.  Not too bad for a bunch of kids (and me) who

have only been in the country for three weeks and barely speak the

local language.

Our instructors really pulled out the stops with our training

"investigators."  These "investigators" are just the instructors

acting like a person that they baptized on their missions.  Our first

"investgator," Jaime, was the perfect investigator.  Always interested

in the lessons, always kept his commitments, wanted to get baptized

ASAP, etc.  Our new "investigators," "Gabriel" and "Veronica," are

something else entirely.  They are both more difficult to connect

with, and have struggles that we have to help them overcome before

they are willing to believe in the gospel.  But I'm glad that the

instructors are being hard on us in this way.  I, and the others here

with me, are going to be dealing with difficult investigators for our

entire mission.  This lets us figure out how to deal with certain

things in a more controlled environment, one where we can make

mistakes without there being lasting consequences.

Scripture for the week: Mosiah 3:19..."For the natural man is an enemy

to God, and has been from the Fall of Adam, and will be forever and

ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit; and

putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the Atonement

of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble,

patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord

seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his

father."  If I had to pick one scripture to teach the Gospel of Jesus

Christ with, I would probably pick that one. (Note: I apologize if the

grammar of that scripture is incorrect.  I'm quoting from memory.)

That's all for this week!  I can't wait to read everyone's emails next week!

Keep on being awesome!

Elder Colton West

El Salvador, San Salvador East Mission