Week 14

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Not too much to report this week, just a lot of hard work. I really am surprised at how quickly we are able to adapt to the missionary life. It's so different from anything I've done before. If all goes well, we should have another baptism this Sunday, but more on that next week.

Speaking of which, who's excited for General Conference?!?  I know I am. More excited than I ever have been before. The rumor is that they even have a room in the stake center where they show conference in English for all the gringo missionaries. It would definitely be hard to watch conference but not hear the voices we love so much (President Monson, President Uchtdorf, Elder Holland, Elder Bednar, etc.). Interestingly, a few of them can speak Spanish and apparently do their own translations.

Anyway, yesterday, for our P Day we went to Metro Centro, a really nice mall near the capital. Elder Ward, the other gringo in Villa Canales said it was like "returning to the United States." It's probably a good thing that I'm not assigned to work in that area, because it definitely was a little hard to stay focused when I was eating Little Caesar’s pizza, trying to ignore the American Music in the background and the football games that were playing on the TV.

In the mall there was a store that I know that my family, at least, would have loved. It was a bakery (a relatively clean one even) where all the bread was placed in large baskets around the store with the price of each loaf, scone, muffin, etc. on the basket. Upon entering you receive a wicker basket and a set of tongs and then can pick out all the bread or pastries you want. Pretty ridiculously delicious. Unless I'm mistaken they were also pumping the smells from their ovens into the store as well. Basically, it was a starchy paradise.

After that we went to a MegaPaca, one of the giant second-hand stores that dot Guatemala. Apparently that's the place where the majority of Guatemalans buy their clothing. Because of this, during visits I'm occasionally asked to translate what their shirts say, because almost all the clothing is imported from the US. There were definitely some gems there though, far more than would be found in DI, for example, because the people don't understand what the clothing says or means. I was able to find a nice BYU shirt, which I bought for less than a dollar.

We then went to a nice grocery store, where they played "Normal" by Ximena Sarinana. I freaked out a little because that is my favorite Spanish song of all time and we studied it in Spanish class a few years ago. Good times...