The Real Guatemala‏

¡Hola mis amores!

Another amazing week in La Mariposa.

Random things:

- Bitsy, in boy form, lives three streets down from us. It´s awesome. I´ve never seen a dog that looks exactly like Bitsy, besides her sister that I don´t remember. I´m going to get a picture one of these days.
-Hermana Wetzel and I have the BEST bathroom experiences here. There is no verguenza between the two of us. The fun is usually at member´s houses, at the church, and various other places. Sometimes it´s just that there isn´t enough water in the toilet, so we have to fill it up from the sink with bowls, or there isn´t water at all, or there isn´t toilet paper, or there is no where to go to the bathroom/no one is home, so we have to improvise, or there´s no door, or there´s no seat, and lot of other fun stuff. Siempre hay adventuras.
-La reunion sacramental was busting full yesterday. We even ran out of water for the Sacrament! Given, we should always be prepared, and that shouldn´t necessarily happen, but I was beaming when they were buscando agua (remember: clean water isn´t easily accesible here).
-They announced our new bishopric yesterday and everyone is pretty jazzed. We love our old bishop and bishopric, but are excited for the newbies and looking forward to working with them. The bishop is one of my favorite people here, Bishop Orozco, he´s too great with the best sense of humor.
-I can´t even express how well we are fed here. It seems like EVERYONE knows how to cook delicious. It´s too great.
- I never thought I would dislike the States as much as I do at times here. I am so grateful for my country and think it´s truly fantastic, but a la gran... soooooo many of the women´s husbands here are in the U.S., haven´t seen them in years, and don´t know when they´re coming back... if they even will come back. Some get married again there, some just abandon their families. We know of a few families where the husband has returned, but we hate hearing the response to "... y su esposo?" of "En los estados."
- I cannot wait for the day that I can understand jokes.

Okay, so we had divisions this past week for a day. I went to La Gomera, close to Sipicaté in the coast (that spelling may be very wrong). It is hot, hot, hot there, kind of reminded me of Louisiana, but evidently, I had it pretty easy, because usually it´s much hotter. It´s the hottest area in the mission. It was awesome though. It looked exactly what I had been imagining Guatemala to look like before I got here. I saw my first monkey, drank straight from a fresh-picked coconut from their neighbors, made tortillas (tried to), and sweated. I was with Hna Robles and she was great. Divisions are fun, because you get to see a different area, have different experiences, see how other hermanas teach, contact, and just live life day to day. The majority of the houses are made of tin. It´s seems to be a pretty tough area. Hna Robles said that most of the people are pretty uneducated, more of the hick area of Guatemala, so it is harder to teach, but she is learning how to teach very simply. It was an amazing experience. It really made me realize what a dream La Mariposa is and has been. I have had it way too easy, and according to Hermana Wetzel, I´ll continue to have it easy for a while.

We have the most amazing jovenes here. They all want to come out with and help us all the time. We dropped a couple investigators off at a Young Women/Young Men activity a couple weeks ago and all the jovenes are constantly asking us about them, talking to them, inviting and picking them up for activities and church. They´re fantastic. One of the investigators, Benjamin, said "I´ve been to a lot of different youth groups at different churches, but there´s just something different about this one." La Mariposa is pretty fantastic.

Hope everyone is doing AMAZING.

Con mucho amor,
Hermana Marin