Monday, August 5, 2013

My First Baptism in Guatemala

entonces (so/ a filler word) one of my spiritual highlights of the week would have to go to my first baptism here in guatemala. It was so special to see him go into the waters of baptism and when his name was called out to start the ordinance, I felt the spirit rush in like nothing else, I started to tear up and remember, ´´this is why I´m here´´ which reminded me of when Nick got baptized and I fully decided to go on a mission. The whole experience was really great, I cherish that moment. ok, so maybe it wasn´t MY investigator, but I did get to see it and the story is true. We have our classes at the chapell behind the temple now because they are doing construction on the third floor of the CCM (and everywhere else it seems). so we were in class like normal, and then my companion asked if we could go to the bathroom, which is down the hall. as we walked we saw the young man preparing to enter the water for his baptism and I got to see the whole thing as my companion was in the restroom. Best bathroom trip ever!
I also seem to get emotional over coaching study. It´s when your teacher gives you feedback on your teaching, and you talk about what is going well and what is not etc. I was expressing my emotions of feeling frustraited not being able to share what I feel the spirit wants me to share because of the language barrier. She shared some more scriptures and I got my composure back together and I felt alright. She asked me to close with the prayer, and while I was praying (in spanish) I felt a feeling of comfort and peace and that I am trying and it´s okay. needless to say, I started choknig up again, but it was good tears of love this time instead of frustration. Ever since then things have been going much better. My attitude is all-over better and I don´t feel like I want to give up. My companion helps me a lot because she is a very accepting of difficult things kind of person. She is patient and encoraging. We balance eachother quite well with our strengths and weaknesses.
speaking of which, yesterday we were practicing teaching to other hispanic missionaries and instead of teaching two-on-two we taught one-on-one (which we did not plan for). It was so hard not having eachother as companions, we were still sitting near eachother though, and we occasionally caught eachother looking at the other for support, help, or the next thing  to say. We realized how great it is to be in a companionship.
Also, on sunday we have a meeting that is kind of like sunday school. we get together with one other district and some leader like the ccm president or something. and then two companionships are randomly chosen to teach the lessons (we know the topics ahead of time so we can prepare) however these lessons are no sweat because they are in English. usually. Since the new rotation of missionaires happened on wednesday, we are with a new group, which just happened to be latinos. My companion and I hadn´t taught yet, so we assumed since we were the last ones in our group to teach, we would for sure be going. The ccm president got up and called for hermana hutchins and hermana fitzgerald to give the first lesson. uhhhhh we aren´t even companions, AND we are going to teach this lesson in spanish that we had planned to give in english. well, they fixed the companionship thing but we still had to teach in spanish. that was special. because we had never taught a lesson on tithing in spanish before, so tithing and personal story words were at a minimum, but it worked out okay and everything went well.
At casa de CRE ( a little place we teach) me and my companion prepared a 15 minute lesson to ´´strengthen faith´´ as we were told to do. however, when we got there we were paired up with this very old and very sweet guatemalan woman who´s husband died 4 months ago. we thought that it would be fine and go like normal, untilllll...we asked ´´como esta?´´ which means ´´how are you´´....and let´s just say 15 minutes later I think we got in a couple sentences about our lesson. haha. I guessed she just needed someone to talk to. It was good, she left VERY happy. I guess we did our job.
My teaching ability in spanish is coming along well. Our lesson outlines are very simple which means a lot of the lesson is given off our minds and whatever we can think of. we have a lot less notes, read a lot less out of pamphlets and books, and are bearing testimony and asking and listening to questions better. It feels good to see improvement.
The drawing has not come to a stop, actually, it kind of picked up a notch. I drew 7 more pictures this week and 5 of which are very intense and took a couple hours or more to do. they are for people in my district now and everyone wants me to draw the pictures in the front inside cover of their book of mormons. kind of intense, but they have all turned out well. The other day hermana Fitzgerald asked me if my patriarchal blessing says anything about doing art. I responded that it does and that I am supposed to serve people with that gift and that I´ll come up with ways to help build faith in Christ (essentially). I thought that moment was really neat to see just how my life is unfolding. People are still boggled that I can draw like I do but that I´m majoring in food science. ...we´ll see.
My companion declaired me ´´jack of all trades´´ after me drawing pictures, leading sining and such, offering to fix a gilrs skirt wich needs some mending, and helping this girl figure out the rest of her balloon animal that her mom would usually make ( she is kinda like a clown that does balloon art or something) , but she forgot what else it needed and I commented on what it could be and she was so flabberghasted that I knew what to do and she asked how I knew. and I just said something like how I have skills of a ´´proffessional ´´without any training.
sorry for any misspelled words, spanish is taking over.
on sunday we have companion ´´splits´´ for a couple of hours with a latina. She was so sweet. we talked only in spanish and she ended up giving me a little picture of her temple in northern guatemala. she was adorable, I hope I get a trainer/ companion like her.
no worries about my 3 point basket ball abilities. I made 3 in 5 minutes the other day, 2 of which were in a row. so I guess I´m over that plateau. we also like to do a daily pull up as a 6 week work out plan in my district of girls. We are actually improving and now we can do a couple a day durring deportes.
another funny moment. we had a bit of downtime at the chapel and a girl in our district was playing hymns on the piano and me and one other girl was singing to the piano. after the first verse another girl in my district asked if I could sing it an octive lower ( which she really just wanted it a little bit lower which would need a key change in the piano) but I replied...uh, maybe, I´ll try. so I sang the whole song an octive lower just fine. It was funny, we all chuckled a bit.
I got 6 bug bites. wahoo. they aren´t too bad though, and I´m still alive.
´´forever red´´ is still very much so alive, it´s my nickname sometimes in my district, but only the girls called me that. I actually wore your red dress again on sunday (the forever red one) and then we had pictures taken again yesterday and my companion REALLY wanted me to wear it for the picture, oh, ps, when you get the picture, my companion is behind me and hermana bender is right next to me, we pretended hermana bender was the third tallest at the CCM to make it so she would be able to stand next to eachother in the picture, she is actually like the 5th tallest, but who really cares. I am officially the tallest woman at the CCM. You don´t have to be THAT tall around here to claim the faim of being the tallest. ok, so to clarify on the forever red thing: what makes it so funny is that we have no idea what he really meant by forever red, we just laugh now whenever it´s brought up. one of the new girls had this ´´great´´ idea that maybe he was referring to the bath and body works ´´forever red´´ line of perfume....for some reason, I really doubt that´s it. haha.
ahh no more time!

No comments:

Post a Comment