Me and my boxer, strong, tall, swimmer, barbie, gymnist, perfect, need to watch body

I get a lot of comments about my body here. Some are very generously nice (like, "hermana hutchins has a perfect body") and some are....special ("you look like this professional boxer that I know of") I am already quite self-conscious about my body, and my increasingly tight skirts don't help either.

I am receiving the opportunity to develop my talents. I am playing piano for sacrament meetings. whew! it's kinda intense for me, especially because I don't get to know which numbers we will be singing until we get to church sunday morning. AND I have never considered my skills to be suffient to play for a sacrament meeting, but here, people will gather around the electric piano (mostly kids) and watch me play before sacrament meeting starts. We got to sing hymn number 91 again (I think it is now we leave at parting or something in english) this is the thrid time singing it since I have been here, and I am glad to say that we sang that song NOT to the tune of "onward Christian soilders" That made me and my companion happy.oh the magic of a piano. I am grateful for the years of piano lessons that I had, but it is sure difficult for me to play the hymns well ( I never even started to play the hymns before I quit piano) so everything I can do now has come from personal practice and the grace of God.

We saw some dancing horses the other day. Hard to describe, but they were dancing. It was for some fair thing.

We were at a Relief Society activity on Saturday, and at the end of this activity there was cake (shocker. I know.) and tacos (but not american tacos). We were helping serve it all up and put the lettuce drenched in mayonase on the fried taco shell filled with cooked ground beef and onions that had been sitting out in roomtemperature for at least 3 hours and the cake ON TOP of the napkin on the plate (she was very persistant that the frosting covered cake slices needed to be on top of the napkin on the plate). When we were done serving everyone else one of the ward sisters who was helping was counting out how many more we needed for the missionaries (us) and for the other sisters who were helping to serve. I said how I didn't need a taco and she was like "why? do you not like tacos?" (all guatemalan like you better eat this food...ALL of it) but I was like, "I just ...can't" (aka I REALLY don't want to get sick from that meat that has been sitting out for HOW long?) so I took the little bit of the "pft" look and expressed my sincere gratitude. I think we are fine. they weren't even her tacos to be offended over. gah. food.

Well, for the spiritual side of a guatemalan missionary. 

I feel like I have some repenting to do. I kind of feel like Lamen and Lemuel. 

So with the story of Nephi and his brothers, Nephi is always the praised and admired one (which is good) but if you realize the difference between Nephi, and lets say, Lamen is theirattitude. They both went to the wilderness, back again, back to the wilderness, back again to get some girls, and back out to the wilderness, both help build the boat, both traveled to the promised land etc. weeeeeeeeeeellllllll the difference is their willingness to obey. and their attitudes throughout. I feel like I really need to develop this more as I do missionary work and receive new dats and stats and "goals" that I really don't agree with. I feel like it is all too focused on numbers (numbers are fine and good, they represent actions) but I want to focus on the people. I wish I could focus on our lessons and quality instead of quantity and hours and HOURS of contacting. We HAVE investigators, but we don't have time to come visit all of them because we are too busy getting in our hours of contacting. gah! but I know I need to have more faith that the mission president is inspired and this is really "not the manner of men" but rather "the manner of the Lord". I am still not too convinced. I am trying though. And I need to remember the blessings of nephi and his willingness to obey (I do have other aspects that I am applying this principle to my life) I have recently studdied the story of the vision of the tree of life and how sad and unblessed Lamen and Lemuel were and how happy and blessed Nephi was. I should be more like nephi. I want to be more like nephi. I just know that there is some heart changing that lies in my future.

I attached a couple of pictures. One is a typical bus with all of it's fullness glory. and the other is me not knowing how to sit on a cannon gracefully and my comp hermana Ramirez photo boming it. yep. that's us.