Hey that´s a hate crime! Gimme my visa!

¡Hola todos!

A little less time today, and a lot more to say, so I´ll do my best.

My area in Jocotillo is all about two things: Milpa and Piña. Basically corn and pineapple plants that grow literally everywhere. And everyone basically works with either one or the other. The piña here is something else though. They call it pineapple in the US, but it´s really not. THIS stuff is pineapple. It´s really, really good, and I wish I could send some too all of you right now. They put it in juice, other food, or just eat it straight. It´s so incredibly rico. They all make corn tortillas, and this week I learned how. It´s actually really fun. Every day for lunch we go to the house of a member to eat lunch, and it´s some of the best food I´ve ever had. I honestly had no idea that the food was gonna be so good here. It´s incredible.

Culture interesting facts of the week: Here you don´t say "Hi" when you pass someone in the street. You say "audios," because you´re leaving. You can also say "va pue," which kinda means the same. Or you can say "buenas!," which basically means the same as "good day." The people are really nice and love to talk. The women like to carry baskets of corn or vegetables on their heads, and I have no idea how the can balance them so well. It´s honestly kinda incredible. 

We have a family committed to be baptized! The family Ismatul has been listening to our message, and accepting to be baptized this Sunday the second. Super exciting, and I am so happy that they´re willing to change their lives to make this step in the right direction. I can see the happiness in their eyes. The mom and her 8 yr old daughter will be baptized, and all the other children will come, but they´re too young. It´s so great though.

I honestly forgot that Thanksgiving existed, cause it doesn´t here. I hope you all had a great one though. I´m pretty sure it happened already.

Elder Culohworard

¡Hola todos!

I am finally in the field. And I´m not even just barely in the field. Life went from 30 to 200 in one day, and it was awesome. My area is called Jocotillo, and it´s in the east part of my mission, which is kind of southern central guatemala. Life here is inCREDIBLE. There are mountains on every horizon (some of them are volcanoes), and everything is surrounded by thick jungle. Some of the The people have all kinds of different houses. The people live really simply. Lots of tiny shops where you can buy all kinds of nice little things or foods. The houses vary a lot. Some people have cement walls and dirty tile floors, others have dirt floors, walls made out of lamina (sheet metal), and a cloth hanging to cover the doorway. There aren´t addresses or street names here, so the way to tell someone where you live is kinda like "on the street with the gas station and take a right down the first alley." And then you have to go and check all the houses and ask people to see which one it is. It´s kinda interesting, but it makes sense because there are very few actual streets, and lots of callejones, or little alleys. 

So there's a rule in almost every mission that says that missionaries aren´t allowed to hitchhike, because it´s dangerous and unnecessary. But we are the exception :). My mission has almost no buses, and lots of things are too far away from each other to walk. So we travel por jalón (hitchhiking), anytime we need to get somewhere a little further away. It´s soo fun, like we basically just find someone driving by who´s willing to stop and pick us up, and then we jump on the back of whatever truck it  is and hold on tight while they drive us the the mountains and the jungle. Today we had a district meeting, and we took two jalónes and a makeshift bus to get there. The ride was on the side of a mountain, and there was this insane view of the landscape with jungle, mountains, volcanoes, incredible clouds, and a rainbow overtop all of it. The whole thing with an incredibly fresh Guatemalan breeze through our hair. I told my comp that it was probably the most beautiful thing I´ve ever seen in my life. I would´ve taken a picture, but I was kinda holding on for dear life on the back of a really broken down truck going actually kinda fast. Así es en Guate.

My companion is awesome. His name is Elder Rivera, and he´s from Guatemala kinda near Quetzaltenango. He´s pretty short,along with everyone else here, so I always feel like I have to stoop when I´m around him. He´s awesome though. The only English he speaks is a bunch of names for everyday objects that he learned from his previous companions pointing to random things on the street and saying "what´s that?" But he´s so great. He has a ton of faith, and he´s really good at talking to people. There´s a lot of slang that people use here that isn´t used anywhere else, an some of it isn´t even Spanish. Oh yeah also, nobody at alll can say my name here, and it´s hilarious. The best attempt I´ve heard came from this boy who´s probably 9 years old, and every time I see him he starts bragging to his family and my companion that he can say my name really well. Lol

Yesterday we were waiting for a jalón to take us to our house for the first time, and there was just nobody coming. We waited for about an hour, and had no luck. So Elder Rivera said "we´re going to say a prayer." So I said okay, and he began to pray. He told God that  we really needed to get to the house, because There wasn´t much time and we had a lot to do to get set up there. He asked God to please give us a ride before 3:15. I looked at my watch and it was literally 3:00. I couldn´t believe what he was asking for. I really was okay with waiting longer, because I couldn't see how that was gonna happen. I asked him how he could ask for a ride within the next 15 minutes if we hadn´t gotten one in an entire hour of waiting. He smiled and said "Elder, just wait and see." And not 15 minutes, but literally TWO minutes later, a truck came by and let us hop on. He then spent the ride, wind blowing through our hair, explaining how when our will is God´s will, he makes it work out. God can do anything, and if we´re doing His work, he will send a truck to carry us forward. I have a lot to learn, but this short Guatemalan boy has so much to teach me, and I´m really glad to be with someone who has so much faith, because that´s how I want to be. 

Thanks for still being alive, even though it doesn´t feel like the states exist anymore.

Así es en Guatemala. 

PS - From Isaac's dad - don't forget you can email Isaac directly at icloward@myldsmail.net.  He would love to hear from you!

When you offend the Latino, you offend him for good

Hola todos!

Life here has been great. It's going by a lot faster now, and I honestly can't wait to get out in the mission field. I've been at the CCM for the past five weeks or so (we all say it's been three years), and so we've been training and learning as much as we can about how to teach and how to speak Spanish. But now it's starting to feel like we've learned most of what we can here and we need to just get out there and start learning from experience. I just want to help the people in this country, and I have less than a week before I get to! Next Tuesday morning we're all going out into the field. I'm definitely not ready, but I'm super excited and I think that I'm as ready as I'll ever be from the CCM. 

So someone ran into our classroom one day and told us all that Stan Lee is dead, and then ran out...is this TRUE? We all got pretty shocked. We don't really hear stuff down here, but that sounded kinda legit. I didn't know that man really could die...shucks.

The quote from the description came from a really funny moment in class this week. Every day...like literally every single day, our evening teacher Hermano Godinez tries to scare the Hermanas, or the girl missionaries in our district. He has all these elaborate plans that usually involve turning off the lights and hiding. And he has this infinite motivation and belief that it's going to work every single time. And without fail, every single time it fails. Something goes wrong, and it just never works out. It's so funny how excited he gets though. So this one day, we decided to scare HIM. We had Elder Grover hide behind the curtains for the window, and when Godinez came in he started freaking out that Elder Grover was gone, especially since he hadn't noticed for about fifteen minutes, and you're never supposed to let your companion out of your sight and sound. So he went over to the window, and Elder Grover just burst out laughing. Hermano Godinez pretended to be extremely offended and mad, and told us all that Latinos never forgive you for playing jokes on them. But we were all just laughing the whole time. He's such a cool teacher.

Elder Kirkman made this huge ball out of literally just dozens of sheets of paper compacted really really tightly together. It's bigger than a softball, and honestly about as compact as one. He named it "Heftyboi," and we use it to play games to learn Spanish. We also made this little toy by putting a paper cup on top of a little orange from one of the trees outside. When you  push the cup, the orange rolls underneath and makes it look really weird, cause all you can see is the cup sliding across the entire room. I also bought a little Jacob's ladder at the market, and that's pretty fun to play with. Being in a place like this without so many things makes you really understand how humble the people are, being able to find joy in the most simple and mundane things. But by far, the most entertaining thing I have here is the scriptures. I'm almost done with the New Testament, and there's so much I've learned. The gospels are completely packed with the earthly ministry of Jesus, and it's really incredible to read about all of the things that Christ did when He was on the earth. He really was perfect, and there's so much that I can learn from Him. Definitely still working on that.

We are all working really hard here, and life is great.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

You're not going to H-E-double hackeystacks

Hola todos!

It's been a really short week, which is weird because I've done and learned a crazy amount of stuff that would make the old me wonder how I'm still alive after it all. God really helps his missionaries. 

I realized today that I never really explained the subject titles to my emails. Each week so far I've been naming my emails with really funny things that my Spanish maestros have said in English. They all understand and speak English okay, but most of them sound really funny when they do. They're hilarious when they make fun of the way Americans speak in English. Western accents, white girl impressions, etc. I love those guys. So the first one with the strawberry was when Hermano Micolax was describing girls, and it was so funny that we probably still quote it everyday. The next one was with Hermano Godinez the time he randomly went into the yard of our casa and dug a hole with a curtain rod. He then suck half of a bell pepper in the ground and poured a bunch of muddy water on it. We tried to tell him that that's not how it works, but he just said "this is Guatemala boys. Anything grows." So funny. He told us this story of a time he left an onion on the ground and when he came back a few days later there was an onion plant there. The more you know.

So this week we got to go street contacting for the first time. That was one of the best things we've done so far. Basically the idea is that you go into the street and just meet people and talk about God and the gospel. You'd think it would be hard to go out into a foreign country and talk to people in a foreign language about God, hoping they'll be interested in hearing your message, but it was actually really natural and fun. The people here are so incredibly nice and cool. They're all so humble, and I can actually understand most of them really well, which is exciting. Almost all of them believe that there's a God who loves them. And when we told them that they have the opportunity to live with their family forever, even after they die, their eyes would light up with excitement. I love sharing the happy message of the gospel, and hope I can learn all I can to be able to do it the way God wants me to.

I've been reading a lot here. We don't even have that much time, but I've already read multiple books, articles, and lessons. I finished the Book of Mormon over a week ago, about 20 days after I started. Now I'm pretty far in to the New Testament in the bible. That's not even impressive compared to some of the people here. Elder Hinckley, who was probably the craziest most goofy missionary I've ever met, ready the Book of Mormon in a week, and the entire Old Testament in three, just while being here. Crazy. It's not about reading fast as much as it's about learning as much as you possibly can, and I wish there was more time in the day to learn more stuff. It's so great. 

Last Sunday, Elder Soares came to visit us. Elder Soares is one of the 12 apostles in the world, which is a really big deal. Our church believes that Jesus still calls apostles and prophets, just like He did back when He was on the earth. Elder Soares spoke in Spanish, and it was one of the most incredibly spiritual experiences I've ever had. The things he said were so perfect for me, and it was really amazing to know that I've been called of God in the same way that he had, even though he's one of the twelve and I'm just a simple missionary. It's also really awesome to be able to understand the Spanish devotionals without translation now. They always give us headphones so we can listen to it in English, but most of the people in my district and I don't need them anymore. It's crazy how what once was literally gibberish is now almost perfectly clear and makes perfect sense. I still have trouble understanding anyone from Honduras and Bolivia, but Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador especially are really easy to understand now. Once again, God helps his missionaries. 

I love you guys!

-Elder Cloward