This week was super fun. We´re meeting sooo many people every single day, and a lot of them have some really cool stories to share. We ate some really tasty fruits that I´ve never seen before. We also took a bus on a road that goes uphill, but by some gravitational or atmospherical anomoly, things roll upwards. Today we went to Santiago Atitlan, which is this really cool tourist city next to a really beautiful lake.
The city is full of tourists and shops that sell tons of really cool Guatemalan style things. Lots of cultural wooden carvings, colorful paintings, but corte more than anything. Corte is a guatemalan cultural type of fabric with lots of really bright colors woven in fancy patterns. Lots of the women here wear corte blouses and skirts every day, and even a lot of the men wear shirts with corte woven in. It´s made with these huge wooden looms, and it looks super cool. The Guatemalan artisan shops are totally stuffed with things that these people just make by hand, and we all bought some cool jackets and things. The funny thing about buying from these shops though is that they really try to take advantage of white people. A TON of people come here from Europe and the states (we met some really cool people from Spain and other European countries. Spain Spanish is sooo much different, and it´t really cool to talk to people from there.), and a lot of them get kinda ripped off. The shope owners notice that we´re not from here, and assume that we don´t know the language or the money system very well...so they raise all of the prices to double or triple of what they would be when they see us. But as missionaries who live in this country, we have more of a feel for what these things should cost, and we learn from an early mission age how to bargain things down to cheap prices. And if the people won´t bargain, we find other people who will. One lady tried to sell us a jacket for Q450. It was a nice jacket...but not that nice. I got her to take it down to Q125, but that still wasn´t where I wanted it. I got a different really nice jacket for Q50 instead. Elder Wilde, a super outoging and energetic guy, managed to get a Q1,500 painting for Q450.00. The things you can do when you speak spanish. The shop owners are really cool though, because they also speak other Mayan languages that are indigenous to Guatemala, like Quekchi, Quiché, and Pocomon. They all talk to eachother in these other languages, and us in Spanish. It´s really fancy. And the things they make are beauutiful, so it was just cool all around.
This week we had a ton of people come to church. Most of the people we´re teaching couldn´t this time, but I have a lot of confidence that they´ll be able to come next week. We´re learning a lot about something my brother Matthew told me about right before I left. On the mission, you talk to everyone. Everyone on the street, in their houses, in buses, and everywhere. And we invite every single one of them to change. To come closer to Christ and to find more happiness in their lives. And it´s kinda tricky. Naturally it´s hard to just go out and talk to everyone you see. But as we do it, we find so many blessings of energy, happiness, and people who really need our help. I love these people so much, and I´m really just here to help them. And so when I get to help people and see the shine in their eyes, it makes everything worth it.
Love you guys too!
-Elder Cloward
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