Saturday, March 21, 2015 -- Week #5, Day #33 Guatemala MTC

10:02 pm

We made it through the week! Yay! My body is exhausted and my legs have no strength, and I can barely keep my eyes open, but I am so proud of us, we had a roller coaster of a time down here  while spending the last two days in ER with Hna Brady.

Fun fact, Hna Kleinman is so cute with her Spanish, she gets tripped up with similar sounding words sometimes, so lately she's been using the string of words "hombre-hermosa-hermano" to get to the correct word when she's trying to address Hno Garcia or another brothers at the CCM...she's adorable and is putting forth considerable effort to learn Spanish. She's made great progress so far, and we are so proud of her.  I know she can do it and will be an amazing missionary in Comayaguela, Honduras!

Some good scriptures:

Jarom 1:7

3 Nephi 3:19

Also, I was thinking about how sacrifice is a form of charity, and that is part of the function of a mission. Kinda interesting to try to figure out what this charity stuff is in an applicable sense.

Also, the word of the day was "syzygy" which is pronounced "SIS-idj-ee" and is E Roth's favorite word. It's when 3 planets in the same solar system all align at once, and I think that's actually pretty darn cool. You go, planets!

Also, fun fact, when speaking Spanish, you're supposed to tend to switch the "v" and "b" sounds depending on where they are in the word.....so it's fun when Hno Garcia, especially, is speaking to us and "vamos" sounds more like "bah-mos" and "palabras" sounds more like "pah-lav-rahs."

Hno Jimenez subbed for Hna Giron today, and he is so funny! He totally looks like a Jimenez, and he is a good teacher. He told us a funny story about an ant and an elephant to explain the custom they have here of stepping on people's new shoes to break them in. So we're always walking around now going "Elefante! Elefante! Mira mis zapatos! Mira mis zapatos! Mira mis zapatos!" and the latinos look at us and laugh. It's quite fun to learn jokes in Spanish, because the humor is different than American humor, and there's almost always a moral to the jokes as well. Good stuff/

But Hno Jimenez shared the insight that teaching without asking questions is like walking around with our hand over our eyes. We cannot see where we're going, and it's uncomfortable and also a little dangerous. But when we are involved and try to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling, we can open our eyes and see what's happening. Actually quite good counsel, I think.

Also, we learned the phrase "que pasa, calabaza?" which means "what's happening, pumpkin?" in the literal, it's really more of a silly greeting akin to "what's up, buttercup?"