FIRST MONTH

Hola mi familia!

I have officially completed a month in the field. I am not counting my two months in the MTC and CCM yet:) Possibly when I have three or four months in the field I will start counting them... it has been a really long month but things have flown by too! It is crazy how many things we have done in a single month!

So first great story of the week... BABY TARANTULA!!!! Yes you read correctly... Hna Ramos (thank HEAVENS) encountered the baby tarantula in our bathroom... and by baby tarantula I mean a spider the size of a 1 year olds fist!!!! Hna Ramos had killed it and headed to our room to pray. When I finished praying I headed into the bathroom without my glasses. Saw the glob on the floor and started praying it was a glob of hair... when I realized it wasn't I ran from the bathroom and sat at the doorway making sure it didn't move and checking to see if Hna Ramos was done praying... I didn't realize it was dead. Anyway I was scared to go into the bathroom for like 2 days. You know me and spiders!

Oh and guess what? They have CHILDRENS DAY here:) Like mothers or fathers day but for the kids... we are missing out in the states! I told Hna Ramos she needed to give me a gift since I am her daughter. So she drew me a picture on a napkin and gave it to me... it was really funny!

Another really fun thing of the week was playing what if? with a family of members. I was surprised how funny it was and they absolutely LOVED it! I didn't understand hardly anything of the jokes but I had so much fun watching them laugh and enjoy the game. None of them had ever heard of it or played it, so I hope my legacy will live on:) haha One of the questions and answers was what does hna ramos do every morning... sing the song of her heart... it was super funny and we still laugh about it when we think about it!

We had a great lesson with an investigator this week. I am amazed every day how much heavenly father is helping me with my spanish. It comes so easy the majority of the time and I am SO grateful for this!! We were teaching him and he is very catholic and knows the bible really well. He told us about the scripture that says nothing will be added to it in the bible, and I shared with him the one that talks about the two sticks getting put together. The most amazing part was at the end, I testified to him that as much as he wanted he would never be able to prove the book of mormon through scriptures. That if he didn't exercise his faith, he would never gain a testimony of the book of mormon. It was great and I think he totally understood that he had to do what we were telling him if he genuinely wanted to know. I am convinced his wife and children are ready to be baptized, but the wife isn't willing to be baptized with him too. So we will see what happens.

A not so great experience of the week and a bit eye opening for me... we had interviews with Presdient on Tuesday. After we all finished we headed towards the buses to go home. We ran into a sister in the branch that is also a part of our ward. She was bawling and turns out somebody had robbed her. Took all of her money, her birth cirtificates (not sure why she had them) and every important document she has... credit cards everything. Now in all honesty I haven't felt in danger at all since getting here. I am nervous sometimes but never fearful. This day showed me though, that if a native can get robbed the chances of me getting robbed are significantly higher. I stick out like sore thumb! they call my hair rubio (which I think is actually blond, but for them my hair is basically blond) and my skin is practically glow in the dark. I just learned I need to be more cautious. carry less money with me and NEVER my cards and in this specific area, never my camera. Thankfully my amazing ogio backpack has a million pockets so I don't think they could find it if they tried robbing me but I'd rather not find out. The missionaries are protected thank goodness and normally the missionaries that have been robbed, it was just somebody taking something out of their backpack, nothing confrontational. So not to worry:) My area is VERY safe and we live by a bunch of members that are fantastic! The other nice thing about my area is that the majority of the people see us every day and know we are missionaries.

So it has been a good week, I hope you all enjoyed conference. It was a nice break from the day to day things and I appreciate even more how blessed we are to live in Utah and we can listen on the radio, tv, chapel, or the conference center. We are SO lucky! We are so blessed and spoiled! The churches here don't have microwaves or refrigerators!!! Or dishes or anything! A stove top and oven, that is it! I am amazing by something every day that we have in the states and they've never seen here. The chapels are also all tile which is kind of strange, but I think it is because of the amounts of rain we get all the time... speaking of rain, not sure if I've shared. It rains EVERY day! Literally! I am so grateful for my umbrella dad bought me in Michigan a year or two ago because it is GREAT! Has a few holes and drips on me when it is pouring but it is small enough to fit in my backpack so I can take it every where and big when it is opened. We wear rain boots basically every day and the streets are literal rivers when it rains for a long time. One time I will take a picture of the buses that pile through the foot and a half of water.

Hope all is well and you are all enjoying fall in the states:) It thankfully is VERY rarely unbareably hot. God was thinking of me when he picked Guatemala, knowing the climate here:)

I love you all!! Can't wait to find out we are having a baby boy addition to the fam:)

Love, Hna Nelson