Huehuetenengo. Week 1.

Hello Everyone!

I am having the time of my life out here! I´m in Huehuetenango, and my area is called La Viña. It's not very big but there's lots of work here! 

Ah, so everything the past week has been an adventure. First the bus ride from Guatemala City to Xela. Solo. Yeah it was a party. I got dropped off at the bus station and handed my ticket and that was it! I was on my own! The bus was supposedly like a Greyhound, but it was the nastiest Greyhound I've ever seen. 4 hours to Xela and halfway there my bladder was about to pop. We passed the waters of Mormon which was beautiful but I could hardly appreciate it because I was in so much pain! 5 minutes later we pulled off at a random bus stop in some little city for a 10 minute break and I found this ¨sanitary¨ station that you had to pay 2 quetz to use. Scariest place I've ever been basically. I was so nervous about those jumping worms someone told me about. Anyhow, somehow I survived and made it to Xela and got a couple contacts on the way! 

I stayed at the mission home for a night and met my new companion, Hermana Lucha! She is awesome! She´s a Latina from El Salvador and we´re pretty much twins in a lot of ways. She´s tall, especially for a Latina, with super curly hair and she can´t keep anything organized either! We joke around all day long and it's a blast. Pres Bautista and his wife are great too. They´re brand new, barely a month out here, and from what I have heard they are awesome!

The next day Hermana Lucha and I got on a bus to Huehue (say wayway) which is about 2 and a half hours out from Xela. It's in the middle of a bunch of mountains and is beautiful. Today is the first day that its been cold and it's only barely because it's raining. Our house is really big, 3 stories with the terrace, but it's bare and full of spiders and potato bugs. Not the big tarantulas, just a million little ones all over the ceiling and walls. If you can believe it I´m totally used to them already. Today we get to wash clothes by hand! We have a wash thing built into the house which is nice.

So, my first night out the Mission President challenged me to commit at least one person to do something. We went out to go teach this old man who owns a little shop here. His name is Carlos. It was like I was back in Mozambique. It's so similar here. I know it's not as poor, but in some places it really is. I don't know if it is just because of the weather and the streets and types of houses, but I feel like I´m there again. It has really helped me not to have any culture shock. I think I surprised my companion because she was trying to play everything down and tell me I could get someone to wash my clothes and watching out for me with the crazy traffic and all and I didn't have a problem with any of it! It just feels like Maputo again. 

Anyways, back to my first lesson with Carlos, we taught the plan of salvation and it went well. I committed him to pray but I don't think he was ready because the next time we went to see him he hid in the back of his shop and wouldn't come out...

Thursday was my first official real day out as a proselyting missionary and it was so much fun! I still have a hard time with conversational Spanish but with the gospel stuff I´m doing pretty good so I haven't been very nervous. It definitely helps having a trainer to jump in though. My Spanish is getting a lot better! I´m almost at the same level that I am with Portuguese, it's just hard when people have odd accents and speak really fast (which unfortunately is the case with a lot of people here). 

We found this little lady named Angelina to teach. Her daughter is 10 and somehow is a member, but nobody else in her family is. They live in a cinder block tiny house with dirt floors and they have no water. We taught the first lesson to her using super basic Spanish because her first language is some other dialect and she can't read. She has a 2 year old named Orlando and a little baby girl about a month old. Everything was filthy and there were chickens pecking at our feet inside the house while we taught. First experience with fleas! 

We have like 7 new investigators in the past few days and most of them want to get baptized! The problem is, 5 of them need to get married before they can. Nobody here is married! And it's 5 separate couples! They all live with less active members... So I will most likely end up planning and attending about as many weddings as I do baptisms.

I eat lunch with different members everyday but we do our own breakfast and dinner. It is interesting since we don't have much to cook with or money to buy food with. I´m finding lots of different ways to eat re-fried beans and eggs... try a bean and banana sandwich! It's actually really good! Bean and egg sandwich... plain bean tortillas... egg tacos... and yeah...  We´re gonna try to make no bakes today! We don't have an oven and only one electric stove thingamajig. It's a real party! I love it!

I love you all!

Hermana Battaglia

ps I'll send pics next monday!

On my way to Quetzaltenengo!

Tomorrow morning we are on our way to get dropped off in our first area's.  It is about a 4 hour drive to Retahulehu where we will drop off an Elder who is also going out early and then another hour to Xela (local word for Quetzaltenengo) where I will be! I am so excited I can´t even explain it!
The Spanish and Portuguese are pretty crossed in my head... I'm scared that I am going to lose all my Portuguese! I can't speak in it anymore! I still mix random Portuguese words into my Spanish but I can't think in Portuguese anymore. It's all just a jumbled mess in my brain. I´m sure the Lord will help me remember it when I get back though.
I´m sorry I haven't been able to write each person yet. Our Pdays in the CCM have been crammed with stuff and we haven't really had a good amount of time for letters.
I miss our late night talks about the gospel. I think about them a lot because so much of the things we discussed are things that I´m trying to learn now to teach in Spanish. Things like what it means to repent and how we can endure to the end.
My companion left for nicaragua today! I love her and miss her but she is going to do so good! I'm so excited to go but I'm terrified at the same time!! I love the people. I've barely met any of them but I love them. I'm so scared that I'm not going to be able to help them the way they need but I guess that's where relying on the Lord comes in.
I gotta run but I love you all!

Hermana Battaglia.   

BOO!

Its been another crazy week at the CCM!  Sunday 3 of the 6 sisters in my room were bedridden with weird stomach stuff, then that night me and my companion came down with it too. Several of the sisters in our hall had it... i think that around 10 or 15 of all the girls have been sick in the past 5 days... and theres only about 25 total! Dinner conversation has all gone to the toilet...  Who knew!! Secretly I'm hoping that this is the rumored "boo" but i´m sure that one day that's going to hit and I´m going to laugh that I thought this could be anything close. Anyhow! I'm sure you all are excited to hear about the CCM bathroom traffic but I´m going to move on to other things for the sake of time and manners! 

So last week we got to go to the temple!! So so so beautiful i loved it so much! One of the highlights of the mission and I'm excited to go back today! 

Yesterday was the best day of all by far!! We got to go out proselyting!!!! We were supposed to go Monday but they let us go yesterday instead since we were sick. Me, Hermana Broadbent, and Hermana Willie were compañeras and man it was a blast! All the Nortes were supposed to be paired with their Latina companions but there aren't very many of those in our group so I got to be the Latina! It was really funny and pretty stressful because I'm the only one of the 3 of us who really spoke any Spanish so I ended up doing 90 percent of the talking and I kept drawing a blank! Luckily the people are so humble here that it didn't even matter! They were all willing to listen. I don't know if I´m just being a greenie or whatever but I think that most of the people we spoke to were soo ready for the gospel. They were hungry for it!! I can't wait to be out there next week when I actually get to follow up with people! Then teach them and see them change! It was so hard getting their contact information and then handing it over to some other missionaries who didn't hear how special each of them was! I'm praying that they dont get lost or dropped along the way.   

Pray for me as I head out! I can't wait to meet the Mission President and my senior compañera! I love you all! 

I love you!  

Kailey

I Made It!

AHHH!!! I can´t tell you how excited I am to finally be in the country!! It's unreal how beautiful and green everything is. It feels like I´m in the movie Emperor´s New Groove... just with a lot more buildings everywhere! It actually reminds me a ton of Mozambique just greener and more hills.

So I have AWESOME news. I just talked with my new Maestra about being in a more advanced class or what I could do since I can already understand everything and she told me that if I have everything down in 3 weeks I can go straight into the field 3 weeks early!!!!!! I´m gonna work my butt off and make it happen!!

I totally gave away a Book of Mormon on the plane from SLC to LA! It was way awesome but I was just laughing at how funny it was to have 30 green missionaries on that flight all hoping to have some missionary experience and those poor people on the plane probably felt like they were surrounded and under attack! I think I did a pretty good job of carrying a normal conversation and not freaking the guy out haha. The missionary sitting on the other side of him on the other hand was making things super weird talking about his girlfriend back home and how he wants to get married in the temple and asking if that would be something he would be interested in doing...:(   So I had to work double hard trying to fix the awkwardness and repair the damage but it was good for me! AND I gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he´d read a chapter. He seemed interested so who knows! There were missionaries in every row around me that told me they were trying to listen in the entire time and were all congratulating me on doing a good job haha. I just hope he actually reads it! 

Ok we only got 15 minutes to let you know we arrived safely. Our P days are Wednesdays so I will talk to you next week!!! I love you all! Pray that I can get the Spanish and teaching down in 3 weeks! 

Love kailey     

The address here is:

Hermana Kailey Battaglia

Blv. Vista hermosa

23-71 zona 15

Vista Hermosa 1 c.p. 01015

Guatemala, Guatemala

Centro America   

Last EMail from Provo MTC!

Hey family!!!
 So I have been teaching lessons but they're to mock investigators so far... so no baptisms yet! This Saturday it has to be in Spanish so wish us luck! My comp is having a harder time with the language than I am... I just wish I didn't have to wait another 6 weeks to get into the field! I think I could be ready as far as Spanish goes in another week or so... to bad they don't have a 6 week track instead of just 3 or 9 weeks... oh well! It's gonna be great going to Guatemala and being immersed in the language. I think it's gonna come really fast after that. I'm reading the scriptures only in Spanish now and I understand them really well! I think the Spirit is helping me understand and remember everything a lot better than I would on my own. It's incredible how strong the Spirit is here and how often I can feel it. It's all day everyday, especially as I'm learning and doing hard things... which is pretty much alll the time. It's amazing how quickly the Spirit comes when you bear testimony. Even to a mock investigator or in a fake lesson. Try it! OK, the comp is gonna log me out now! I love you all thanks for everything!
kailey

Week 2

  Hola! Bet you can't guess what that means...haha. So I'm really starting to understand the whole "frumpy" sister missionary thing. There is no time to get ready and look normal, let alone actually look nice. Every day after gym the debate is always whether to have smelly sweaty hair, or look like a wet dog for a while. It depends on the day what I decide.
   Here's a glimpse of my schedule. I'm up at 6:30, at the very latest, and in class by 7 for personal study. Breakfast at 8, then class for 3 hours or so where we learn the lessons in English usually, but sometimes in Spanish too. Then we have lunch around 12:15, gym after lunch (which is terrible because I usually feel sick and the gym is closed to refinish the floor so we have to go outside in the heat). My knee is doing a lot better but I still can't run more than a couple of minutes without it aching pretty bad. With the gym closed I can't use the cycling machine so It's hard for me to get a good workout. Anyways, after gym we run back to our room where I debate whether to do my hair or not, then sprint over to class for TALL lab, which is a language learning on the computer.  Then we have class for another 3 hours (one of which is usually companion study) and language study for an hour. Dinner is some time in there too. We finish at 9, plan for the next day till 9:30, then run back to our rooms to be ready for bed by 10:15, then journal for 15 minutes and lights out by 10:30! There is not any free time during the day unless you count getting ready for bed, but that is the fastest hour of all 24. It's weird, up until the first Sunday, the days felt like they dragged on for hours and hours. But now it's Friday and Monday feels like it was yesterday.
   I can't tell you how excited I am to get to Guatemala! I learned a new word from a Guatemalan Elder yesterday. It's "puchica". He said it is a good word when you get surprised or as a swear word replacement. Here are a few entertaining Spanish mistakes I have made so far:

   *We can be forgiven of our "pescados" (fish) instead of "pecados" (sins)
   *Embarazado is not the translation for embarrassed! It means pregnant...
   *Ropa does not mean rope. It means clothing. One Elder told some investigators that he climbs mountains "sin ropa" (without clothing). Needless to say they were quite impressed!
   I love my companion and my whole district and I'll be sad to leave next week, but I am so excited for how much I am going to learn in Guatemala. I hope everyone there is doing well. Thanks for all your love and support. I love you!

Hermana Kailey Battaglia


Just so you know, my mailbox number changed to #358 in case you want to write me on Dear Elder.com or send me a package! (I leave the MTC July 19th so don't send anything here after the 18th.)

Dearelder.com

If you want to send Kailey a letter while she is in the MTC, dearelder.com is the fastest and least expensive way to do it. Just log on to dearelder.com and request MTC delivery. She will receive it the same day that you send it if it is submitted before noon. Her Address is: Hermana Battaglia, MTC Mailbox #344, GUA-QUE 0719, 2005 N 900 E, Provo, Ut 84604. Her estimated departure date is July 19th. Use this info to fill in the blanks on dearelder.com. She would love to hear from you! I also found out that the UPS stores have daily delivery to the MTC. Get your package there by 1:00pm and they will deliver it the same day, and on Fridays, its FREE! (free at the UPS store by Macy's in Pleasant Grove)