First Baptism!

So its been a crazy week again! Planning a wedding and a baptism and trying to find people to teach and  all that crazy stuff! We spent a bunch of time running around to Pacas (mini DI's all over here) looking for ties for Alexis and a white shirt that would fit him, a present for Dori, stuff to make a cake, stuff to decorate the chapel and to do Dori's hair. It was nuts!

It's been raining a ton and the power has gone out like 5 times this week. We got some candles for our house and it's super fun! It's kinda sketchy going out when there's no light though so we usually chill at the house in the evenings if the power is gone.

We found out one of our investigators, Angelina ( the one with dirt floors and chickens and fleas), completely ran out of food this week so we went out and bought her some on Wednesday. That was an adventure! Sometimes I feel like I'm in a movie here. Especially when we go to the city center where the markets are and everything. The roads are super narrow and lined with shops and "tiendas". Cars are  trying to get through the middle of everything and sometimes, massive buses and trucks. It's ridiculous! There's always different loud music playing and so many bright colors. It's like one of those fun hippy travel scenes if you know what I'm talking about. Well this time, as we were heading back with all the food and squeezing in between the tiendas and the cars, this one car passed super close and a guy had his head sticking out the window and- yeah- he puked all over me and Hermana Lucha! Mmmm chunky shoes! It almost started a chain reaction!

So I'll skip over some of the other weeks details and just tell you the fun stuff. We helped some ladies in our ward wash these giant leaves that they use to make tamales. It was a lot of fun! One day we bought "Nacho Libre" style corn. It's called "Jacote Loca" or something like that and it was disgustingly delicious. Then we made some for ourselves last night. I tried quoting "Nacho Libre", "GET THAT CORN OUTTA MY FACE!!! you made me look like a fool last night!!!",  yeah,  Hermana Lucha  gave me a weird look for that one! I guess you had to see the movie!

 

The wedding and baptism on Saturday was pretty hilarious. The lawyer that was performing the wedding taught Alexis how to tie his tie since he had never put one on before. I did Dori's hair with flowers and my awesome hair skills in about 5 minutes. The lawyer went over ALL the legal jargon during the wedding ceremony so it lasted over half an hour. He answered his cell phone in the middle of it and it was really funny. The hymns all sounded like funeral death marches. AND then to top it all off,  Alexis had to get dunked twice!  It was such the perfect first baptism and I am sure I will never forget it! I loved seeing his face and how happy he was after his baptism!

 

Well, I have to run but I hope everyone is doing well! Brush your teeth because I see everyday what happens when people don't! 

 

I love you all!

 

Kailey

Trabajar en La Viña del Señor

Today is another P-day already and it's crazy how fast the time is passing. It feels like I was just writing you guys yesterday. Its been a really good week! Rainy season is officially here and every afternoon it POURS like you wouldn't believe. You´d think that since they have a rainy season like this every year they´d build houses a little more leak proof, but every night our house is full of puddles. It just adds to the adventure!

I´m a little bit nervous for today because the past 2 Mondays have been fiasco's. The first Monday I spent washing clothes but all my whites got stained blue by the detergent! That was when Hermana Lucha realized that she had bought dish-washing detergent instead of laundry detergent! So I spent the next couple of hours washing out the stains until my knuckles were all raw and bloody but alas, my whites are white again! Then, last Monday I bought a ton of fruits and veggies for the week and spent a good hour washing it all, chopping it, and making this beautiful fruit salad. I bought a big Tupperware and filled it up but as I was putting it in the fridge the lid caved in and ALL the fruit spilled all over the floor. It was so horrible I almost cried. I am nervous now for what misfortune might lie in my path today!

Last Monday we got to go visit some sweet Mayan ruins! That was a lot of fun... they were smaller than I expected but it was still really cool to see. I climbed all over them and got rid of some of my pent up energy. I wish we had a bike mission! But then again, I would probably die between the insane traffic and the horrible roads. Plus our area is super tiny. It's the smallest area in the whole mission! I´ll probably go crazy since we only have like 4 streets in our entire area ha-ha.

I am starting an English class that I will teach every Tuesday. Last week only 1 person showed up but they announced it better in church this week so hopefully we will have a better turn out this time. The only problem is that I don't exactly know how to teach English. Thank goodness they won't understand enough to know any better!

So let me tell you about Alexis. I might have mentioned him before (his"wife" looks like Dobby from Harry Potter. I say wife loosely because they are not married yet. That seems to be a common theme here. I will probably be planning and attending as many weddings as I do baptisms)! He´s our golden investigator. Seriously, he is a different person than the man I met less than 3 weeks ago. He started drinking when he was 14 and has the craziest life story I have ever heard. He´s been homeless, in jail, in gangs, a drug addict, and everything in between. We were really relieved when we found out he hadn't killed anyone! (Seriously!)  I don't know what's different this time because he has met with missionaries lots of times before but always turned them away. Now every time we go to his house he´s reading the book of Mormon or if he´s not at home his "wife" says he´s gone to the park or somewhere with his book of Mormon and a sucker (he sucks a sucker whenever he´s craving alcohol). He willingly accepts every commitment and has been working hard to get his wedding together before this Saturday. They are getting married in the morning and then he´s going to go straight over to get baptized! I don't think I could ask for a better first baptism. I can´t wait for this Saturday! 

Last night we met with him and he told us this crazy story. He said years ago one of his friends died. This friend had a metal plate in his leg that cost a fortune. Well, Alexis and his friends decided that this friend of their's probably didn't need that metal plate in the next life, so guess what they did? That's right. They dug up that friends grave and stole his femur that had the plate attached to it. He said they spent a while trying to break the bone and get it off and then they spent the next couple of weeks trying to sell the plate but nobody would buy it because it had already been used. Go figure right??  He said that his dead friend haunted him for weeks after that. Aw man I love this guy, he´s hilarious. I can't wait for this Saturday. We are going to go find a tie today to give him for a baptism present. 

I can´t wait to have more adventures this week! Don't forget that reading the book of Mormon is the key to having a good day and to having a testimony of the gospel. It's easy to see the difference between somebody who is ready for the gospel and somebody who´s not. The key is if they are reading and praying! 

Well,  my time is up but I hope everyone´s first week of school was great! I´d love to hear all about it! 

I love you all!

kailey

 

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