Jesses MTC Letter June 18th 2014

Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2014 11:27 PM
Cc: deenat@aol.com
Subject: Jesse Thompson on her mission in Guatemala

hola familia!!!!!!!!  okay so my enter button doesnt work so excuse my
bad grammar and also the whole dealio with this keyboard is confusing.
BUT SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED ITS INSANE!! right when i got off of the
plane in Guatemala I fell in love! !I had such a good feeling about
being here and i already love the people. Its insanely green and
great! so I am at the CCM  aka the missionary training center where i
am learning how to preach the gospel in spanish! Let me start out with
this...i have never done anything so hard. We wake up at 630 and go to
bed at 1030 and dont have any free time! i am comprehending spanish
24\7 even in my sleep! i am in a trio and one of my companions said
that me and the other companion were speaking spanish to each other in
our sleeep. if only we could do that when we were awake.... so right
now there is about 35 nortes here which is a lot for the CCM. It is
super small with a little nun catholic school in the back, yes we
watch all the nuns for fun, and the temple is next to us with a gas
station in between. on the other side of us is a little club where we
hear techno spanish songs on fridays....quite the party...and with the
world cup games people go crazayy. We also have a huge fence around us
with some armed gaurds so you know we are pretty safe. Actually, my
teacher, hermono Ruiz, said that most Latinos even the sketch ones
respect missionarys because of what they are doing in fact he said
they would probably kill someone for us if they messed with us. So im
feeling the love haha. Also, yes, I am the tallest Hermana here and
taller than most of the Latino boys...i sware they didnt check out my
height before assigning my calls. Hermano Ruiz claims im a
giant...which i am here. But hey its a great conversation starter.
Lets talk about the language....yes...i cant speak spanish...in fact
one of the Latinas asked me if i had a boyfriend but i thought she
said brother so long story short all the latinas think i have 2
boyfriends...whoops. At all of our meals we have to sit across from
the latina hermanas so we can practice spanish...it usually ends up
with them all laughing at me and i have no idea why. they do talk
aobut my height and just reassure me that latinas may be small but
they have big hearts! But i love them all so much! i cant even explain
how fabulous they all are. speaking of meals, I LOVE THE FOOD HERE!!
soooo good....ive probably already gained weight because its so
yummy!! they are very open about the talk of diarria, but all of us so
far are good i just thought i would let you know! Now lets talk about
my more than amazing district!!! oh my they are perfect! so its me and
my companions (hermana nichlos who was on my bball team at school and
hermana prince who is straight out of high school) and then there are
six elders. My companions are amazing! I got so lucky! there are about
12 norte girls who got here last week and about six who got here about
3 weeks ago. i wouldnt mind be companions with any of them. Having
three is great because we can help each other with spanish and an
extra plus is that we get along super welllll!! love them!! the elders
are so great in my district..we have already become a family and its
only been a week! oh randomly i felt an awesome earthquake but dont
worry mom im sure it has nothing to do with the volcano behind us!
haha so i have to talk about one of my favorite parts of the week,
which is teaching a fake investigator (which is someone who is
interested in the church and wants to learn more, we are just
practicing with peopolel who work here) The first lesson was super
cool because we spoke no spanish and he spoke no english...but i will
say i felt such a caring love for him because i knew that the gospel
was going to make him so happy and i just cared about it all! thats
why im on a mission! for that feeling! that feeling of caring for
people so much that i want to share with them what makes me happiest.
Our second lesson went horrible because we thought it would be smart
to read the spanish off a piece of paper instead of talk to him from
our only english speaking hearts haha. but the third lesson was
amazinggggg!! myt spanish was almost perfect and i started tearing up
because it was the spirit that was speaking to him not me. i knew
exactly what to say and how to say it because the spirt was truly
helping me. the gift of tongues is real folks!! too bad it doesnt
happen when i talk to the latinas at meals... So today is a pday which
is a preparation day and we went to the temple this morning whichh is
beautiful we can write letters and kind of do what ever we want until
we teach our investigator tonight. we have gym time every day which is
so much fun! ha the presidente of the CCM (who is super awesome
btw..couldnt have asked for a better president) he loves being fit so
we do these exercise videos and he whoops all of us!! hes hilarious
ill tell you more stories about him next time. we also have regular
exercise machines and two basketball courts which are also used for
four square, volleyball, (and all the latinos favorite) soccer! super
fun!!    well thats it for now! i have a lot more to say but i have
the next 5 weeks here at the CCM so ill tell ya some more later!!
love ya all!!!     hermana thompson  ps sorry for lack of pics we
arent allowed to have our cameras at the ccm but you will get a ton as
soon as i go into the field