Week 10 - Teaching in a barn, Living in a Castle

In his new area

July 5 – Tuesday – after one week in the Field

Hola. yes, yesterday we had a training meeting so we couldn't email. but here I am today. ummm the sinkhole wasn't here i don't think, its kind of just a little town that's a suburb of the capital. It does have a lot of poor areas. I've already taught lessons in houses with thousands of cockroaches crawling everywhere, or houses that are basically a barn, ducks, chickens, roosters, rabbits, dogs, cats, running around in front of me, pooping on the ground as we teach. When I go home at night i feel like I'm entering a castle, whereas when i first got here, houses like mine seemed not very nice. And yes I do have the shower head with exposed wires to heat up the water. Its nice though, it gets nice and warm. And yes there's still volcano ash everywhere in Guatemala. There are some piles of ash on my street, there's ash in the fountain in the capital, it's basically everywhere. But its mostly all cleaned up. Transfers are every six weeks, so you never know when you'll leave. You get the call on Monday if you're going to leave, and then you actually leave on the Wednesday, so i have no idea when I'll be leaving. That's so awesome that Zach and Brendan's missions calls are both in the mail. That's so exciting. You have to make sure to email me where they are going as soon as you know.

Yeah it does somewhat suck about those packages not arriving, my companion does have music though so that's good. I received a letter from Grandma Rhodes just yesterday actually though, but still no packages. I'll probably get them next change. That Elder Pearson you are talking about is a sweet guy, I like him. ummm about the internet rules, I can only use my lds mail, I can't go on my blog or any other people's blogs. just this email, the church website, and the actual mission blog. My companion is Elder Kody Euteneier and we normally speak English, even though i should really be trying to speak Spanish all the time, but we talk about Spanish all the time and  learn new words and grammar everyday still so that's good. He has been in the mission for 13 months. The walk to church isn't actually too too far, like 15 minutes maybe, but we go and pick up families to walk with us to church so it takes longer. We had 10 investigators over the age of 8 at church on Sunday, and then like 8 more that were younger kids. The chapel is pretty nice actually. I guess its only 4 years old. It's true how people here breastfeed wherever, without covering up. I bore my testimony in church and as I was looking out into the congregation and of course there was someone breastfeeding right there.

It rains pretty much everyday here. At least every evening. I kinda wish i got more than one pair of waterproof shoes, but I'll make due. Its been fine so far. I'm glad the strike is over, but now there is no excuse for me to not get letters ;) . the first few days in the field were pretty hard, but as time gets going things get better and better and I've been happier, I just gotta focus on what I'm doing, and things are fine. Anyway thanks for the emails! I'm gonna try to send some pictures in a new email.

I feel really bad for the missionaries that have to go right to the field from the Provo MTC. The Guatemala MTC President gave us a lesson about the language and on a scale from 1-10 people usually leave the Provo MTC at a three, and he said everyone at the Guatemala MTC was already at at least a 4 or 5 and that was when we still had three more weeks weeks left at the Guatemala MTC. But i still got a long way to go.

And yes, I'm going to be in shock at our nice house when i get home. and it seems like whenever these poor people join the church their lives change and they keep better care of themselves and their homes and they're cleaner happier people. Well my time is up for today. love you!

Love you all so much!-elder hopkins.

Cows that just walk around wherever they feel like

A really big tree with a trunk the size of a car in the middle of our area in a park

A cat sleeping on a dog at a house we were teaching at.

My sleeping area.