First week in GUATEMALA

sometimes the right thing is hard

Off she goes!!! 

Half of the missionaries in the CCM - Sara is on the left

HOLA FAMILIA! This is the first time that I have had tiempo to e-mail.
I only have a half hour to e-mail and it's a little hard on the
Spanish keyboards so I will get better at typing with time. I received
some e-mails! I'm happy Rachel that my superhero name is "super
missionary", I honesty can't think of a more rewarding title.
Being away from my family, my home, my friends and Hilbertos  is
absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done and there are times when
I wish I could be in San Diego. However, there is no place I would
rather be than right here. I can look down at my name-tag and see that
I am a missionary called to serve the people of Guatemala.
So, I'll tell you a little about Guatemala now. We actually don't live
at the CCM, we live about two blocks away, right across the street
from the temple (it's housing for temple visitors). We live with about
14 sisters in an apartment so it is crazy but it's really fun and they
are all from North America. Every day we walk to the CCM and there are
four guards along the way that follow us until the next guard sees us,
it's kinda scary when they are just standing there with machine guns
but they get huge smiles when you talk to them.           Our district
has been teaching an investigator who can speak a little English so we
try to teach him in Spanish as much as we can. By our third day in the
CCM,my companion and I had a Spanish lesson with him and he has
  committed to be baptized! His date is on March 15, so we are still
teaching him and preparing him.       (I don't know where the enter
key is so my multiple spaces will have to separate my paragraphs.)
There are probably 14 "Norte's" (white girl missionaries) and the rest
are Latinas. We study ALLLLL day long but we get a break from meals
and to play sports. We eat with the Latinas and most don't speak any
English so it is very fun to try to communicate with them and to play
sports with them, I've made a few friends with them and they just
laugh at everything I say and every time I walk into the room haha.
The food is pretty good but you have to eat everything on your plate
or else the cook will come over and ask you why you didn't like his
food. Luckily I've been able to eat all my food but there are BIG
servings sometimes. They have fruit juices at every meal but they are
hard on white people's tummys so I am slowly building up an "immunity"
to it by drinking a couple sips every day.             My spanish is
coming along really well, I'm constantly thinking about how to say
things in Spanish and I even had my first dream in Spanish two nights
ago (the Latinas taught me a tongue twister and in my dream I was
trying to teach it to some of my family haha). It is getting easier to
communicate with my Latino friends because sometimes it's similar but
sometimes it is WAY different. Por ejemplo, one of the white sister
missionaries spilled her water all over the table during a meal time.
She meant to say that she was embarrassed so she said "Yo soy
embarasado." However, that doesn't mean "I am embarrassed", it means
"I am pregnant." Hahahaha so the language barrier is apparent.
Being away from the US, my thought have changed. I got three mosquito
bites the first day and instead of thinking "Oh no, now my arm is
gonna itch." I thought " Oh no, hopefully I don't get Malaria." But
don't worry, I'm not gonna get Malaria haha.      Okay my time is
almost up but please write letters.  We can't use
our cameras because of security reasons but they took a group photo of
half of the people in the CCM. I will forward it to you in another
e-mail entitled "group photo." I miss everybody and it is hard to be
here but I'm learning so much every day. The church is true and I'm so
honored to be here to teach that.     Love,  Hermana Hansen
p.s. I don't have time to proofread my e-mail so hopefully it made sense haha