All Moved In!

Hey Everyone! So I've finished my second day of actual class. Everything is off to a great start, though I'm not sure I'm going to have the 100 some odd adjectives I copied down today memorized very soon. We'll see. I got moved in with my Guatemalan family on Thursday just prior to lunch. If I can figure out how to add pictures/video when I'm done typing this message you'll be able to see it. I am incredibly blessed with my living arrangement. I'm not sure but it seems like the family I live with might be a little better off than some of the other families students are staying with. The house is pretty decent size. Not much on the walls to speak of and no carpet, but it is very clean and is very comfortable. I suppose the comfort level has more to do with the family though. Its actually only the two adults, Elmentina and Jose. I think the last name is Iranza, but I wasn't sure on that and I'm too embarassed to ask. I don't think it will matter. At any rate, they are incredibly nice and I have a good time trying to communicate with them at meals. For instance, today Elmentina made this delicious soup with spinach and some sort of noodles. It took me about a minute or so to communicate what I wanted to say, but in my VERY broken Spanish, I asked, "Do you know the cartoon..." and before I could get the name out, Elmentina's son (who was visiting) said "Poh-Pay-Yay", or if you didn't catch that, "Popeye". I laughed saying, "Si, Si, Si, Popeye", and Miguel and Elmentina got a good laugh out of it as well.

When Elmentina was first showing me around the house, I thought to ask about churches around here, wondering where I might possibly attend while here. Being of Church of Christ heritage, I knew the Spanish "Iglesia de Cristo", so I used that term to ask about church in general. She asked me later on if my parents were also "Mormon" (same in Spanish as English). I was a little confused until I remembered that Mormons are also referred to as "The Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints". Turns out Mormonism has a pretty decent following around here, so thats what she thought I meant. I had to look up the word "clarify" in my dictionary to correct the situation. Turns out that they are Jehova's Witness. From what I can tell there are basically three categories of Christian Religions here: Catholic, Mormon, or Evangelical. I guess Evangelical covers everything that is not the other two. So I ended up going to their Jehova's Witness meeting yesterday for Easter. I've never been to a JW meeting in the States, so I can't really compare, but it didn't seem too sketchy. Then again, the only word I understood the whole time was "Versicolos" (Verse), and I only caught that because they were constantly flipping back and forth from one passage to another. I didn't bring my Bible because I didn't know if owning a Bible was common, and I wanted to be sensitive to the possibility that they couldn't afford many Bibles. Joke's on me! EVERY SINGLE PERSON there had a bible, and EVERY SINGLE PERSON there was flipping back and forth to follow the lesson. Kind of puts us United States-ians to shame really. But hey, its ok, we have Power Point!! [chuckles awkwardly and glances sideways looking for confirmation in vain]. There is an American couple that were there that have lived here for two years. After speaking with John for a couple minutes he said, "So if you're ever jones'n for anything American, have Elmentina let me know and I can get it for you". It was a very kind offer, but I had to smile in my own mind, wondering if he knew he had just used drug lingo in church.

This last week was Semana Santa, or Holy Week, leading up to Easter. I guess it is consistent with the Catholic church that a lot more emphasis was put on Friday than Sunday. Parque Central was packed with people and there were processions of floats going off and on all day long. Once again, hopefully check the pics. The crazy thing was that these rather massive floats were being CARRIED by people. The biggest one probably had a good 50 people around it. They would trade out and they had these poles that they could set it on for sections of time that they weren’t moving. The other thing that stands out about Parque Central is all the little stands of food and various goods. The fact that I’m not supposed to eat much of the food at those stands is driving me INSANE!!!! It looks SOOO good! I mean, really, how often is fresh mango and pineapple just walking around under your nose?!!! (pssst….don’t tell, but I tried some of the mango another student had, just between you and me…..or I guess, between you and you and you and you and you and you and me. Hahahahaha)

I have been able to enjoy some good English speaking companionship with several of my fellow students as well. It has been VERY welcome, as the long 3 day weekend of a knew place and the complete inability to understand anything was a little difficult in my spirit. I was going to go on this midnight hike up a volcanic mountain with a few of the students, but I fell asleep before I was supposed to meet with them. Oh well, the stress of a new place has kept me a little drained anyway. This week there are two trips scheduled to hike around two different mountainous areas, one of which includes the chance to soak in a natural hotspring. The third scheduled activity is a SOCCER GAME!!! [clears throat] I mean, uh, Futbol!!!! lol. I didn't imagine I would be doing anything athletic other than hiking, so I didn't bring shoes for soccer, so I might go cough up the $10 USD it will cost me to get a pair of tennis shoes (That exchange rate is killing me! [chuckles at his own humor]). I probably won't be doing every activity that is offered for the sake of saving money, but when you're talking about a Mountain Forrest Hike and natural hotsprings with transportation to and from, all for the equivalent of FIVE BUCKS, its hard to pass that up!!

Though I am feeling better now than a few days ago, all the new stuff is still a big transition. Please pray that I would rest in the peace of our Lord and remain open to being an instrument for the Kingdom here in Guatemala, despite the natural feeling to look out for “number one” (kind of a blasphemous phrase if you think about it). I love you all.

Grace and Peace,
Bryan

P.S. The pics and video function seems easy enough, but it refuses to actually load, as in it is taking FOREVER. Actually, now I just tried youtube and it takes forever too. I may not post anymore videos after this. I'll try to load pics later too, but I'm out of time. Check this youtube site for the video of my house. There is actually more, but I'm not going to wait for it to load now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET_f64wv3b4