Week 39: Living on a Prayer

WE’RE HALFWAY THERE!

There are so many signs here!

That’s right, everybody! I have been a missionary for nine months. Can you believe it? Those are nine months that many on this list have endured receiving weekly emails from me. If you’re still around and reading, congratulations are definitely in order.

Xela is to Quetzaltenango as Muletown is to Columbia

A thing about missionary work that I recently discovered is the months you gain feel a lot more like years lived. Like, sure, I've been a missionary for nine months, but I feel more like a 9-year-old than like someone with *experience* and *wisdom*, if that makes any sense. And so by the end of this, when I’ve reached those 18 months, I’m still going to have a lifetime of learning and growing. To be fair, though, a 9-year-old has more of a grasp on how to do things than a newborn baby does. So I suppose I have earned some credit for getting this point.

Name a better duo. I’ll wait.

Week 2 in Xela is already finished, and I’m more than a little shocked by that fact. The first few days in a new place always seem to go by painstakingly slow. Everything is so foreign (no pun intended), and as you adjust, it’s a lot to take in. Wait, lunch is when we eat the most? Everyone drives like they’re on Rainbow Road in Mario Kart? I am Dorothy in Munchkinland? But now that I’m semi-used to the chapina* way of life, it looks like we’re actually on a bullet train, and boy, does it have places to go!

Look at all of those houses that are most definitely not in our area (Calvario is a pretty small neighborhood)

I am still learning how to street contact en español, but I am amazed by how kind Heavenly Father is, because as I keep a prayer in my heart and open my mouth, I’m amazed at the people we cross paths with. We’re especially excited about this one person we approached on Thursday. We’ve only had one lesson so far, but he's been super promising! Like, baptism kind of promising. So make sure to keep Cesar in your own prayers! I know he’s in mine.

There is nothing like a pupusa after English class with the Calvario squad.

I’ve been able to grow a lot, both in the nine months of my mission and in these first weeks in Xela. And I find myself going back to these verses in Alma 26:

12 Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things. …

15 … yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work.

I will never have sufficient words to describe how incredibly imperfect I am. Everything about me, and any person on this planet, is flawed. It’s insane. But what is even more striking to me is the fact that it doesn’t matter. Heavenly Father still has a great and marvelous work, and “if ye have a desire to serve, ye are called to [it].”

I have been overwhelmed by my weakness a couple of times here. Not knowing how to wash laundry by hand, being shocked to discover that mayo comes in a bag, and especially not understanding half of the things that people are saying to me. But the thing that’s important isn’t having a washing machine, or American food brands, or that people get to know how funny my joke would be in English. It’s that they feel loved by their Savior. And He will help people know it, regardless of how broken my Spanish is. I hope that what I’ve written today has shown you that He loves you, too. And so do I.

If you know, you know. (Matthew 5:14)

— We’ll make it (I swear),

Hermana Newton

* A colloquial name for Guatemalans.