2 March 2011

Hola family.
   
    So I realized I don’t really remember what I wrote last time so I’ll probably repeat myself. Soccer here in the MTC is the coolest thing ever.  The Latinos are really good, not as good as I thought though.  I can keep up with them and compete a little.  It reminds me of Nathan’s Xbox game fifa street soccer.  It makes it that much better because I am playing in a poor little country on a concrete basketball court.  There are hoops, but the poles come down to form a goal.  They are like that all over the city.  I don’t know why they bothered putting the basketball hoops up since nobody plays it but oh well.  This one Elder from Argentina is great he can do almost any move.  He jukes everybody out.
    Oh so I was just reminded, if you order the lihihona here we’re going to be in it next month. Also you can go to guatemalaccm.com and look at pictures.  We live in some really nice apartments, much better than Provo.  Because of that, we have to have guards guarding the building and have 20 ft high walls.
    The Latinos are awesome. They love to joke around and are always happy. They love to come and talk to the Americano and then laugh at our Spanish. It makes me work harder and is good practice. They talk super duper fast.  It’s crazy.  I can’t even understand Hola Como Esta sometimes.  They also slur everything into one, plus they speak quietly.  The food here is amazing.  We have like chicken, pasta, fruit, pudding, cookies, hamburgers, beans, tortillas.  I love their tortillas they’re the bomb.  There are some pretty weird gross things every once in a while.  Like yesterday morning for breakfast we had pancakes, bacon, and a hot dog just plain.  I didn’t eat it.  Also for breakfast we have had these like refried bean type of things, they were alright, but they looked like umm, mud, or poop or something, and they would just plop it onto your plate.  I have the exact example; the food they eat in Holes the movie.  
    They split up me and Elder Hymas and now my companion is Elder Graham. He is a convert to the church, he joined a year ago.  I love him but miss elder hymas.  He was awesome, he is just one room away and I am with him in class a ton, but we don’t really have time to talk anymore.  There is this Latino in our room named Elder Garcia, he is awesome, and he speaks fluent English so we can actually get to know him.  He is the nicest person ever.  He told me to tell you that he is my fat Latino roommate.  He is kind of chubby. I feel so bad for all of them; they come from rough backgrounds and situations.  Most are poor but elder Garcia is rich and his parents were always gone at work because they own a company, so he grew up on the streets without a real family support.  He really was thinking of going home the first couple nights because he missed his brothers, or friends.  They need him because most are in bad situations and he is right down the street but can’t help them.  There are lots of Guatemalans here but also people from Argentina, Honduras, El Salvador, and places like that.  The city is awesome. There are like big skyscrapers and then little houses its way random.  
    I have realized that since we have been to Nauvoo a bunch of times and other church history sites that I really have a strong testimony of Joseph Smith.  I love teaching the first vision.  We have already taught like 3 lessons in Spanish.  It is really hard but nice to practice and see what we need to work on.  
    I have to go now, but oh yeah, that food does give you the squirts, it hit today, ugh.  Oh well. Well c/ya.

 Love elder Gardner.