the new AP is in the house hahaha

so this week was nutso wild!

 

we{ll start with thursday, i saw my first cockroach here. wild experience, it was freaking huge. i about died seriously, we{re in the casa de huespedes and were on the nice couches doing personal study and all the sudden one of the hermanas is like oh my gosh oh my gosh its a cockroach, so elder mills was next to me, we both jump up, i pull a heisman and smash him back into the couch, scream, and run!!!! haha, i was waiting for that freaking thing to sink its fangs into me or something so i bolted! ah man, then one of the tougher hermanas got it and killed it for us, whew. im going to have to man up or something hahaha. oh and elder hollingsworth got like a half dear john today, felt bad for him, but he{s being good humored aboutu it. tell lex to ask mads about it. its kinda funny actually, but its all okay!

 

friday, not much exciting happened other than my teacher told me my espanolis acutallly improving, i cnat tell much of a difference but she said she can see a huge difference since day one, considering day one was next to nothing i feel great. and she said i am bold when i teach even though my compannion talks more, she feels i apply to her needs and she really lieks that. so not too bad.

 

saturday' we helped with these primarys that come on saturdays! the kids are so cute, we all sing to them and then give them a presentation, usually its just the latinos but me and myc ompanion somehow got in on it and g ave all these primary kids a tour of the CCM. it was so awesome. this little cute kid just babbled on and on in spanish to me like i ws fluent or something, i just nodded adn said bien to everything hahaha. we did CRE today, we taught a real less active member a lesson and we found out monday that he actually did go back to church after not going ofr 6 years. hopefully he keeps it up!! that was exciting, to know you{ve finally made a differenc.

 

so sunday we found out we{re the new aps, there was at otn of rumors going aroudn the CCM about who it would be and this and that. we had no idea it would be us. its a ton of responsibility here. apparently we run this place along with the two supervisors, which is pretty nuts so i{m going to be wildly busy for the next three weeks im so so so stoked!!! new kids come in tomorrow and then the fun really begins haha. i get to conduct all these meetings in spanish, im going to sound so stupid haha. i cant wait.

 

skip monday, 3we taught a great lesson and learned how to negotaite at the market

 

today, we went to the relief map, which is a three D map of guatemala, like a terrain map, it is like huge huge huge, takes up this 1 acre lot tup thing. then we went to the market. i spen tlike 40 dollars in american money or less and got soccer jerseys, a drug rug, a marathon t shirt, which is so leget. i got lex and mads some cute things and i cant wait to send stuff home. this place is so great! I cant wait til i send home pictures and you will know what i am talking about. we got to leave the CCM today and it was so nice, haha i ate MCdonalds and dominos in the food court at the mall after the market. i havent been so happy, other than my stomach feel spretty full ahha. Well, ill have a lot to tel next week, wild AP stories of having to rush through life and wing everything and all that. weve already had emergencies this morning so thats crazy too.

 

its just us nortes in the CCM tonight, kinda lonely, E Rod is gone and i miss him like crazy. Man this time isflying, and the email time is way too dang short, especially since i still havent figured out this stupid keyboard. i hope all is well at home, i love you all and everything is more than well here!

 

oh i forgot to tel lyou one of our new favorite phrases, and i hope mom doesnt freak haha, { hey look, its another guy with a shotgun} about every ten seconds were outside the CCM haha,

 

well i love you all, thanks for the support, i cant wait to write you again!!

 

love,

 

Brock

baptism by fire hahaha

hey, to begin i love you all so so so much!!

 

now for the business, best way to get packages here is to send them flat rate usps. stuff it full full full in the cheaper boxes ya know. takes abou tten days, tape jesus pass along cards on it and pictures or stickers of jesus over the places where you could open the box, they won{t tear Jesus face. so if you send a package itll take like ten days or two weeks or so. ill only be here for 3 or 4 more so if you send somethign here send it soon. and as always, you cant put elder or ccm or anything that would give away its for a mormon.

 

next item of buesinss. i will email home next tuesday not wednesday. new elders come in wednesday so we help them all day so our pday is tuesday next week. we get to go to the mercado and to the mall and to this underground museum and stuff. its gonna be wild i cant wait to tell you all about it! i havent got the letters for this week yet but tell lex to dear elder me already haha :) i love her so much and i hope school goes well for you sweetie, i cant wait to hear about your first week!!

 

so for this week, nothing real exciting up until ssaturday night and sudnay, just more class and stuff. all the days mesh together and this week flew by. i was bedridden with some sort of wild flu sunday and monday haha. crazy, knocked clean out, but hna. steimle takes good care of us elders and her and pres. steimle ahve a ton of medicne so they drugged me well and i feel great now. i want to talk most about what we did yesterday. they let us out to go contacting, we split off with out companero latinos and just layed out the gospel on this area haha. it was so fun. i dont know a ton of spanish so i told e rodriguez that i would do the stopping and introducing and hellos and stuff, he could get them with the thick stuff and we{d set up appiont ments and get the address referalls at the end of the contact together.

 

we started off around nine thirty am and got on this bus that took us to who knows where in the city, they let us off, we walked about a half mile, then they said have at it and be back in an hour and fifteen minutes haha. we got a referral from the first lady we talked to. and man was this place sketchy, or so it would have been in idaho, its kinda like its the norm here, a little bit of a culture shock to me. the people here dont have much and a lot of them were actually decently interested in what we had to say. or they were just nice to the white kid with broken spanish haha.

 

we ended up getting five referrals and contacted a million people. it was awesome which is more than most other elders groups got. it was super fun and exciting. we were going up this street knocking doors and this lady yells, what do you want, elder rodriguez says, we have a gift for you haha, she opens this little hatch in the door, she{s naked! she says  i was showering sorry, what do you have for me? we bolted!!!!!! haha so freaking wild!

 

for the most part it was an incredibly humbling experience and i cant wait to go out and do it again in a couple of weeks with elder brown, that will be an interesting thing, then we are really on our own.

 

thank you so much for all the support. i love hearing about what is going on at home, i am glad to hear everyone is doing well, tell everyone hello for me and that i am doing well.

 

i{ll write a longer email next week, they{re really pressing us on time today. all is well, i{m loving it! and i cant wait ot actually ge tout and do something again!! more exciting news next week. I love you all, God bless!!

 

Love,

 

Brock

Culture Shock!

Haha its good to write home again finally, i feel like i really havent been able to write home for like 2 weeks now it was killing me haha. Not much interesting happened tht last week in provo so the letter would have been pretty short anyways, the letter about here though should be a decent length if i can type fast enough haha.

 

oh first, if anyone decides to send mail to the CCM here, you cant write CCM or the long way its spelled out, and any letters or packages cannot have Elder before my name, so mail for the rest of the mission, unless it is from dear elder.com needs to not have Elder or anything that would give away that its going to a mormon haha. ill try to figure out this week the best way for you to be able to send packages and letters to me here. i have so many pictures i am going to have to try to find a way to send a flashdrive with the pictures on them or like send the memory card. i{ll figure out the best way to do it and get back to you guys next week. for now the emails and dearelder letters are wonderful.

 

i was the only elder with mail on my second day in here, and considering it was a rough day, that helped a ton, and one letter was from elder lapray so that was bomb. except he decided it would be funny to put the whole stupid thing in spanish, i guess i should appreciate it haha but it was a tough read!

 

So getting here wasnt too bad, i told ya{ll about the flight last week and such. I was pretty out of it the first day. The second day was awful, ive never felt so awful at spanish and like i couldnt do anything in my life. i was pretty ready to quit, i was making myself sick enough to probably haha. but things got better, i finally figured out that i{m actually decent at the language when i relax and just speak it and listen, and that im not the worst one, even though i shouldnt compare myself. God truly answers prayers, i know that, andrew was able to get me a little message through his cousin stopping by the CCM here and giving a teacher a note, i couldnt believe it. i really needed it and the time here has been pretty decent after that.

 

not going to lie, its not like this is my favorite place in the world. it really feels like i{m in prison now haha, the building isnt half the size it looks online, one solitary building and some concrete out back for 2 small basketball courts and a small barn gym like place haha. I can dunk again for some reason, or i finally figured out how, or the hoop is only 9 and three quarters, take your pick haha. The whole complex we are at is surrounded by 20 to 30 foot tall chain link fence with prison barbed wire all around the outside of it. There are guards and stuff at every entrance. And good news, sometimes we actually get to leave the prison. we{re going to the temple today and last friday we did service at the chapel near the temple, we still had to have guards with us but it was nice to get out of one building for once haha.

 

the food here is a little different than provo, its like half latino half american, you never know what youre going to get, and since i don{t know what half the stuff they are serving us is i usually don{t bother asking haha. im not sure if i really want to know if you know what i mean. but it tastes good about ninety percent of the time, and it definitely feels more homemade than provo, just no more all you can eat til you explode. the other elders told us we are lucky because they fired the old cooks 2 days before we showed up and we now have brand new good chefs that are doing all of our food. I actually really like the fruit bar here, everything is so so flavorful.

 

my spanish is coming along slowly, it took me about 5 days to figure out that half the kids that with us are from the advanced spanish group like andrew and i shouldnt feel like i didnt learn anything cuz they are basically like 10 weeks ahead of us easily easily easily haha. my new companion is elder brown, hes a lot more chatty than elder reeder was, which is nice for me because you all know how much i like to talk. we have a similiar sense of humor too so im having a blast with him. he{s from oklahoma and went to byu last year too. i really like him. i also have a latino companion haha, elder rodriguez, he{s supposed to only speak spanish to me but he knows jsut al little bit of english and likes to speak it so i have to remind him that i have to learn and that we can do english at night and during english language teaching time. he{s extra chubby and from mexico haha, he{s super funny. he had filled his bowl with fruit and then was throwing more and more and more on and i looked at him and said <´holy cow<´and he didnt say anything, then like 2 minutes later he looks at me and says, elder andersen, what did you call me back there, a cow? hahaha, i had to explain to him that it was just an expression of like whoaaa!! he understood and now all he does is say holy cow, orin a high pitched voice he{ll yell at me from the shower room, elder andersen, es su novia, hahaha. hes pretty funny. oh, and since i am the largest person here at the ccm, a couple of the latino elders nicknamed me big bear haha. more like beeg bur, is how they say it, every latino seems to know me and i dont know like half of them, but they are super nice people and i really love them.

 

oh and before i forget, there is some ccm website, im not sure what it is but i think it is just guatemalaccm.com or something, i might be on it, i should be in the big group picture at least. so try to find it.

 

well im almost out of time, i really am enjoying it here, elder rodriguez and correa both act like a mother to me half the time so dont worry mom haha.

spanish is coming along and this place really isnt too bad. other than it looks depressing outside because its winter and it rains like ive never seen before ever single day. which is kind of cool, and the thunder sounds like it is going to knock down the building. but, life is good, i{m trying to work as hard as i can, thank you so much for the emails and letters they are truly a blessing and help to keep me sane while in prison :) thank you so much. i love you all so so so so much! have a wonderful week!! i{ll email again next wednesday,

 

Love,

 

Brock

Made It!

So apparently the plane landed safely and we´re here. the keyboard is jacked up so there won{t be any apostrophes because i refuse to change my typing haha.

 

I hope everything is well at home.

 

The address for this place is

 

Boulevar Vista Hermosa

23-71 Zona 15

Vista Hermosa 1

Guatemala, Guatemala C.A.

 

I don{t really know much about how to get mail to here yet or anything or when it even comes so good luck with that. maybe talk to the laprays. today was decent. not my favorite place here yet. i know feel like i know zero spanish again but whatever, i guess it will come hopefully. i don{t really feel like i{m in another country right now. the flight was long and pretty boring actually. i was expecting more fun out of the experience, the windows are too low for tall people to look comfortable out of so i didnt do much of that. the mtc is actually really nice. its nicer than where i was in the provo mtc so i am pretty happy about that. other than now i have another quiet companion, great. ill be doing my best here to enjoy the week. once again i know no spanish so its about to get intense. and the driving here is crazy, i hope i dont have to do that. i thought the bus driver this morning was going to kill us haha. sorry my thoughts are all over the place. we got a quick nap but i{m pretty tired. not really sure what to say other than i think today is pday so youll have to wait another week for an email, i{m sure it will be longer as i dont really have much to say other than this place is nothing like provo. its green, humid, actually feels pretty good because i haven{t been burning up. its pretty weird to be here. i{ll recount two weeks to you i guess next week since this time i don{t have my journal with me and i cant really remember anything very exciting happening. start sending me emails, i{d love them, like i said, i have no idea how the mail works here. this place is pretty small. one building, smashed between a gas station, a ghetto, and the street, and the temple. i am happy though with the rooms and the bathrooms they put provo to shame oddly enough. my last american meal was mcdonalds, some nice couople on the plane gave me and my new companion elder brown airport money or something so we got food for free last night. oh and the food here at the ccm compared to provo, no bueno, ill be getting skinnier for sure other than its now offensive not to finish your plate so we{ll see how it goes. i cant tell if im really enjoying being here at the moment haha, i havent really settled in, hopefully that comes soon. i{m sure i{ll be in a better mood next time i get to write to you all. we have to run. i love you all, thanks for the prayers!!!!

 

love elder andersen

Last pday!

Family!!!

 

Number one, i love you all so so so so much. Thank you so much for the package and for the tie. It was exactly what I wanted and I'm ahving a hard time nto wearing it every day haha.

 

Two items of business- We now leave Tuesday night from the MTC. same flights times etc. It's just tuesday night now. I"m not sure when I'll get to call. I know I should get to call. like 90 percent sure I'll be able too. We have plenty of time at the airport haha. Item of business number two is they won't let us hook up to computers and send pictures through email while we're in this MTC. idk how it will be in Guate but I'll let you know. I'll try to print some before I go and send them home. Oh item 3, got the letter about insurance from Ryan and signed it and sent it.

 

Anyways, what I've been up to this week.

 

Last Friday was excellent. The package from you all finally came and I loved everything inside. I've realized I have a lot of food now and I am no longer losing weight here, but I'm not gaining so thats good. I've probably lost around 8 pounds or so. My clothes fit well again haha. Our companionship is doing really well in teaching, our teacher couldnt find anywhere we needed to improve at too much, she talks with the other companionships for like twenty minutes during missionary coaching study and can't seem to find anything we need to do much better so ours last about five. Spanish is hard a lot of the time but i'm finally getting the hang of some of it. I also was officially known at this date in time as the Elder who knows how to sew. I've been sewing peoples crap all week because I know how and they don't haha. Pretty funny. I get cupcakes and cookies and all sorts of junk out of it, and they learn how to do it so they can help somebody else. Not a bad deal.

 

Saturday was a wild one. Elder Reeder and I have hit and miss days and this was a big big big miss haha. We didn't get along and teaching wen't awful. He never talks when he's even remotely upset so it's not like I can fix what got him mad. Its like when something goes bad he turns into a shy fifteen year old girl. Anyways. most of the time its good. I'll try not to bag on him haha. I play basketball every day with Elder Folsom. He's going to Honduras. We're like the exact same person except he's an inch taller and fifteen pounds heavier. Love it. We get on the same team and eat other kids for lunch during gym time.

 

Sunday-Sunday is always so legit. I made a joke to one of the branch presidency about speaking in spanish and then he told me "thanks for volunteering" but since I'd already been asked to do the sacrament I think he picked someone else haha. It was a close one. At least at that point I'd have a great excuse for why my 2 minute talk on la Expiacion was awful. Devotional was tonight. Some guy spoke on Love and how God loves us this much, with his hands wide open. I got kind of bored but really liked the comment about God liking what we like. If it matters to us, it matters to God, that's why he's so loving and awesome. Sundays are lame at night. I usualy save mail til the end of the night and read it before I go to sleep but since no mail on sunday=no happy bedtime story. But I had food to enjoy from the family so that was awesome. AFter the devotional we watched the Joseph Smith movie. First time I had seen it. Great movie, and it wasn't corny like the one the week before so I actually got pretty into it.

 

Monday- Fianlly it was august! I didn't feel sleepy today either so that was awesome. first time that has happened. Since Hno. Kruegers longboarding, cracked skull, wack freak accident happened last thursday it's just been Hna. Ellsworth. We got a new teacher fresh off his mission. He looks brand new and told us not to ask him if he'd talked to girls yet because he hadn't haha. He taught me some stuff about how to learn spanish better adn how to make more effective notecards and stuff. He then gave me more good advice one on one and really helped lift me up from teh Spanish rut i've been in.

 

Tuesday- Tuesdays are extra bomb too. TRC. We taught Joanna and that went decently well. Some guys in our district got like a 90 year old lady who fell asleep twice in their lesson to be baptized. I have no idea how that happened. Hilarious though. Oh! haha and we got haircuts, I was super nervous to let these ladies touch my hair. I'm very very very picky. The lady who cut it was super nice and since I wore my glasses that day I couldn't see if she was screwing up while she cut it. While its a tad shorter than usual. Which I didn't even think they'd do. I love it, it feels good and I'll need to keep it short when I get to guatemala or i'm gonna lose it haha. We foudn out that the computer hooked to the plasma in our room will play Mormon messages from LDS.org. We had al ittle movie party while studying Spanish. Devotional tonight- Gerald N. Lund. Yeah the guy who wrote the work and the glory books and stuff. Way too deep for me, but faith is good and needs to be exercised or something haha.

 

Wednesday- Not too darn bad! We talked about cars before bed with the kdis in our room from the other district. I finally felt like I could have some fun haha. I miss driving like crazy. Not driving like crazy but driving, like crazy. Not much to say about to day other than our lesson went well. I realized I know a lot more spanish than I give myself credit for, and that I can do this.

 

Today- Pday, Temple is always greeat, relax and feel peaceful. search for some answers. I also snuck in a nap between writin gletters.

 

So between sewing the stupid little tie holder things back on to ties and learning spanish i stay pretty busy. I love the letters I get from you all each week. THey are so supportive and I love knowing what is going on in everyones lives. Thanks to any friends than end up reading this for their letters too. Keep them coming please!!

 

oh! tell lex its "lo que dice el"

she'll know what i mean haha

 

remember i leave tuessday night now. so i hope i don't call while anyone is at mutual hahaha. I'll either call before we leave salt lake, or from LA. during layover time. the times i gave  you last week are still correct. Salt lake is salt lake time. LA is LA time (pacific) if that makes sense.

 

Anyways, wish I had more time. Next time I email I'll be in Guate!!! I love you all, I'm so glad I did this and i'm thank ful for all of your support. This is a wonderful work.

 

Love and miss you,

 

 

Elder Brock Andersen