Elder Caydyn Westwood: Week 1 in the field

What’s up everyone??

First off I’m still alive just in case anyone was wondering haha. Second off I take back anything bad I ever said about living in the U.S. things are so different down here it’s a whole new world here.

We got here Monday night at about 9 or 930 and then went to the AP´s house to sleep for the night. As you probably all saw we had a huge group because of the missionaries that we met up with from Guatemala. Because it was night time when we got here the humidity wasn’t quite that bad but it hit me as we were going to bed. The AP´s house is pretty small and we had about 20 missionaries spread all across the ground about the size of our laundry room so it was packed and smelled awful! It was bad we stayed there the next two nights. I don’t think I slept at all because it was so hot and humid in there. The second night I was here I was stressin big time so I prayed for comfort and like immediately after I said amen I just felt at peace it was so cool.

Tuesday we went to the mission home and went over a bunch of stuff and then went to the temple for a little while. We didn´t get to go in but it was still nice to go to the grounds. It´s so beautiful I love it! I think we´re gonna try and set up a p-day to go there but idk when it will be. It´s so green here it´s crazy! I don´t think I’ve ever seen this much green in my life! Then on Wednesday we had changes where we met our trainers and found out where we were going. My companions name is Elder Echeverria he´s from Guatemala and he´s a way cool kid. At first I was pretty nervous because I was like oh no I have a native and he probably doesn’t know any English. But he actually speaks pretty fluently in English and is a champ at Spanish so that´s been a big blessing. He´s been helping me out a ton so it´s been nice.

My area is called Arraijan I think, I can’t remember how´s it’s spelled but anyways it´s pretty much where they send a most of the new missionaries. It has a ton of hills; they get pretty tiring after walking up and down them every day. Our house is about the size of the upstairs living room in our house, maybe a little bit smaller though. When I walked in the place was a mess! So I’ve been cleaning it up in my spare time this past week. It was so bad. Mom thank you for teaching me how to clean and sorry for being such a rebel at keeping things clean, ha I knew this was gonna happen. But its super small, Echeverría says it´s probably the smallest one in the mission, but it keeps us dry from all the rain so it´s good. It rains so much and so hard here it’s crazy! The other day we were walking up on this ridge to try and get to an appointment and a thunderstorm passed over us, it was kinda scary. We saw this huge flash of lightning and then immediately heard just this deafening roar of thunder. It was nuts!

My area is said to have one of the highest baptism rates in the mission as well. Elder Echeverría was telling me about the investigators we already have and he said that we´re going to be baptizing a family of 4 on like the 8th so that should be sweet and then we made 2 more baptism dates this week. It´s awesome! Except I don´t understand anything anyone is saying. ha They all talk so fast here! I’m getting better I think but idk. I can talk about things, but when they reply I’m so lost haha. But I’m getting better I think, the other day I was having a super hard time and getting frustrated so I just prayed and plead with the Lord to help me and after that things started going better. It was awesome, I know that he hears and answers our prayers and will help us with anything. But basically right now in our lessons Echeverría does most of the talking and then I just bear my testimony. ha I think this upcoming week I’ll be able to participate more in the lessons though.

I don´t think I’ve ever prayed as much for help as I have since being here in the field. It´s so hard because I can´t understand anything but it´ll come, I just gotta put my trust in the Lord! And I gotta keep reminding myself that I’ve only been here a week so be patient. You should see the people’s reactions when I tell them I just barely got here last Monday they´re like I shock haha but they´re patient with me when I don´t understand them and when I speak.