Hola mi familia maravillosa!! Hello, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!!

I’m sorry I missed a solid 3 weeks of my mission blog! I have no excuse but “I was busy…” However I noticed that on the mission I really won’t ever stop being busy. But here it is… perdon (sorry)!

As you can imagine a lot has happened in the past 3 weeks. Here are some bullet points…

  • We had our first baptism with Hermana Andino. Hermana Leonely Ortega Jeronimo, the aunt of Hermana Angela Ortega Jeronimo who we baptized with Hermana Morales. This baptism was a little different than the last one. If you guys can remember, I was being trained last time which means that I really did not do anything but decorate for the baptism. Well now I’m realizing that there is way more to a baptism than that! I felt like a child during Christmas for the first time, so amazed and dumbfounded with everything. Now as a trainer I feel like the parent during Christmas (stressed, anxious and continually looking over the ‘todo list’) We finished the baptism and are now moving on to the next 3 weeks. Some miracles can be a little challenging right? Or is it the other way around?
  • I hit my 5 month mark on my mission! THAT’S CRAZY!! It’s weird because I feel like I have 2 months on the mission, but when I talk to the newer missionaries (carne fresca!) I feel like I have 10 months, weird. It also means that I have 13 months left, time is moving fast.
  • This past week and a half, I went to the capital again. Long story short, before I received my calling to serve in Guatemala, my dad petitioned for me to get my Guatemalan citizenship. After a long time waiting, instead of receiving my proselyting visa, I will be receiving my citizenship card while I’m here on my mission! That means that if in the future, if I choose to go down that route, I could live in Guatemala indefinitely.
  • Christmas happened!! It was actually the coolest thing ever!! In Guatemala they celebrate Christmas more on the 24th and it’s all right!! Every place was decorated with Christmas lights and garland with ornaments. There were fireworks all day everywhere! In the air, on the ground, in the house!! Literally everywhere. They also spread pine needles to cover their floors. This is one of my favorite traditions because it smells so good and it looks amazing. Every family is together eating their traditional Christmas dinner. Tamales, paches and ponche. Paches are something I discovered here on the mission. They’re almost like tamales but they’re made from potatoes. Delicious. Also ponche is very famous here. It is a hot drink that’s based with lemon tea (natural) with pineapple fruit, papaya and other fruits popular here in Guatemala. It’s also very delicious. It has almost the same taste as fruit cocktail, just with cinnamon.
  • On the 24th Hermana Andino and I went to Hermana Paty’s house for lunch. She made us an ‘American styled’ Christmas lunch that was amazing! We ate baked chicken, pasta salad, bread, vegetables with jalapeño (spicy but delicious). We made some rice krispies for her the night before. When we gave it to her as a gift she was like, “what the heck is this??” But nevertheless she was grateful. She also gave us presents! I received a bolsa tipica (typical handbag) and colorful earrings to match everyone of my outfits. She was very sweet, it was great spending time with her!
  • Afterwards we went out to another members house and gave him a gift as well. He opened it and was sweet. We shared a message about spreading the Light of Christ to others. He then asked us if we wanted some tamales?! Of course we couldn’t refuse, so we ate tamales with him. Shortly after we went and ate dinner with another member! My poor companion was sick to her stomach from eating all of that food. Poor girl!!
  • We got home around 9:30pm that evening. We then set off some fireworks, and by that I mean some sparklers and poppers. Hermana Andino then spoke with her family back in Honduras and I fell asleep! Even with all the comotion of fireworks going off, I slept better than my little dog (pepper) does during the winter!
  • On the 25th, we went to a couple of member homes as well. We ate tamales again and then went to Salama and celebrated it with the sister missionaries there and some of the local members. It was really fun to be a part of another family’s Christmas. Everyone treated us very well. Even now being December 28th we’re still busy celebrating.
  • This past week we also had a ‘small’ trip to Cobán for a Christmas activity with all 90 (something) missionaries. I think that was one of the funnest things we did this past 3 weeks! It’s always more than fun talking to some of the other Elders and Hermanas about their experiences on the mission. The first night we spent in Cobán, we arrived around 6pm. We said hello to the majority of the missionaries and then stated our devotional. We heard a spiritual message from the mission president and his wife. Afterwards the president turned on a projector and Netflix!!! Everyone’s mouths dropped… We were literally about to watch a movie. He put on a movie called “The Boy Who Stole (or saved) Christmas” We all ate ‘hotdogs’ and beans with salad. Then later each companionship got a bag of popcorn. We really enjoyed our time there. That night we got to sleep in a hotel. It was nothing more than a bed in a room but it was nice to rest after our day of fun.
  • The next day was the biggest day of the 3 day activity. In the morning, all of the Hermanas and Elders got together and went to a soccer stadium that the president had rented out. We spent a solid 4 hours playing soccer or volleyball. The majority of the Hermanas played volleyball since some of the latino Elders got pretty competitive. That and the giant Americans that everyone was scared of because they could easily accidentally step on you and squish you like a bug! When we finished with that we went home and got ready for our mission Christmas dinner. We put on our best dresses and a little bit of makeup and then left. There was a ton of food. We ate and ate. Had a piñata, ate again, had a gift exchange and ate again!! One of the members put off fireworks for us to watch and it was almost as good as uncle Jason’s! The next day we had our final devotional and then heard from all the parting missionaries who were leaving to return home. It was of course very emotional to see and hear some of my friends in the mission and realize that it’s actually their final weeks in the mission. I’m always learning so much from them and their examples.

Anyways, this is what has been happening here for the past 3 weeks! This week we’ll be celebrating the New Year and upcoming 3 maybe 4 baptisms that we have lined up! I love you all. I’ll continue to take more photos and videos and of course write more! Thank you for all of your love and support for me! I love you and miss you! I’ll talk to you guys again this coming week.

Love Ari.