Intro

Dear Reader:

I wish I could have had all of you along with me for my trip back to Guatemala as part of the Kekchi Choir. I've been so amazed and touched by the amount of support I've received from family, friends, neighbors, and members of the ward, and I thought this was the best way to tell everyone all about the amazing and wonderful experiences I've had. Thank you, for all you've done. I wouldn't have gotten there without you, and I hope you enjoy reading a little about my adventures.

I'm going to assume that for the most part, you already know a little bit about why I'm writing. But just in case you don't, here's a little refresher and some background on how I got involved with Kekchi Choir.

Maria Juana, a Q'eqchi woman I taught, and me,
holding a Q'eqchi translation of the Book of Mormon.

I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Guatemala City North Mission from June 2010 to January 2012. It was the single most amazing, wonderful, and rewarding experience of my life, and though I was of course excited to come home and see my family again, my heart almost immediately longed to go back.

I spent the first 6 months of my mission and the last 4 months in a region of northern Guatemala called the Polochik Valley, in a town called El Estor. The Polochik Valley is home to a Mayan tribe called the Q'eqchi. The Q'eqchi speak a Mayan dialect by the same name, and while most in my area of El Estor are bilingual, speaking both Spanish and Q'eqchi, many more speak only their native dialect fluently, especially those that live in small villages in the mountains above the valley. As a missionary, I learned passable Q'eqchi--sufficient to allow me to make small talk and teach simple lessons about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like most missionaries who served the Q'eqchi people, I came to love them, their language, and everything about them. Many elders who served in surrounding areas became fluent in Q'eqchi after serving in remote villages in the mountains. While I cannot say I have that level of fluency,  I love the language and enjoy learning about it, even though my opportunities to speak Q'eqchi are now extremely limited (oddly, there are few native Mayans in Utah...).

A Q'eqchi family in El Estor.

Just a few weeks after I returned home from the mission in January, I received a message on Facebook from a guy named Mike, who had served in my mission some time ago. I had heard of him, and knew that he was involved with doing official Church translations into Q'eqchi of the scriptures. I had also heard that his latest project involved translating the hymnbook into Q'eqchi. In the message, he told me that he was putting together a choir of professionally-trained singers who would return to Guatemala and present the hymnbook to the Q'eqchi in a series of firesides. It sounded wonderful, and I was thrilled that the Q'eqchi would get such a wonderful introduction to the hymns.

I have to admit, though: I totally ignored the message on Facebook. I am not a professionally-trained singer, and as a newly returned missionary, I doubted I could get together the funding I needed to make the trip. But luckily for me, about a week later I got a phone call from Rachel, one of my mission companions, begging me to think about it, and then just a few minutes after that, a call from Mike, asking if I had gotten his message and if I would be interested in going. I hemmed and hawed, discussed it with my parents, considered what it would mean to clean out my measly funds to return to my mission so soon. I have to hand it to Rachel for being very persistent, but my parents' reaction was what really convinced me to go. Independently of each other, they both said, in effect, "When will you ever get a chance like this, ever again?" And I knew I wouldn't. This was very literally a once in a lifetime opportunity. The hymnbook would only be new once; the chance to return as a ''musical missionary'' would come only once.

I decided to go for it. These are the experiences I've had because of making that decision.