Arrive in Teleman

Well, Mom, as my one reader, I hope you are pleased to see the latest installment of a blog that is somehow taking me nearly a year to complete. :)

So after our Fireside in Tucuru, we were back on the buses to make it to Teleman. We passed more fantastic views on the road there and arrived in Teleman in the late afternoon--too late to really get out and do anything (which was sort of okay, because there really isn't anything to see or do in Teleman anyway) and too early to go straight to bed. We had a nice, relaxed night, eating dinner, listening to the tropical rainstorm, and relaxing.

I guess it's worth mentioning here that I had stayed in Teleman a few times before, as a missionary. The first time was in preparation for a trip to Coban for zone conference. The zone leaders were in charge of getting us sisters a place to stay for the night. Unfortunately for us, it was near the end of the month, and the ZLs had run a little short on their pouch money, the monthly allowance they received to spend on the zone. They put us up in the cheapest hotel in Teleman, and calling it a dive would be insulting to genuine dives. This place was horrifying. I wish to the bottom of my heart that I had taken pictures of this place, but I was too afraid my camera would get stolen. The door had at least five locks, and the only one that worked was held in place with duct tape. The beds had a single blanket but no sheets, and the blanket smelled very, VERY strongly of body odor, alcohol, and various other stenches too heinous to mention. The bathrooms only had water for an hour a day. It was not a good experience. To say the least, there was no sleeping going on that night.

The other time I stayed in Teleman, the elders got smart and did not put us in that hotel. Instead, they lent us their mattresses and put us up in the church. This was infinitely better in the sense of cleanliness, though four sisters sharing a twin mattress could have been worked out better. Also, the elders had neglected to mention that the church had a little, teeny infestation of living things. Spiders, mosquitos, and who knows what else. Also, churches do not come equipped with showers, so that could have been better.

My point is: I was not expecting great things from Teleman.

Since I know you're wondering, the hotel we stayed in was actually pretty nice. There was one minor hiccup when we got home one evening and found this little guy waiting for us:

but other than that it was pretty good! The hotel had a restaurant upstairs with a roof but no walls, so it stayed pretty cool. 

The next morning was Sunday, and we were given the choice between going to the Teleman branch, just down the road, or the Sacsuha branch. I chose the Teleman branch, mostly because it was close and I wanted an extra few minutes to sleep. I'm not super great with the getting up early thing. Attending church in Teleman was an experience. My branch in El Estor definitely had problems with attendance, but we still usually had 80-100 people in attendance each week. The Teleman branch was tiny. The chapel didn't even have pews; the deacons had to come early to set out chairs. I actually knew this, since I had slept in that very room. The services were done in a mixture of Qeqchi and Spanish. One of the speakers gave his talk bilingually, repeating everything he said in Spanish, while another speaker had one of the elders serving in the branch translate for him. I don't know if they always did this or if it was mostly for our benefit, but there was a lot of translating going on, because a lot of people in our group didn't speak Spanish, either, so those of us who spoke Spanish were translating that as well. It may sound strange to think of it this way, but I have found that I actually prefer attending church in a Spanish (or Qeqchi). I don't understand everything that's said when Qeqchi is the spoken language, but if I pay really close attention, I can get the gist of it. Even though I speak fluent Spanish, I still sometimes find myself translating into English in my head, which also forces me to pay close attention.  I think I get too complacent in the listening department when I hear things spoken in English, so attending church this way was a nice experience, forcing me to really pay attention and appreciate the simple, heartfelt message the members shared.

After Sacrament Meeting, we American split up. Some stayed behind to attend Gospel Doctrine and Relief Society or Priesthood, but several of us wound up in the Primary room. There was only one Primary teacher, and she had no manuals or children's songbooks, so she was having the kids draw and color. Hoping to help her out a little bit, we threw together a very simple lesson about obedience and helped the kids to memorize part of 1 Nephi 3:7. Okay, we mainly got them to memorize just the beginning: Ire y hare! I will go and do! We explained the rest of the verse as well, but they really got pumped about that part. Then we had them teach us how to do Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes in Spanish, and reciprocated in English. Maybe it wasn't the most spiritual lesson in the history of Primary, but the kids enjoyed it. We especially enjoyed talking to an investigator who had come but felt a little reluctant just leaving her children in primary by themselves. By the end of the lesson, she was chanting ire y hare right along with the other kids. We got lots of hugs as we left, especially because a few of the women in our group had purchased traditional Qeqchi clothing and worn it to church.

After church, we got on the bus and headed for Sacsuha, where we were going to have our fireside for the day. The local couple missionaries had packed us a paper bag lunch of chips, juice, raisins, and other snacks, and so we sat around and chatted and ate. We got a good laugh out of a few tiny Qeqchi kids who kept coming up and asking us for treats. They were so adorable, and we had so much food, that we all wound up giving them a lot of what we had.

We had a great turn out for the fireside, including several missionaries who wouldn't have gotten to see the fireside otherwise, and the whole event went pretty well. Somehow I don't have any pictures from this particular fireside, besides this one taken outside the building when we were preparing to head out. 

Since it had been so little time since I had been in the mission, I knew all of the elders in the field. This elder, Elder Tambriz, was a hilarious guy who stood about five feet tall. Next to him is Andy, one of the talented members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir who was with us. Andy has a way of making friends with everyone and somehow made friends with Elder Tambriz even though he doesn't speak any Spanish. Andy thought it was pretty funny how much shorter Elder Tambriz was, so he had him stand up on top of a spigot that is located just outside of the church building. Since so many of the members walk to church, and since so few have shoes, this spigot is placed outside the doors so that they can rinse off their feet before entering the church. 

After the fireside and chatting with many of the members, we got on the bus to head back to Teleman. It was a long day of lots of travel, and I honestly don't remember too many of the specific details of this particular day, but it was great fun, as always. 

Polochik!

I don't know how I did this, but I forgot to tell a very important story from our touristy walkabout in Coban. In the afternoon, we went to a market that sold fruits, clothing, purses, and stuff like that. There were four or five of us walking around, looking very not-Guatemalan, and we had to have stuck out majorly. All of the sudden, out of nowhere, this little boy jumped out at us. He must have been four or five and was just adorable. We were eating some fruit we'd bought at the market and he held out a grubby little hand, asking for one. We gave him one, and he was delighted when he realized that some of us spoke Spanish. He started showing off, dancing around, and jumping out at us when we thought we'd lost him. But my favorite moment was when he started crawling toward us on the ground on his fingertips and the tips of his toes. He shouted, "Yo soy el Hombrearaña!" "I am Spiderman!" I was so surprised and thrilled that I couldn't help but laugh and give him some more fruit, so he followed us around as long as we were there. It turned out that his grandmother ran one of the stalls, but he was allowed to basically run free in the market, so everyone knew him and thought he was super cute. I think he was too:

After our amazing concert in Coban, we got a good night's sleep and then got up early the next morning to have breakfast before hitting the road. Although I loved the opportunity to spend some time in Coban, I was really excited to head out. I hadn't really ever known Coban as a missionary, and had no particular sentimental attachement to the place (although I certainly do now!). But today we'd make our first stop in the Polochik Valley. We'd be leaving the cool, foggy hills of Coban and dropping down into the hot, dirty, dusty, humid towns along the road.

When I entered the mission field in August of 2010, I was assigned to El Estor. If I had to describe El Estor, I would use one word: HOT. And I would spell it out in capital letters, too. I'm going to belabor this point, because if you haven't been there, you have no idea what this kind of tropical heat is like. I've lived in Texas and Arizona, and I have never felt such debilitating heat as I endured the first few months of my mission. The air is so thick and muggy that you can feel it tangibly if you wave your hand around. It's so hot that when it rains and hits the ground, it steams and you always feel like you're breathing out of a humidifier. You go to sleep sweating and you wake up sweating, and even if there were a heater on the running water, you wouldn't want to use it because the only time you're not sweating is when you're in a cold shower. It's so hot that one time, when I burned my hand as a missionary, we couldn't find any running water that ran cool enough to do me any good.

That's how hot it is. I just wanted to make that clear.

So when I think of Qeqchi people, I think of HOT. I think of being sunburned and sweating, and little kids with dark, dark skin but sun-bleached hair. The heat had everything to do with our missionary work. We had to plan to be in lessons during the hottest part of the day, and we had to recognize that if it was too hot people would be sleeping in hammocks or bathing to try to cool off.

I guess that's why Coban didn't really connect with me. There was no heat. But now we'd be leaving Coban and heading toward Tucuru. And I knew what would happen, and I have to admit I was eager to see how all the non-return-missionaries would react. We'd head out, and as we left Coban behind, we'd start to feel the temperature go up, and then the dust from the road would kick up. The further down the road we got, we'd start to feel the closeness of the buses. We'd all be shocked at how rapidly things would go from temperate to horrifying.

It happened pretty much like that. Except that right as we left the nice paved road and hit the crazy dirt roads, it started to sprinkle. Tender mercies, because we had perfect driving conditions. When it's not raining, the road gets so dusty you can't see much in front of you, and you arrive at your destination covered in grime. When it rains, the dirt roads become potholed, slippery, and sticky, so that you're constantly smashing up and down in your seat. But with a gentle sprinkle, the road was clear and the dust was down, leaving everyone free to admire the spectacular scenery. Here's an example:

And here's another:

And one more. I guess at some point, sweeping green views all start to look the same, but still. :)

It was actually pretty cool to get to watch everyone freak out over how amazing everything looked. I'd seen it so many times before that I had kind of lost my ability to be impressed by it all. Plus, most of the times that I had made that trip, I hadn't been in a nice air conditioned bus. I'd been plastered into a tiny microbus with a 10 person capacity carrying at least 25 people. I had been almost always carsick and just dying to get out. Four hours of that kinda takes away the awe at the spectacular views. But seeing it through fresh eyes was so fun! People from the group were going crazy, taking tons of pictures, hanging out the windows, asking the drivers to stop so they could get a better look. It made me smile.

When we got to Tucuru, we found that we would be performing in a half-finished community center made up of basically scaffolding and bare cinderblock. It had been raining off and on all day, but when we arrived the sun was out for a few minutes. You can see the building in the background:

Right after we got there, it started to pour down rain like you wouldn't believe. The locals had built us a stage out of cinderblock bricks, and we moved them around a little bit to make a little stand for our director to put her music on. When one of the guys dropped one of the cinderblocks, about a thousand cockroaches skittered out of it. In another, someone found a very large tarantula. Fortunately, the guys didn't tell us this before we got settled on the stage. They reserved these facts for after the concert. 

The concert went off pretty well, though we were disappointed that the attendance was so low. We figured the rain had probably slowed people down, since most members would have to walk. We were even more disappointed to learn that two branches had tried to come down the mountain to see us, but had gotten stuck in the mud. Even though attendance was minimal, we did have a few people who braved the rain and mud to come see us, including a few investigators that the missionaries had brought, and the shoe shine kids.

In virtually every town in Guatemala, you can find little boys who will shine your shoes for a few Quetzales. They're usually between about 8 and 14 years old, and these kids are amazing experts. They can whip a pair of shoes into shape in just a few minutes, and they do a great job. Since missionaries area always in need of a good shoe shine, the kids have some sort of missionary super power. They see white shirts and ties from a distance and they will track those elders down. So I imagine that when they saw our buses pull up they must have been ecstatic! Here were all these guys in shirts and ties, and what's more, they were clearly American and probably wouldn't know that a shoe shine was only a couple of Quetz. The RMs didn't get fooled, but some of the other guys wound up paying an inflated price (although I think some of them paid extra just to be charitable), and the shoe shine boys followed us around all day, shouting, "Lustre! Lustre!" even though virtually every member of the group had had their shoes shined. Some more than once.

It was kind of okay though, since they followed us right to the concert. They stayed all the way through it and even cheered a few times. :) We sent them home with pass along cards and introduced them to the elders in Tucuru.

While it wasn't our most successful fireside, we were grateful to have reached those who were there.