Hola mi familia y amigos! We had a great send off to our mission at the airport by our family. We sure love them and appreciate their support! We then flew to Los Angeles and took a 4 hour middle of the night flight to Guatemala City. We were pretty tired when we arrived, but our friends Mark and LaFaunda Curtis who are also serving here, met us at the airport and brought us to our temporary apartment which they had prepared for us. Our assigned apartment won't be ready until the first of the year, but in the meantime we are very comfortable. Our next apartment will be by the CCM (MTC) and the temple which is a beautiful area.
We spent our first day here touring the city with the Curtises and going to the places where we will do some of our shopping. We had lunch at a restaurant with some of the other senior missionary couples and were invited to dinner at the apartment of another couple. There are several senior couples who live in our apartment building and they are very fun and helpful. Many of them have delivered Christmas goodies to our apartment and we have more than we can eat. The couples have been sharing with us the dos and don'ts of living in Guatemala and it has been kind of intimidating but also reassuring that we will be fine. We do have an armed guard outside our apartment 24 hours a day, so we feel quite safe!
Today we attended Sacrament Meeting at the CCM . The meeting was in Spanish and even though I didn't understand most of it, I was surprised to find I did actually comprehend a little of what was being said. It was fun to see the wonderful missionaries and to meet the CCM presidency. We ate lunch at the CCM with the missionaries, the Presidency, the mission nurse, and the mental health nurse.
After lunch we were able to see one of the apartments in the building where we will live and were impressed by how nice it is. We're excited to eventually move to our apartment in that building.
We had a wonderful dinner at the Curtises this evening where we were able to meet some other senior couples. I am impressed by all the different assignments these couples have been given -- nurses, humanitarian aid, public relations, 4 dentists (who sometimes treat missionaries who have never been to a dentist and also remove wisdom teeth if needed), lawyers, office and apartment management, MTC presidency. and us and the Curtises who are AMA's or area medical advisors.
The church is very well organized in every area! We learned last week at our medical training that in the 1980's about 40-50% of the missionaries at any given time could not go out and work because of medical issues. Now there are nurses, mental health specialists, doctors, and great medical teams at church headquarters who have helped decrease that percentage down to 8%. Plus the church has placed great importance on training the missionaries about how to care for themselves and practice better health habits.
Tomorrow we will go to the area office where we will learn about our responsibilities and the real work will begin! We feel we have an important job to do here to keep the missionaries healthy!
We're excited for this opportunity to serve and know this is where we need to be right now. Thank you for your love and support!
Great send off by our family at the airport
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