Sept 19th

Hey fam! So we have good news and bad news....Bad news is...I have a parasite. Giardia to be exact. BUT the good news is... I lost 7 pounds so Im pretty happy about it. haha

It all started last Monday when I had the worst stomach pains Ive ever experienced in my life. Like there were mini people inside of my intestines with knives cutting my insides to shreds. Then I developed explosive diarrhea. I learned this week that that is actually a medical term. Look up Giardia on google. Explosive diarrhea is one of the symtpoms (mom you dont have to put that detail on my blog if you think its to crude but I dont care). Then I started feeling feverish and was always cold. Which we all know if bizarr here. But we had a hard time leaving the house or anything because I pretty much lived in the bathroom. We would try to leave but we would have to come back like every 5 minutes. So I went to the lab and threw any pride I had out the door and got a stool sample. There were sooooo many people there and the bathroom is there right in front of everyone and you have to carry your (clear) poo cup allllll the way to the front to give to the person. Oh dear. Quite the experience.

So I discovered that if I just didnt eat or drink anything, I wouldnt have to go to the bathroom and I could go and work. So I just stopped eatting and drinking. But one night, we had an apt and I was soooooo thirsty so I took one little sip of water thinking....surely Ill be fine with just one gulp of water right.....NO! WROOOOONG! 2 seconds later we ended the lesson super fast and literally were RUNNING home at the speed of lightning. The only problem was....there was no eletricity....in the whole town. It was pitch black. And....I may have fallen in the sewer. Just one of my legs. But it ate all of my leg. It was horrible. Luckily it was so dark that no one could see me. Why does this stuff always happen to me? haha I love it.

Well...now that Ive talked about my parasite for half of my email....I will tell you a little about my investigators. haha We have had a few setbacks with our investigators because we cant seem to get them to church so they couldnt get baptised. But this Sunday they FINALLY came! I was sooooo happy! Maria Gloria came and she said that she felt that she felt very content in church. ALSO! We found another family and they are pilas! I love them. They are super sweet. Its a mom and dad and 3 kids. They want to get baptised October 8th. They were just someone random on the street that we contacted but they just happened to be looking for a church to join.

To answer a few of your questions... I am still doing the Nursing stuff that I used to do. I answer phone calls all day and I still fill the first aid kits and travel to different zones to talk about health and what not. The only difference now, with the new doctor is I talk to Hna Maravilla every night on the phone. I just call her and give her a little update on who is sick and she puts in her advice and such. I actually like talking to her every night. The other night, I was on the phone with her and I heard the President in the background barking and meowing into the phone. haha! I love them. They{re great!

Well fam....I am drawing a blank. I have no idea what else happened to me this week. But I love you all tons and tons! Thanks for the prayers, letters and love! Youre the BEST!

Love, Hermana Alston

Us and Ody (the one with the orange shirt) She was the one that I told the cool story about last week. And the other girl is satan I think. She keeps inviting Ody to go to parties so she cant go to church. haha

Maria Glorias grandaughter. She ran into the house and changed and came out in "typical" clothes and said "Misses Alston.....will you take a picture of me?" In the sweetest little voice in the world. How could I resist?

Sept 12th

Wow this week was super super fast and crazy. We worked soooo hard this week. We would leave at 10 in the morning and not even come home for lunch or anything. We are on a roll and are both just super pumped to work really hard.

So I am going to start off by telling you a really cool experience that I had. So the rule in the mission is that we have to wake up super early and leave the house at 7 to go gather investigators up for church. But the thing was is that we didnt have ANYONE to bring to church cause it was our first week. So we were very tempted to just leave the house right before church cause we didnt want to just go walk around and do nothing. But I said, "naw, we should follow the rules and leave at 7 cause if we do that, we{ll be blessed and we{re gonna find someone who will get baptised." So we left the house at 7 AND I WAS RIGHT! haha On Sunday, we contacted this girl named Natalia. So we went to our apt with her and she is living with her Aunt. Her name is Ody and she is 19 years old. So we invited her to listen to. When we challenged them to be baptised, they said they didnt know because they were Catholic. But when we were leaving, Ody followed us out and asked if she could talk to us. She said, "I didnt want to say anything in there because my family is Catholic and they dont want me to change religions. But I dont believe in the Catholic church. I have been looking for another church and haven{t been able to find one that I believe in. But when you guys teach us, I feel something that I have never felt before that I cant explain. I felt like I was going to cry the whole time during your lesson but I held it in. I know that this is the church that I have been looking for and I want to get baptised." AHH!! We were soo happy. She is getting baptised the 24th of this month. It is so refreshing to hear when other people can feel the spirit too. Because sometimes we will feel it so strong but they dont feel a thing. She was definitely prepared by Heavenly Father and put into our path. I love my job.

So it has been pretty dang crazy lately. Yesterday was election day for President. So we went to church and everything like normal but the President said, if you feel like its dangerous outside just go back to your house. So we started working but every single business was shut down, NOBODY was in the streets or in their houses because everyone was gathered to vote. There were only some creepers in the street and everyone kept on telling us that we were crazy for being out and that we needed to go home. And one lady said, "Hey! you cant be out here. There are crazy men fighting with machetes, you need to go home and stay there." ha! So that was the end of it. We went home and stayed there for the rest of the day. I dont know what was going on outside but I heard an ambulance going off like every 5 minutes. People are crazy.

One other crazy thing that happened to us this week. We were walking to an apt at night downtown and this homeless, very scary looking WOMAN, yes woman comes up to me and starts touching me, like caressing me and asking me for money. So I give her a coin just to get her off my back and then she tries to rob me and take me very special earrings that Theresa sent me right out of the ears. Then my watch. I was a little angry at this point and grabbed her hand and said "DO NOT. Touch me." So she just laughed and said "Oh you dont want me to touch you? So I cant touch you here? (and touched my arm) or here? (and touched my stomach) or here? and grabbed my butt!!!!!! For the nerve!! I may have yelled at her a little bit and told her to go away. Luckily she obeyed and left us alone. Psycho!

Then we walked down the street a little furthur and a lady had just gotten shot! There were a billion people gathered around and a bunch of ambulance and such. Dont worry, we went to a members house and called one of the ward members to pick us up. Its also a huge bummer cause we cant work on Wednesday or Thursday because its independance day and we{re not aloud to leave. So we are stuck in the church with the zone. Just like semana santa. BORING! Oh well. Oh but please dont do crazy stuff like call the mission cause you{re worried about my safety or anything ok? I feel perfectly safe. We go home early at night and are tucked away in our house all night. The President would not have put us in our area if it was too dangerous. I thought about not telling you any of this stuff but then I would not have anything to write about! haha! Dont worry about me. I am perfectly safe and protected by angels! :)

Love you all tons and tons and tons and I pray for you every single night. Hope you have a GREAT week and Ill talk to you next monday!!

Love, Hermana Alston

The street that we live on in Mazatenango

The outside of our house

Our kitchen

bedroom

bathroom

Pila

Sept 5

Hey fam! Well boy do I have a looooooot to tell you. First and foremost you should know that....I no longer live in Retalhuleu. I finally left!! Crazy huh? I had transfers on Wednesday but LUCKILY I got transfered with my bff (Hna Hidalgo). I am now in Zone Mazatenango in an area called Lincoln!!! And let me just tell you something.....I LOVE IT! It is so fantastic! Our area is HUUUUUUUUGE!!!!! We have to take a "picop" (aka a pick up truck with like a cage around it so people wont fall out) to get anywhere. And they pack soooo many people into it its crazy!! The talegate is like scraping the ground when we are all packed in there. Its hilarious. But we have to take that or a bus everywhere cause everything is so far away. It takes like 30 minutes to get to any of our appointments. Its been reeaaally hard because we are opening the area and we have no idea where anything is! We are completely lost! But we finally got the bus route down I think and we know where a few members live so we{re good. We have spent the whole week contacting and finding new people.

Our house is a complete dump. haha! Its crazy! Our bathroom and pila are outside. We dont have to clean our bathroom cause the rain cleans it everyday! baha! We dont have a sink or anything inside. Just our pila outside. We dont have water or electricity about 40% of the time. But it{s definitely an adventure. The weather here is A LOT cooler too so I am pretty much loving that! It is still pretty hot but NOTHING like Reu. Our area consists of 3 different pueblos. San Gabriel, San Lorenzo and Central Mazate. San Gabriel is tin house, tropical forest like....San Lorenzo is a little bit nicer but beautiful! And Central Mazate is INTENSE city! I have never been in a city like it. It is pure insanity!!! THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE!! There is this place called the "red zone" that we cant go to after like 6 pm cause there are tons of prostitutes and bars and such. The prostitutes are really rather frightening looking. They look like men.

It has been raining like CRAZY here! I thought that it was a huricane. A bunch of trees got knocked over. Everyone is saying that there was a tornado but I definitely didnt see it. Hna Hidalgo and I were walking down a street where a tree had fallen on the electrical chords. So we were about to walk through it real fast when we decided that we probably shouldnt do it. Well right as we were walking away, it EXPLODED! Like a huge loud explosion! bah! We almost lost our lives! haha

As far as investigators go, we got a reference right away from a member and we went to visit her immediately. She is AWESOME! It is actually a really cool story. She had a dream that one of her friends that had already passed away came to her house and he just kept on saying "HURRY HURRY HURRY!" and leading her to the river. She was really confused but she followed him. So when she got to the river it was super dirty and she didnt want to get it but he told her that she needed to. So she got in the river and just as she got in, the water that was coming from furthur up was crystal clear and sooo beautiful! (end of dream) Then 2 days later, a member of our ward came to her house cause she was really sick. And he gave her a blessing. She said that she felt something that she had never felt before, like a fire rushing through her body she said. So she told us that she thinks that her dream was a way of preparing her to be baptised and the clear water that was coming was baptism. So she is getting baptised the 17th or the 24th of this month. We are way excited. She is the sweeting most humble lady in the world. They live in a little tin hut with soooo many people. We also just met 3 daughters of hers yesterday and we are going to start teaching them too!

Yesterday, we went to go visit the family and it was raining sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo incredibly hard. We took a bus to get out there and when I stepped out of the bus, I was in a completely river in the middle of the street. It was almost up to my knees. So I started walking to the side of the road and all of the sudden, I fell!!! Apparently there was a canal that I did not know was there because the water was running so hard in the street I could see. The water was up to my hips. It was great. Some people helped me out of it. Including a drunk man that just grabbed my ankles. Im really not sure why. baha! But the water was running so hard in the street that we had to stand on a bench and the water almost even got us there! Craziness!

As far as nursing stuff goes, Dr. MacArthur went home and there is a new mission doctor. I am not a fan. Thats all Im going to say. I am still the mission nurse. I am just going to be traveling to Reu once or twice a week to work in the office. Its only about an hour drive and we just catch a bus. Not to bad.

Well I am soooo sorry to probably bore you all to tears with this very long email. But I just had so much to say! haha Sorry I dont really have any pitures of my new area. Im kind of scared to carry my camera with me. But I will give you what I do have. Thank you so much for your support and prayers. You all help me sooooo much! I love you and miss you all TONS! Keeps the emails and letters coming. They do NOT go unappreciated!

Love, Hermana Kami Alyse Alston

cool volcano right by our house.

awesome delicious fruit called chincuya

bathing in the pila when the water went out.

August 29th

Well my dearest family. I have no time. I dont know what happened. It just leaves so so so so fast! Sorry this is going to be so short. Ill write you a really good one next week, I promise.

So I am pretty sure I am leaving my area and changes are in 2 days! I am excited but also very distressed because I am deathly afraid that my recent converts are going to stop going to church. I am going to have to give the new Hnas a lecture about taking good care of them. They are like my babies! I am going to be one psycho mom I think because I am freakishly worried about my recent converts here. Oh well, what can ya do?

Other than that, we dont really have any super positive investigators right now. Its always super hard the last week of transfers because we have to do tons of Nursing stuff and hardly have time to work as missionaries. We have been filling the first aid kits, making trips to the pharmacy, working in the office, sending in reports etc... So sorry I dont have too much news as far as investigators go.

The doctor of the mission is going home this in 2 days. I am actually quite sad about it. I love talking to him on the phone. He is hilarious and entertains me so much! I hope the next one is just as good!

I have been telling people that I am pretty sure that I am leaving. And they are soooo sad! Everyone is giving me presents and hugging me and getting my address and taking pictures. Its soooo precious. I am going to miss everyone so much its ridiculous. I have been here quite a long time and have gotten quite attached. Wish me luck with changes!

Well I know that this email was super short and I am a horrible daughter BUT I didnt have much more to say anyways. But I didnt have anything else to say really anyways. This week was very uneventful. But thanks so much for everything fam! Keep the letters and love coming! You all help me more than you know! LOVE YOU!

Love, Kami Alyse Alston

Cutest family ever. They are in our ward but dont speak spanish. They speak this other language that I dont know how to spell it. Its super cool though. These are the typical clothes that a lot of people wear here.

Hermana Hildalgo and I

My bff Oscar that always gives us free rides in his tuc tuc

darling Hna that gave me this teddy bear. She is the one that her grandaughter got kidnapped.

August 22nd

Hey fam!!! Well I am already running out of time very rapidly!! So Im gonna have to make this quick.

So we have some good news and some bad news. Ill start with the bad news and get it over with. Our 2 families that we were teaching both decided not to get married yet. So we will not be baptising any families. SAD! I hate men (except for the exceptionally wonderful men in my life of course). haha Both of the wives want to get married and baptised so bad but they can{t. While one of the husbands was explaining to us that he didnt want to get married yet for a few more months. The wife was practically in tears. She has been waiting so long to get baptised. Poor thing. But the good news is...we found some more positive investigators. One in particular is especially. We met her on Friday and she came to church on Sunday! And we didnt even have to pick her up and walk with her. She just showed up on her own. We were so happy! Her name is Mari and she comes from a VERY humble family. She is 21, has a 7 year old daughter and is pregnant. She is the sweetest little thing in the world. Her profession is selling food in the streets. She walks around in the streets alllllll day long with a huge container on her head and yelling what food she is selling that day. She told us..."I was praying that I would find you guys in the street on Saturday so that I could give you some of my tamales". hehe Cutest thing ever! She wants to get baptised but not yet. We{ll see what happens with that.

As far as nursing stuff goes. We went to another zone this week. Its called Coatepeque. It was fun. We just taught a little bit about health to the zone and then we did divisions with the Hermanas there. It is super fun to see other areas in the mission and to be able to do divisions with the sisters. I think my favorite thing about traveling though is the buses. They are hilarious! It is just pure craziness. Some of my favorite parts of a bus ride are - LOUD music, men falling asleep on my shoulder, SUPER fast driving, preachers jumping on the bus and preaching so loud that it hurts my ears, and chickens that people brought on the bus flying over my head. One person had a box full of chickens that they brought on the bus and they started to get out of the box and he didnt realize it. They started flying over our heads and finally someone told him so he was running around the bus trying to catch his chickens. When he finally got some, he asked me to hold a few while he tried to catch the others. HAHA! I LOVE it here.

Ok, Im going to tell you something scary that I found out this week but dont freak out or do anything stupid like call the mission to make sure Im safe or anything like that ok? I can assure you that I am perfectly safe and following all the rules and NOTHING is going to happen to me. But we have been visiting this inactive member and something very sad happened to her daughter. She was walking to buy tortillas with her 6 month old baby and someone kidnapped her. A lot of people saw who is was. It was a tuc tuc driver. And he shoved them both in his tuc tuc and took off. They have been gone for 17 days and the mom has not heard anything. Here{s the real sad part though. Everyone knows who the man is and what number the tuc tuc is (number 525 - dont worry, I have my eyes peeled for the tuc tuc always!) And the police know who he is and everything but they are not doing anything about it because the family has ZERO money to pay them. So the man that took them passes by their house and will stop and talk to them and rub it in their face that he took her daughter. And NO ONE DOES ANYTHING!!!!!! They dont know if she{s alive, where she is, nothing! The poor mom is always crying, poor thing. And this happened very close to our church in perfect daylight! I wanna beat those stupid policeman up! And the horrible man! That is the 2nd inactive member that we have visited that has gotten kidnapped. The other one has money though so she came back really fast.

Well now that I got that horribly depressing story over with.....I GOT YOUR PACKAGE! I was the happiest person ever! The Elders were very very jealous cause it was soooo huge! It was BETTER than Christmas!! Everything was perfect and fits me like a glove. I have already gotten so many compliments on the clothes and everything. I listened to the tape like 50 times at least. That was my favorite part. And dont worry,I am already filling up the other tape very fast. Thank you sooooooooooooo much! You{re the best!

Changes are next week already! I can{t even believe it! This change went by faster than alll the other ones I think. The baptisms have been horrible in the zone though. We have only had 3 baptisms in the entire zone. 2 of them were from us and 1 from the other Hnas in the zone. We usually have around 15-20 just so you know how bad that is.

Well I have nothing more of value to say but I love you all soooo much! Thank you for all your letters and love and support! Talk to you next week!!

Love, Hermana Kami Alyse Alston

August 15th

Hello familia!

Well as you can tell by the subject of this letter, I'm really not sure what to say. For some reason my mind is completely blank and I cant think of anything to tell you. Normally I'm just typing as fast as I can to get everything in! So I apologise ahead of time for my boring letter.

One super exciting thing that happened this week is.....SANDY AND EVELYN GOT BATISED! It was super interesting trying to get the signature from Evelyn's mom. I had never seen this women in my life after living here for 7 months!! She is M.I.A always! BUT we finally found her in the house and signed without any problems. I think she just wanted us to leave as soon as possible. haha It was precious though cause after the baptism, they just couldnt stop smiling and kept on saying....I just feel so happy! I'm just so happy! Love that.

I'm afraid, however, that I have come to hate Sundays. That's a bummer huh? Sunday's used to be my favorite day! Yesterday we went to go get Sandy Evelyn so we could walk with them to church. It was especially important that they go because they were going to get comfirmed and recieve the Holy Ghost in sacrament meeting. Well we actually woke both of them up and we ended up being 20 minutes late to sacrament meeting. We missed the sacrament and they had to get confirmed at almost the end of the meeting. Oh good heavens. I always end up being so stressed and annoyed because our investigators are like 30 minutes late. Or people lie to us all day long and tell us that they will be there when really they have no intentions of being there at all. And I don't know what it is but it seems like every Sunday, we get at least 3 really rude people chew us out. But that's ok, one day my Sunday's will be peaceful once again. haha

Well it turns out that one of the families that we are teaching will most likely get baptised the 27th of this month. That is if all goes smoothly. They will get married and baptised the same night! How happy!! I just LOVE her! She is always giving us hugs and acting like our mom. So darling.

So here is a funny story just to show you how "religious" people are here. First, you need to know that around Reu there are GIANT pilas. Like its the size of a swimming pool and people can go there for free and wash there clothes or bathe or whatever. There is one right next to our house. Anyways, I didnt actually see this but my comp was telling me about it. Apparently there is a "John the Baptist" day. And on this very special day, they had a dance party in alllll the pilas. You could choose whichever one was closest to you and there was a disco ball and super loud music and a dance party INSIDE the pila! bahaha! I love Guatemala. Have I mentioned that?

Another random funny story. We were at a lesson teaching Sandy and Evelyn and Sany's 90 year old grandma was there sitting on the bed. She is darling but bless her heart can't hear very good. So anyways, somebody said something funny and we all starting cracking up. But the thing is, is she thought we were laughing at her so she raised her arms up in the air and started waving them and laughing like a witch (trying to imitate us) and kept doing it for quite a long time. We were all staring at her and when she stopped she said "why would you say that God doesn't answer my prayers?!?! He DOES hear me and he LOVES me!!!! You are all going to be punished! God is going to punish you for making fun of me! You just wait! He will PUNISH you!!!" haha! Poor little thing. I felt bad but was DYING on the inside trying not to laugh. Don't worry, Sandy explained to her very nicely that we were not laughing at her and that God definitely does listen to her prayers.

Well fam, sorry that's all I got for you but if I am lucky and my computer works, I will send some good pictures to make up for my boring letter. LOVE YOU ALLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY PDAY!

Love, Hermana Kami Alyse Alston

Me and Hna Hidalgo. LOVE HER! Oh p.s. in our interviews, pres said that we were probably gonna get moved together this transfer to open a new area. woohoo! But he always changes his mind and therefore cannot be trusted.

One of the hoodlums that we teach. He drew me that pic. :)

The cleaning guy at the church. He generally only talks to us with hand motions. That's why we are doing weird things. I LOVE HIM!

The driver of the tuc tuc's baby daughter was shoved in the back of the tuc tuc! haha!

Car wash pics that I never sent.

August 8th

This week went by soooo fast! I swear, every week is going by faster and faster! Holy cow! This week was really good. We worked VERY hard. We are really trying to baptise a family this month. That is our goal. We have a few positive families that we are teaching but they all have something major standing in the way. That is not to say that they{re not going to get baptised, its just gonna take a little more work and time thats all.

We are teaching 2 families right now and in both of the cases, the "husband" is an inactive member and the "wife" is not a member. I put "husband and wife" in parentheses because they are actually not married. Very few people get married here unfortunately. They just live together their whole lives. They both have been living together for more than 10 years and never plan to separate. So we are trying to get them married ASAP so the wives can get baptised. Both of them want to get baptised and married but they say it's "reeeally fast!!!". We tell them that it is DEFINITELY not fast. They have been living with eachother for 10 years now for heavens sake! But we{re working hard for those baptisms for the end of this month.

Sandy is getting baptised this Saturday so we are very excited for that. And her friend Evelyn WAS going to get baptised with her but we had a few hangups so it will need to be postponed.

All of our leaders have been pushing and pushing us to work with the members. Get references for them, teach with them, contact with them, everything! So we have been trying to be good little missionaries and follow their advice. So we{ve been working a lot with them and they{ve been teaching lessons with us a lot. Well now, I am beginning to think that that wasnt the best idea. Here are some experiences we{ve had with that.

- We were teaching a reference from a member and in the middle of the lesson, they bring each of us some hot freshly made coffee. Me and my companion respectfully decline and explain that as members of the church, we cannot drink coffee. RIGHT after we were done explaining, the member that we brought with us shouts "I CAN DRINK IT!" and grabs the cup out of the investigators hand. Thank you member. Very helpful.

- We were in a lesson teaching about the Joseph Smith story. After the lesson we invited the investigators to pray and ask God if the story was true and we promised them that they would get an answer that it was true. After that, we asked the member to share with the investigators how they recieved their answer that the church was true. She went into an elaborate story of how she was praying alone in her room and she asked God if the story of Joseph Smith was true when Joseph Smith walked through her bedroom door and smiled at her. She knew from then on that Joseph Smith restored the gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh dear. It was fun trying to fix that one.

- We were in a similar situation this time and we asked a Recent Convert to share with the investigators how they recieved their answer that the church was true. He also went into an elaborate story about how he was praying and shared that he had the same dream every night for 1 week where he saw a white circle in his dreams. And that was his answer! What does a white circle have to do with the church being true you ask? I have no idea.

Oh how I love the members here though. I really do, with all my heart and soul! hehe

Here are a few funny things that happened this week.

- We have a really creepy, 50 ish year old neighbor and he grabbed my hand and told me that he would love nothing more than to have a person like me as his companion. He said that he has plans to return home with me and ask me hand in marraige. Creepy.

- We were teaching a less active member and she was really wanted to prove to us that she could read. First, you have to understand that only about 50% of the people here can read. And you can pretty much count that if they are older than 45 years, they cant read. So she wanted to PROVE it to us. She made us pick a random scripture, "ANY ONE! PICK ANY ONE and Ill read it to you to show you how well I can read!" haha! Did I mention that she is like 60 years old. So cute.

- A drunk man walked up to me in the street and started yelling at me and pointing his finger at me. He was very drunk and I could only understand about 50% of what he was saying but I did catch that he tried to go to the United States and they wouldnt let him and its "ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!!!!" hehe Oops. I should have thought a little harder before I made that law.

Well family, that{s all Ive got for you today. I hope I didnt bore you to tears. The church is definitely true!! It is amazing how many times a day the Holy Ghost testifies of that to me. Every time I hear the story of Joseph Smith or testify of the Book of Mormon, I just feel the most wonderful feeling ever and I know its true! I love you all! Have a FANTASTIC WEEK!

- Hermana Kami Alyse Alston