Guatemala MTC

Hello everyone! Sorry about the late email. They changed our P Day

from Tuesday to Wednesday this week. Hopefully nobody was worried

about my life. From now on i'd advise you all to anticipate an email

at any time in the week because our schedule here at the Guatemala MTC

is crazy. Please also excuse any bad grammar or word formatting

because they have spanish keyboards here that are really hard to use

and the enter key doesn't work. So anyway, the plane rides were fine.

The hardest one was the flight from St. George to Salt Lake City. It

was a little bumpy but it wasn't bad. After that the flights to and

from L.A. and Guatemala City were smooth. Most of the missionaries

that were going to the Guatemala MTC met up in the Salt Lake airport.

Half of us were on one flight and the other half of us were on a later

flight. We arrived in Guatemala last Wednesday morning and were all

dead tired. They picked us up from the airport here and some really

ghetto yellow buses. On the inside of one of the buses there was a

rainbow sign above the drivers mirror that said "Jesus te Ama" (Jesus

loves you). The city is beautiful. They took away our digital cameras

for while we are at the MTC so I won't be able to send any pictures

for another 5 weeks. There are so many trees and plants everywhere.

I'm sitting in the computer lab at the MTC where there are windows

with an awesome view of the mountain and the temple just a block away.

I want to live here. The weather is mostly overcast right now.

Yesterday, during our physical activity time we were playing

volleyball with some other Elders and Hermanas and a huge rainstorm

hit. I stuck it out for a bit but it started raining so hard that It

was hard to see outside, so we just went into the gym and did some

p90x yoga with the other missionaries. They have been feeding us a lot

of food here! And they really stress to us about how we aren't

supposed to waste food so we have to eat all of it. Some of it is

really good and some of it is not that great. Anyways this week went

pretty quick. We have already been here one out of our six weeks.

Luckily, I havent been missing family too much. Today we went to the

temple and it is awesome. I definitely got a lot out of it this time.

Anyway, ill also share something spiritual since you all are waiting

for it. The teachers here are amazing. Most of them are from Guatemala

and they have all served missions. The teachers i have had are Hermana

Cuhce (pronounced almost like cookie), Hermano Morales, and Hermano

Romero. I just want to share an experience we had in class with

Hermano Romero. He taught us in the morning a couple of days last week

and was helping us with spanish grammar. After our lesson he bore his

testimony completely in spanish saying how he knew we would understand

it. It was so cool because he was talking normal spanish and EVERYONE

could understand everything he said. The spirit was very strong. I've

never felt so close to the gospel and the Savior as I have in this

past week in the MTC (CCM in Guatemala). I'm in a companionship trio

with Elder Wright and Elder Smith and they are both great guys. All

the Elders and Hermanas in my district have amazing spirits. On

sunday, we had a mock investigator lesson where two companionships

from our district were assigned to teach a lesson to our

investigators. The spirit was so strong in there when the Elders and

Hermanas taught. It will probably be my turn next Sunday. We also got

to see the broadcast of Boyd K. Packer's funeral and it was really

nice. Anyways, i'm watching a timer run down in the top corner of the

screen counting down and i don't have much time left. I'll just end by

saying thanks for all the support and emails from everyone. I

appreciate it a lot. The next 5 weeks are going to fly by and I cant

wait to send some pictures of the stuff i'm doing down here. Have a

great week everyone! Love, Elder Taylor (p.s. please remember to send

your emails by Sunday night so I can read them on P Day, thanks!)