Elder Tyson Dawson: Week 35 in the Field - Training Once Again, Tortillas, and Wisdom

Weekly Letter 22 of June 2015

We received the information about changes yesterday and I'll be staying here while Elder Uribe will be leaving. I will remain as District Leader and I will also be training. I'm excited to see who my new companion will be. I will meet him on Tuesday at the change meeting which is held in Zone 6 of Guatemala City. Elder Uribe was a great companion. He has a caring heart and a diligent attitude and will surely be missed here in Minerva.

This week I again had the opportunity to go on a division with an Elder in my district, this time with Elder Farnsworth from Fountain Green, Utah. Elder Farnsworth is 19 and has six weeks less than I do in the mission. He serves in a relatively dangerous area called Tierra Nueva (New Earth). His area is about a thirty minute walk away from mine. In the division we were able to talk to a lot of people in the street, I met former gang member who was shot in the spine and is now confined to a bed, and we met a nice older couple to whom we taught about the restoration and ate snow cones in their living room after the lesson. We learned a lot from each other and overall it was a great division.

We had a great baptism this week for Cristian Ramirez. The baptismal service held immediately after a Faith in God activity for the Primary children so we had a great turnout at the service and the primary kids sang and gave Cristian a warm welcome to the primary.

Elsa Lima has her baptismal interview scheduled for Wednesday and her baptism for this Saturday. She bought a coffee made with grains instead of coffee beans and hasn't had a sip of regular coffee since. Guatemala is a huge producer of coffee beans and pretty much everybody drinks coffee here. Interestingly, Elder Falabela, a seventy, is the owner of a company that makes a product called Morcaff. Morcaff is a coffee-like beverage made from toasted wheat and barley and other grains. It is cheaper than regular coffee and people say it tastes like normal coffee. Morcaff is a mix of the words Mormon and Cafe (the Spanish word for coffee). They sell the product in every super market and this is what Elsa bought to overcome her habit. We are really excited for her baptism and we know her son who is service a mission in Argentina is even more excited.

People always ask me what the food is like here so I guess I'll take a little bit of time to explain Guatemalan food. My daily diet consists primarily in the staple ingredients of bread, milk, cereal, peanut butter, cheese, beans, tortillas, sour cream, avocados, and vegetables. Bread, peanut butter, cheese, beans, and produce are largely the same here in Guatemala. Milk is different, normally sold as ultra-pasteurized milk that can be stored without need of refrigeration. Milk also comes in bags or boxes, not in jugs. Cereal is different because Guatemalans only receive certain American exports of cereal. I usually eat cap'n crunch while other favorites like Rice Crispies and Cheerios are non-existant and others like Lucky Charms have ridiculous costs. Tortilla play a huge role in Guatemalan cuisine, most people being unable to eat a meal without at least three tortillas. Tortillas are small and one tortilla costs about three cents of a US dollar. There made fresh in tortilla businesses that are to be found every hundred feet or so with absolutely no variency in quality or cost. Tortillas are made exclusively by hand. Dry corn is cooked and mashed and the mash is placed on a hot, round, stone surface over a fire. The tortilla is flipped once so as to be brownish on both sides and sold quickly becasue once cold they are not to be re-heated. Guatemalans do not eat tortillas like they are eaten in Mexican cuisine. In Mexican food the tortilla is used as a sort of food blanket to hold meat and other ingredients. In Guatemala, the tortilla is mostly used in between bites of other food. One bite of soup, one bite of the tortilla. A spoonful of beans, a mouthful of tortilla. In this way, the tortilla is much more of a nutritional addition to a meal that would normally be too little food to fill you up. Anyways, tortillas are super cheap and help us bring food costs down on our missionary budget. The food here is different and more simple but it's not bad.

I love you all and I hope everything is going well at home. I'd like to end my letter with a couple quotes. The first is from Apostle Sterling W. Sill who said:

"Now there's a flaming sword placed in the Garden of Eden to guard the tree of life, but fortunately for us there is no flaming sword guarding the tree of knowledge and each one of us may eat to his heart's content. Now maybe you can think of something that's more exciting than this but I don't know just what it would be: that we can have all of the information that we want on any subject, including the Plan of Salvation and the process by which we win eternal glory for ourselves."

Boyd K. Packer shared a similar sentiment about the value of knowledge in this verse of poetry:

I'm quite content to move ahead

to yield my youth, however grand

the thing I'd lose if I went back

is what I understand

My invitation is to seek wisdom and understanding through the discovery and application of eternal principles. Eat to your heart's content from the tree of knowledge and keep looking forward.

Elder Dawson