Highlights from our phone call

By Leslie Smith:
Our very much anticipated Mother's Day phone call was more than we could have imagined! It was amazing to feel like a whole and complete family with all of five of us talking together. Here are a few interesting things we learned:

Tucuru has a population of both Spanish and Qeqchi. Church meetings are a little tricky. The prayers are offered twice (once in each language) and the Sacrament meeting talks are assigned one in Spanish and the other in Qeqchi.

They are going to start teaching an English class to the people once a week. He gave us a short Qeqchi lesson which was fun!

He is used to the weather being in the high 90's most of the time. The other day, it had been cloudy and rainy for about 4 days straight. When they got home they put on sweats and hoodies because they were freezing. They looked over at the thermometer and it said 75 degrees!! He's going to be in BIG trouble when he comes home to Utah in February and the average temperature is in the 20's and 30's.

"Caldo" is the normal meal that he eats at people's houses. But the food there doesn't resembles his grandma's guatemalan cooking at all! Caldo in his area consists of a very spicy broth and a piece of chicken.

His typical diet consists of oatmeal for breakfast, ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch, and a Top Ramen-type soup for dinner. With an occasional can of beans.

He is absolutley in love with the Qeqchi language. He loves how simple the vocabulary is and how things aren't "nouns" but are described. For example, he said there is no word for "coffin." Instead it is described as "the box where you hide the dead."

He feels very comfortable in both languages now and said that he would be embarrassed if he was asked to offer a prayer in English because he can't really remember how to do it anymore.

We talked about college majors and classes, sports ...well, just football really, his mission buddies and activities they've had, the new mission president coming, and so much more.

We ended with a family prayer again. This time, however, Brendan offered it. It's fun listening to Jordan say it in another language, but we felt that he needed to hear his Dad say it and feel of our love and support as he is the one that is far away from family. At the end it was so hard to say goodbye, like always. Especially knowing that it will be 7 long months until we hear from him again at Christmas. We had to be strong, say "Goodbye. We love you" and hang up....Jordan didn't hang up the phone until all of us did first.

We also got a CD with hundreds of pictures, his old scriptures, and some traditional handbags. So cool!! I will post some of those pictures on the blog later this week. For now, we are still waiting to hear from him this week as he had Zone Conference this past Monday and Tuesday.