New companion, New Area!

Group Picture...I assume his district along with the stray dogs!

Ben with Elder Martinez, Jorge and Dorian on the day

of their baptisms! (I don't know which boy

is which because Ben didn't specify)

Hey Piercing Family,

If I was a Guatemalan right now I would be chuckling at the seeming similarity between the last name of Pearson and the word piercing. But I´m not so I´m not. But seriously, I get that all the time haha. It´s funny to me that they find it so funny. I love this place.

So anyway, the news is in. I had changes and am now in Linda Vista in the area of Amatitlan with a new companion from Honduras, Elder Cruz. I was made Senior Companion which I wasn´t expecting and am slightly nervous about haha, but I´m learning as always. I´m very excited to be with Elder Cruz. He is the complete opposite of Elder Martinez. He is very humble and very quiet, but wants to work hard. It´s cool because he entered with me, so there is the cool mix of two people figuring things out instead of an older missionary just making all of the decisions.

So for the area. The ward here is very strong and I had the strangest feeling of deja vu entering the ward. I felt as if I was coming from Ohio and coming to Grandma and Grandpa´s ward in Utah because everyone was a returned missionary, there´s many generational families, and everyone is just a big mormon family. It´s such a different dynamic compared to my old ward so I have some adjusting to do. I´m used to having more of the responsibilty in the ward because many people don´t follow through, but now I just feel unrelied on haha. Anyways I hope I adjust quickly.

Being senior companion is weird. It is more of a learn how to do missionary work on your own thing, instead of just giving suggestions to your older companion. It´s a good learning experience though and I´m trying to do what I can to learn the area quickly and start applying some of the things I would have loved to do in my other area. The investigators here don´t have great potential so we´ll see.

I was mostly sad to leave the other area because of Beatriz. She was crying when I told her I was leaving which actually surprised me a lot, but it made me sad that I wasn´t going to be able to see her baptism.

Well I will write more next week of course but I love you!

-Ben