Suq na ak'ux taq??
Hello to everyone at the close of change 7 in the mission. You know what that means...almost a whole year in the mission. I really can hardly believe it. It's all going to be downhill from here and I already don't feel like I'm going to be ready to go back to the real world. Just having been in the cap for a month i just felt sort of out of place. I feel much more comfortable and normal in little villages and towns. 10 days until the big year mark.
Anyways, this week has been unexpectedly crazy. It started out on Monday when I got a call saying that I had an e-change and had to leave the next day. So I am NO LONGER in the capital! I am now in a place called Taktik. (tack-TEEK) It's the area closest to the Polochik actually, so it's about an hour or an hour and a half from Tukuru. It's a lot bigger than Tukuru but it has kind of the same feeling. The good news is that there are a lot more people here who speak Q'eqchi' than in the capital. The only thing is that Q'eqchi' isn't the language that the people speak normally in the little villages. It's another Mayan language called POQOMCHI'. So I am actually learning my 4th language now. I went and bought the very few books that exist about Poqom and have been studying Poqomchi' everyday since last Wednesday. (k'ahchi'kiin chi tijem i poqomchi' = I am in the process of learning Poqomchi'.) I have to say that I LOVE learning languages haha. I don't know why, but it facisnates me. Poqomchi' is kind of like Q'eqchi' only harder. There are some things that are pretty similar, for example like animals. A lot of of the animals are the same in Poqomchi' (also called Poqom sometimes) but it's really much, much different. Different enough that I don't understand anything in Poqomchi' even though I know Q'eqchi'. The hard thing is that, unlike Q'eqchi', there haven't been missionaries that have learned it really, or I guess I should say that have been called to learn it or anything like they do in Q'eqchi' now. I found out last night that i'll be staying in Taktik for this next change so I'm going to give it everything I've got to learn it and I'm going to talk to President Watts and try to start a Poqomchi' program that would be pretty much like the Q'eqchi' program only smaller. It's just hard to learn because there are really no books or anything that really teach you how to speak. So I'm starting to translate the Q'eqchi' grammar book into Poqomchi' so that we could maybe get something started. President Watts is apparently considering it and I really want him to do it. It would be really an amazing experience (like the elders who first started speaking Q'eqchi'.) So pray for me please! So many of these Poqom people don't know the gospel yet and I want to try to help bring them to the gospel.
Other than that it has been a good week. My new comp is Elder Escate from Peru. He's pretty cool, just pretty quiet. But we get along well and we are already starting to have success. We are going to baptize a little 8 year old girl whose mom is leaving her with her member sister-in-law to go to the US. So we're going to have that on Wednesday probably. We also have another really pilas couple that are for sure going to get baptized. The only thing left to do is pray over a date to do it! So its pretty exciting! The branch here is really awesome and I could feel the spirit a lot there yesterday so I'm excited to get to work here.
Well, sorry that this email is going to have to be cut a bit short but I have to write to President Watts and talk about Poqomchi' haha. But I love you all tons and I will write more next week as well as send a couple pictures of my new area here. Love you all tons! Keep choosing the right and praying every day. Don't let a day go by without following a prompting from the Holy Ghost. Love you!
Elder Norton
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