Joy's official letter # 1         June 7, 2016

Joy Ashton	11:00 AM (4 hours ago)

When I lost visual of you guys at the airport and went through security, they stopped me and looked though all my stuff so when the other missionaries came through we were all done at the end and walked to a big group of missionaries. 

I am in a trio companionship with Hermana Speth and Hermana Houston, both from Utah and both are funny. I thought I would be a crier here, but I am really doing fine. Sorry about that. I do love you guys, but it isn’t bad. The food here is delicious and there really aren’t any worries besides learning the language and not being able to understand my teachers. 

Oh, the Guatemala mail system is down so I won’t be able to receive any letters or packages as long as I am here. Also, the mission president in El Salvador sent this:

 "The postal system here in El Salvador is very unreliable so please tell your parents and loved ones to NOT send packages by private mail systems like UPS, DHL express, FedEx, etc. If they do the packages will be stuck in airport customs and we will not be able to retrieve them. Please tell your loved ones to send packages by US mail as these will arrive directly to our office without any fees or problems. The address to send both packages and letters to is:

 Sister Ashton

El Salvador San Salvador East Mission

PO Box # 3362

San Salvador, El Salvador

Central America"

Since it is so hot here, we sleep with the window open and so one morning at 5 am, I woke up to all the birds chirping and singing. There were some that would coo and some that would sing the same phrase of 15154 over and over and over and over. It would not stop.  There were also some that Cawwwwed which was the reason I woke up so early. I thought it was the alarm. Too bad that bird didn’t wake us up the next day because all of us slept through the alarm so we only had 13 minutes to be ready and down at breakfast. 

We have a very full schedule here and not a minute to spare. We have to copy the schedule into our agendas. That is the not so fun part. 

I am glad to hear that all of you are learning languages and that you are all practicing hard. That is a tiny taste of the suffering here, but don’t you worry. I will get it, dang it, if it is the last thing I do. 

The CCM  (MTC) is surrounded by metal fences and it is watched by guards the whole time, so I really am not worried about safety at all. Haha last night there were a lot of booms (not gun shots daddy.....) and Hermana Silva joked that they were just people rehearsing revolutionary war reenactments and the shots were fireworks for the Fourth of July... in Guatemala. That was pretty funny. The girls are all great and one of them went to Skyline. Her name is Ellery Howorth. So we had stuff to talk about and in common right off. 

Thanks to everyone who emailed me!  They are so fun to receive. I loved the pictures so whatever pictures you want to send are welcome. But like I said, the mail system here is broken so don’t send me any prints.

My p-day is Tuesday for now so send me your emails before then! I will try to read through all of them and reply!

I’ve gotten to the point where I am getting ok at praying in Spanish, so that is good.  Instead of saying "Dear Heavenly Father" every two minutes, I am saying "Querido Padre Celestial" so I would say that is a good thing. I’m working hard but it is hard. Just know that I can whip out a "Dios nos ama" any time you need it. 

I love you and I know that I am receiving the blessings from your prayers!

Love, 

Hermana Ashton