Ten White Shirts: Pragmatics and Faith in Chimaltenango

I recently had the chance to sit down with Elder Hall and Elder West, two young men who came to Chimaltenango as missionaries with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We drank some mint tea and had a great chat. We talked about their own personal experiences as missionaries, what it felt like to make the transition from high school to Guatemala, and what they feel they are learning about their own faith and their own individuality. We also talked about the role of the Church of LDS here in El Tejar, its larger structure within the country and abroad, and some administrative techniques the church uses to maintain uniform pedagogy throughout the world. Lastly, I invited them both to talk about how they see themselves in relation to their communities, both here and at home, and to consider the role of active citizenship within everyday life. I've written out some excerpts from our conversation below, but I would like to encourage everyone to sit back and listen to our whole conversation, which is available through the audio links below.




Sometimes I get a thought, like, "Wow, I'm in Guatemala and I won't be home for two more years."

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As missionaries we have a pretty strict schedule. We wake up at six-thirty in the morning and we do half an hour of exercise. Seven to eight is our time to eat breakfast, get ready. From eight to nine we do a personal study of the scriptures, and from nine to ten we do a study as a companionship, so that we are on the same page throughout the day. From ten to eleven we do a language study, where we can get better in Spanish, or if we are with Guatemalans they might study English with us. From eleven to one we are out on the street. It's called proselytizing time. If we have an appointment we'll go to someone's house and teach, if we don't have anything we'll just walk down the street and talk with random people. If we see someone who needs help, we help chopping wood, or whatever we need to do. We go home from one to two and we eat. From two until nine, or nine-thirty, we're out in the street doing the same for the rest of the day.

As missionaries we have a goal to contact and talk to twenty people a day, twenty random people, so about one hundred and forty throughout the week. With this, after two years you go home having talked to thousands and thousands of people. A lot of the people who you talk to, well, the conversations get pretty exciting.

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It's always out there: when you're nineteen you go on a mission. It's not obligatory, but growing up I always thought I would go on a mission. Then, in ninth or tenth grade, with all of my friends in my life, I kind of lost my desire. I said, "I want to go on a mission, I'm going to lose so much time, you know?" I thought, "So many more people are on a higher spiritual level than me, I'm not going to be able to go out and do that." Finally, in my senior year, I started investigating the mission, weighing my options, and I decided to go. The last summer I worked my butt off to make enough mone, because as missionaries you pay your own way. The church doesn't pay for anything. For two years, it works out to be about ten thousand dollars per missionary. It's cheaper for me to be here, but the money we pay is distributed to support missionaries in other parts of the world, as well, and it wouldn't be fair if I paid less than they did.

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All day long we just wear white shirts and slacks, so you have to get your wardrobe of ten white shirts, your ties, your shoes that are going to last you for two years.

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I knew that the mission would change me, but I didn't know in what ways. A lot of times people will ask me a spiritual question in their house, and I'll be dumbfounded. We say "I have no idea, but let me go home, I'll study it, let us come back in two or three days and I'll tell you what I've studied, what answer I get." I keep a little book of questions people have asked me that I didn't know how to answer. Then I go home and study it.

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The best thing for me has been to come and to learn from other people. A lot of people think we (Mormons) come here knowing everything...but I learn so much everyday from people who think they don't know anything.

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It helps a lot, being a more friendly person, going out and experiencing things--kind of taking things into your own hand and making them happen yourself, rather than sitting around waiting for other things to happen.

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We have a scripture that says "Don't seek to declare my word. First seek to obtain my word. Then, if you want, your tongue will be loose, unto the convincing of men."

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In Guatemala they are much more open to the idea of religion, and they're much more loud about it...In the states, if you saw a church with a speaker on the roof and you heard their whole session, people screaming and bands playing, other people would get angry. You don't hear about people making complaints. Here there's more freedom.

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We do activities in the church where we get together and we eat a bunch of food. We'll do hamburgers, hotdogs, barbecue in the states. Here, they call it a churrasco. You get together, you get your meat, your tortillas, your rice and beans, and that's your basic meal. I love it. It's delicious. Whenever you have a group activity there's always food. Without food there's no fun. Food, I think, brings together the worst of enemies.
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A lot of people think that missionary work is just full-on teaching the gospel, non-stop. You do teach, but also through your example, Being part of your community, walking around the streets is fun. Helping people build a fence, helping people carry wood, being active in the community makes you feel good about yourself. I would say I'm more active here in Guatemala than I was in my own home.

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Sometimes I think, "Man, I would never have guessed, three years ago, that I would be walking down a Guatemalan street and ten people would yell my name, because they know me,and not just as a missionary, but by name.