My Families, My Countries

I had an amazing experience this past Saturday. I was at my lovely job when a man came in to purchase a MoneyGram. Almost immediately he said, "you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?" 

 I looked at him for a second and replied, "I don't know. You look very familiar too. Did you work at ***?" 

 "No," he said, and he turned to his MoneyGram form to continue filling it out. 

I watched him as he did. As soon as he wrote down his last name,I thought I had it. "De donde eres?" (Where are you from?) I asked. 

"De Guatemala." 

 Continuing the conversation in Spanish I said, "Really! I served my mission there!" 

 "In what part?" 

 I had served in four different areas while I was there, but I was pretty sure I knew who he was at this point, so I answered, "El Tejar." 

It turned out I was right on the money. Ten years earlier, while I was serving in his hometown of El Tejar, Chimaltenango, he returned from his mission. I had met him then, and I had known the rest of his family even better. I had eaten my meals at his oldest brother's house every day for six months. I was ecstatic to see him. My mind took a trip to the clouds for a while, and I even temporarily forgot how to do my job. My brain was occupied in other pursuits as so many memories I had thought irretrievably lost flooded back. 

I asked him about all of the people I had left behind, and he rewarded me with the knowledge that all were well. He had married an American girl from Manti, Utah and had been living there for the last seven years. He and his family were moving down here to Hurricane, Utah, of all places, where he has a job at Costco. Now my wife could testify to how excited I get just to meet someone from Guatemala. Suddenly my understanding is perfect, and my normally shaky Spanish becomes fluent. I love to hear news from my second home country. 

But in ten years, I had not run into someone I knew from Guatemala one time. The best that I could do to describe the emotion to my wife was to say that it felt just like when I disembarked from that plane ten years earlier and saw my family for the first time in two years. Indeed, the people of Guatemala, and especially my friends from Guatemala, hold a piece of my heart, and I have adopted them into my extended family—my brothers and sisters, hermanos y hermanas.