Show one post with post loop on homepage

Hi, I am having trouble with post loop. I want to show the most recent post from each category on the home page. But only one post with no next buttons. I also don’t want to show the entire post, just an excerpt. Right now it’s pulling all of the posts and adding navigation which I want to avoid. You can see what I mean at www.creativexscape.com.

I know the code that I want is showpost=1

But when I tried to add that and cat=22 to the post loop widget, it didn’t work. Any help is greatly appreciated as this is for a client.