2015-02-23 Challenges and Blessings

Hey guys! This past week has been pretty crazy... actually one of the weirdest and frustrating weeks of my mission.

On Monday, we just went around saying goodbye to people with Elder R.  He is a great guy and I know that he will do better from now on out.  I was really touched because we had a good, long talk about how he turned it around with me.  Good guy, good missionary.

On Tuesday, we had changes and I received Elder G from El Salvador.  He has 7 months in the mission.   This past week has been the most challenging in the mission comp. wise... but we'll get to that later. 

After changes we went back to our area, and visited members and investigators, and as we were walking up this hill in the bottom of our area, these 2 cops stop us and say "drop your bags, and spread out on the wall."  They searched us and did a pat down, the cop even tapped my balls to make sure I wasn’t hiding a gun or something down there!  Haha I was laughing the whole time, and my comp was sooooo scared!  He says "we are missionaries!” and the cop says "I don't care if you have money!"  Haha and my comp looked like he was going to crap his pants.  They looked in our bags and books for stuff, and then took down our names. 

Wednesday, crazy stuff passed too, we went to an appointment at 2 in the afternoon and as we enter the house this old guy is having a seizure on the floor, so we pick him up and put him on the bed and he just keeps having these seizure attacks off and on, and he could barely breathe.  So we call the ambulance and like typical Guatemala emergency service, the ambulance did not come and we were waiting there with the guy practically dying there for about 45 minutes, and so we just went and got a taxi to take him to the hospital.  He is okay now.

Thursday, we saw a dead body on the street.  A group of people were surrounding the crime scene and I guess the guy was shot like 4 times and the cops were all running around looking for the bad guy.  We passed the scene on the way to an appointment and it was sad.  Then about an hour after we contacted a house and a guy let us in, all tattooed, and as we were teaching the lesson, he stopped us and talked about how he was an ex gang boss and how he had killed many guys, and how there are people from the other gang looking for him etc.  You could see death in his eyes... it was weird.  I felt bad and sick in the whole lesson.  I have only felt that way a few times in my mission in houses like that.

Hahaha oh well, we will see how things unfolds, time to crack the whip and straighten things out.  But other than that, I am loving the mission.  I love what I do and the people I meet!  Have a great week guys! Take Care!

2015-02-16 Staying in Beautiful Alameda

02/16/15

Hey guys, well another week down here and the change comes to an end.  My companion has changes and I am staying here in Alameda.  It was a fun run with the kid.  He is super sad to be leaving because this is his first area, but it is all good.  We got a lot of work done here in the area this past week and we taught and found a whole bunch of people. 

I was talking to Elder F this past week, and he will be going home on Wednesday.  It is crazy how time just flies away here.  Time goes by and you look back and say "how did I get here?" haha.  But everything is going well here. 

I did divisions with the other area in my district, and we got a lot of work done.  I went with this guy from Blackfoot Idaho, named Elder S, and he is great.  Has about 7 months in the mission, and was kind of down about everything because the work was moving slow in his area, but we just went in there and tore it up.  He came out happy and with the excitement needed to keep going.  I love helping others. 

I was reading in the teachings of the prophets that Wilford Woodruff said in a temple dedication that the portals of the heavens were opened and the destroying angels were loosed upon the earth in 1894 and that things would get tougher and tougher as time went on.  I read an article and a study that said that since that year the number of wars and destructions grew substantially.  That made me think that if the angels were already sent down to begin the separation of the wheat and the tare as it says in the scriptures, we are in the last days.  Things are coming to a close, and those that are not willing to work and strive in the faith will be burned with the other unworthy and unwilling servants.  Things may get bad, but do not lose hope.  Keep the faith, and work hard in the service of your God.  Others have agency, but our duty is to fulfill our calling to the best of our ability.  And like it says, if we continue faithful until the end, we will receive a crown of glory, and all the things the Father has, we will be partakers of those blessings too.

I love you guys, have a great week!

02/09/15

Hey guys, how are you all doing?  This past week was great and we got a lot of work done.  Finally are getting a good number of people to go to church, but we still need to find more investigators that really want to progress.  We lost some baptism dates because of unseen factors, and my comp. and I sat down to really assess what is going on.  We talked it out and had some help from the leaders and we started to act and attack the work in a different way.  After that, things started to fall into place and go well.  Just work. 

Nothing much happened this week.  It seems like drunks are always attracted to us.  I feel like this week we have been approached by more drunks than ever in my mission.  They always say "hello mah friend" and try to speak English, and my comp. gets the most of it because he is whiter than me.  They think I am the Latino and he is the gringo.  But other than that a good and sobering week.

Love you guys, take care!

2015-02-02 The Lord's Luchador

Hey guys! I am glad to hear everything is going well over there in that part of the world.  We had a good week.  We just got back from the Church Area Offices in zone 10 so we kind of just had a slow p-day, didn’t do much.

This past week was great and we had a baptism.  The baptism was for K.R.  She is a young woman, 15 years old.  She was referred by one of the members.  We started teaching her 7 weeks ago and since she is under 18 years old, she needed to attend church several times before she can be baptized.  So we have been working with her a lot.  She is super, super great, one of those "Golden Investigators" that everyone talks about.  She reads the Book of Mormon everyday, prays, and picked up super quick on everything that we teach her.  She is the only member in her family, and her parents support her going to church, joining the church and attending the church activities.  The family said that they have seen a change in her since she started going to church, and they can see that she is super excited about it.  They have this calendar in the house and she marked all the Tuesdays in the year with "mutual" and the baptism date after the first time we talked about baptism.

The baptism service was good and it went smoothly.  One of the priests in the church baptized her, and everything went well.  Not as many people showed up as we expected or invited, but the important people to her showed up so at least that was good.  Guatemala reminds me of Hawaii because everyone here acts and does things on Hawaiian time... but oh well.  

Other highlights of the week, Friday I did divisions with the ZLs and we worked and everything was great.  Haha this week I have just been having bad stomach problems.  Oh I tell you it was soooooooo bad!   It was very hard holding it.

But things are going okay here.  Having so much fun.  We also bought nacho libre wrestling masks.

Well, have a good week, I love you guys, and take care!