Tuesday, April 17, 2012

4-16-12




Moms,
That is sweet on Landon's mission call! I am soooo stoked for him. Yeah August is forever long to wait though, that would have killed me ha-ha. But he should love it.

We have had fun with the weather too lately, rain season has almost set in I think. We had some after effects from a hurricane this week too everyone was telling us. On Saturday we were up on the mountain and walking home from some visits and we got caught in some rain. I don’t know, rain might not be the word to describe it. Torrential downpour is a little more like it. The road was completely flooded, probably a good 6 inches of just water. No raincoat or umbrella so made for an interesting afternoon.

I can’t believe the wedding is here though, that’s so weird to think that my brother will be married when I get home. Just cant really wrap my mind around that.

This week the entire mission had the goal to contact 40 new people, and make return appointments with them. Which meant we basically had to contact all day every day. People will always talk to us here, but to get them to let us comeback is always a little tricky, especially since the whole world is ¨catholic¨. But, it was kind of fun actually to knock doors for the first time in my mission, made me think, what do missionaries in the states do all day everyday?

 Here missionaries are kind of like ward doctors, any kind of problem, call the missionaries. Bishop is fighting with his counselors, call the elders, the relief society president insulted the primary president because her tostadas just didn’t quite make it up the par on the taste scale, call the elders. So yeah, we just prevent the entire ward from going inactive, and then teach the references that the members give us. In the states there is no way the wards are like that, so what do the missionaries do all day? I don’t know? Contact I guess. So I felt almost like I normal missionary this week.

We did just about die though this Thursday. We were in this really kind of jungly area trying to find some houses to visit and stuff, and walked up to this one that was kind of up on a hill, we could see a man out on his patio and a few dogs laying there, so when we yelled up a buenas tardes to this guy, he didn’t even look around. So my comp yelled again and that very second like 10 huge dogs just came bolting out of the house. The guy didn’t even move, and these dogs were soooo mad. We are kind of running off, my comp was swinging his backpack and everything at one of them, and out of nowhere this 90 year old lady just runs out of some trees, swearing up a storm at these dogs (I definitely learned some new words ha-ha) and just starts beating these dogs with her walking stick. I have never heard so many swear words in such a small time. She absolutely was going to town on these dogs too, grandma was not happy. But we talked to her for a little bit, she didn’t want us to come back, I couldn’t really understand her, she only had 3 teeth. I feel like the story would have been a lot cooler if we ended up baptizing her, but nope ha-ha. She is catholic.
 
Anyways, that’s about all that I can remember that is newsworthy for the week. Les quiero, talk to you soon.
Adam
PS the one picture of me standing by the giant puddle, that’s the road.

Monday, April 9, 2012

4-9-12



Moms,

Well, this week was really kind of a waste. Pulled zeros in almost every single category, except baptisms and confirmations, but I will cover that in a bit. On Tuesday I was still on divisions with another Norte who is about to die, he has like 23 months I think, so he just wanted to go sight seeing in my area.




Fun little fact, I have the largest area in the mission. My area covers all of the Cuchamatons, this whole mountain range, and its giant, so I can basically go anywhere we want to on these mountains and it’s in my area, so naturally we decided to go to the top. We went to this little town called Mirador, and just kind of walked around. We road up in a micro bus, kind of like a van, and it took about 2 hours just to drive up this mountain, but it was really cool. We could see this really cool old style house and we wanted to go check that out so we hiked over to it. It was super sweet, there were these little kids that were playing in it and they told us that it used to be an American doctor that lived there. Super cool views though, I will send some pics.
 



After that, because its Semana Santa, the biggest holiday of the year here, we literally just went to house after house, appointment after appointment of nobody being home. Not a single person, no members, no investigators, nothing. So rough. Everyone leaves on vacation and stuff, none of the stores are open, and everyone else is just outside plastered drunk. Its awful ha-ha. We would just get yelled at by drunks everywhere we went.

I had to go down to Xela on Thursday for a Spanish examine (new missionary test, super easy) and we had to pay a "took-took" (little taxi things) like 100 quetzales to get us to Huehue because there wasn’t even busses from Chiantla to Huehue. Even the bus drivers go on vacation.

People are just straight delusional here too, we saw our neighbors one day and they were soooo excited to talk to us, they were just asking us if we were going to go see Jesus, we were just kind of like, what the heck are you talking about? And she literally tells me ¨Jesus is the in the Catholic church right now, you guys should talk to him, you guys believe in Jesus right?¨  I was just thinking to myself, 1) I walk around all day with a name tag that literally says in bold letters, Jesus Christ, yes I believe in Jesus...2) Of course when Jesus comes again, he is going to come to Chiantla Guatemala and just chill in a Catholic church all day. But these people literally believed that Jesus and his apostles were here.

Also, on Friday, the day of processions, they crucify him. Not even kidding, we weren’t allowed to leave the house because they crucify Jesus in Central Park. What? Where am I right now ha-ha? They all carry crosses around town all day, and then at night, they tie some guy to a cross in central park. I am pretty sure if the resurrected Christ came with the second coming and all, he is not going to willingly crucify himself again, right? I am not alone with that logic, right? So glad its over. But they don’t even celebrate Easter, Sunday is not even a holiday, they don’t even understand why Jesus got crucified, they just celebrate the crucifixion and not even the Resurrection, that’s the whole point and they don’t even celebrate it ha-ha, like if he died and wasn’t resurrected, what was the point of him dying?

This place needs a little bit more common sense. But Easter was great, since I went to Xela on Thursday, I got both of the Easter packages I had, one from you one from Heather, before Easter. Amazing, also kind of unheard of, actually got mail on time. And Grandma sending the peanut butter eggs? They were gone before I had even finished unpacking the rest of the stuff ha-ha. Soooo good, just tell her to have a platter of those ready for me when I get home, I would love to eat about a hundred of those straight off the airplane. But the package was awesome, thanks for all of that, great thinking with the tie, the Uno, and the candy. Wow, you’re the best.

We also had a little bit of an Easter miracle, we went and brought the lady and her family who was supposed to get baptized yesterday to church with us, and when we were waiting for the bus to come, her 18 year old daughter who had told us she wanted nothing to do with the church, even though she sat through every lesson and attended church every week for like two months, just walked up to me and said, ¨Elder Morrow, I have a question, can I get baptized today? Also can you do it? ¨ I might have heard a choir of angels start singing Halleluiah in the background, I am pretty sure a rainbow appeared behind her right after she said that too. I was just kind of dumbstruck, didn’t really know how to respond ha-ha. Just kind of told her uhhh, let me see what I can do, and I had the district leader come to our church building to do an interview during church, had the zonies bring us clothes, and yeah, baptized her ha-ha. Couldn’t believe it. Made for a really cool Easter though, always nice to be in the font.

Plus Conte came because the Mom wanted him to baptize her, so that was super awesome. It was sooo good to see him. He doesn’t really know what’s going on with his back and all just yet, so if he does go home early, it would be nice to end your mission on a baptism like that. Anyways, I have to go, les quiero, talk to you next week.
Adam

Monday, April 2, 2012

4-2-12


We are eating Cojolles, it’s like this fruit in cinnamon and sugar that you suck on for about half an hour. You don’t eat it. It’s a fruit that is too hard to eat so you just suck on it. Kind of was gross too, I just thought it was funny because the member that gave it to us literally told us it was illegal contraband from Mexico, like they are illegal here or something ha-ha, thought that was great



Hey Moms,

Conference was sick, definitely the best weekend of the mission. We all referred to it as the NBA finals, not gen conf ha-ha. We just went on divisions the whole time so the nortes could watch it in English. So I was on divisions with our new dl the whole time, and we just slept at the zls and stuff, it was awesome. 


We stole all the couches from the stake center and put them in the kitchen of the church. Soooo nice. I have forgotten what it was like just to sit on a couch for a few hours, or just to sit on a couch ha-ha. They don’t really exist here. We just sit on pool chairs and little plastic stools usually all day everyday. The talks were all pretty good, kind of thought it was a little strange that there was not a single missionary talk, bummer, waited 19 years to be a missionary and for the first time ever there was not a single talk given on missionary work ha-ha. Even Jeffrey and David let me down; they usually rock the missionary world, but not this time. I made a list of my conference gems for you guys though;

1) Perry Webb getting released, that made my ears perk up a little, getting a little hometown shout out.
2) Come Thou Fount is now a Hymn again, also I will do anything humanly possible to get the Sunday morning mo-tab singing that on my iPod.
3) David F. Evans commanding the Church to send more handwritten letters, not just emails, to people far away from you, cough cough.
4) Jeffery R. Holland ending his talk with ¨Repent. It’s getting late. Amen. ¨
5) The MTC choir Saturday afternoon, with the cameras focused in on an Elder Archuleta, first row, front and center. Guess the rumors are true, Darchie is serving his mission; wonder if he is really going to Chile or what.

Other than that it was good, I learned that I really need to save my family, and the fathers of the church are really struggling. They absolutely got blasted talk after talk. Sorry Dad ha-ha, hopefully you paid attention. No, all of gen conf I was just sitting there thinking man, I am so glad my dad is not a loser, is not one of the people the prophet and apostles have been blasting for the last hour. Your the best pops, keep on keeping on.

Thanks for the trip to baggy town pops ha-ha, homo. I would kill to just have some St. Geezy time. I loved going to that condo, definitely doing that when I get home. Might as well just make a reservation right now please. I am super baggy pops, probably because I have been on divisions for like a week. My DLs comp´s grandma died so he went to the funeral so the DL wants to do divisions with another gringo, so yeah, not working for like a week plus G conf has been fun. But I need to hit the streets ha-ha, I hate being with old missionaries because they just talk about how much time they have and how little time I have, its super fun. Our DL is actually really cool, I just hate being the zone baby, I am the only one under a year, and most have like 20 months, so in a few changes this whole zone is going to be cleaned out.

Other than that, I am just trucking along; I bought a guitar so that has been cool, learning some new songs and stuff. I don't know what it has been this last week, I have just been really bugged like the whole time.  I basically bullied a 50-year-old woman into a baptismal commitment. I have been feeling super bold lately, maybe it’s because I can kind of actually speak Spanish now. But it was this lady we have been teaching since before I have came to this area, and I challenged her to baptism and she was like hmmmm on my birthday I want to. So I said, ok great, when is that? So she said May 28. I just lost all patience ha-ha. I pulled some dirty moves on he. I just said no to her. Told her that we had to do it earlier. She was kind of hesitant so I just said, look if you want me to be here for your baptism, we have to do it soon, because I will have changes before then (probs not) and also my old comp, Conte, if she wanted him to come she had to do it before he goes home from his mission ha-ha. And she just goes hmmm idk. So I just said all right, so next Saturday works then, right? And she sits there for a minute and just goes.... ok, sure. Why not? Boom, bullied her to baptism, felt pretty bad about it, I repented ha-ha.

The only other thing really worth mentioning is we got absolutely soaked after Saturday afternoon conference, just waiting for p-hood. We decided to go get some taco mansion to eat. Yeah, I am terrified of restaurants here, but I was starving so I obliged. It was actually really really good, after I pulled all the long black hairs out of my gringas (kind of like tacos...don’t really know how to describe it), but yeah really good. Then the second we go to leave it just starts pouring pouring rain, like I think the rainy season might be coming a little bit early. I have gotten soaked every day for a week straight. But we were about half an hour away from the church and we had to go back. And conference was starting in like 40 minutes, so we just went for it. So yeah, absolutely soaked from head to toe for all of p-hood session. Even still, it was pretty sweet. It is so crazy the rain here, I don’t get why it is so brown and there are no plants around here ha-ha, like the streets just look like brown rivers, absolutely pours rain. Its cooold too. The water is freezing, everyone just tells me its not even that bad too, it only gets worse as the months go on, so that is something to look forward too ha-ha.
It’s either super hot or, its pouring rain, so pick your poison.

Oh also I got Heather and Jims package; tell them thank you sooo much. Nothing like having a giant bag of peanut butter m&ms and mini Reeses for conference. Perfect timing Heather, thanks for the letter too.




Anyways, I got some mail off to some people today, hopefully it gets there, I found out a way finally to send some letters, so let me know how that goes. I am prepping a pretty sweet b-day package for Alex and Wendy too. Figure if I get it off this week or the next they should hopefully get it before the end of May ha-ha.
Thanks for the emails and photos. My two favorite quotes for you are:
¨You can often gauge the ambition of a man by whether he hates his alarm clock or considers it his best friend. ¨ Thomas Edison
¨Things that we persist in doing become easier not because the thing is easy, but because we increase in doing. ¨ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Also, how is your BoM challenge coming? I just finished again, like two weeks ago. I felt like a ton of conf was focused on the bible so I started with the New Test this morning. My goal is to have it done by the end of this change, so five more weeks and I will let you know. I really want to be a scriptorian before my mission is over.

 Anyways, I got to go, les quiero.
Adam