12-17-12

Hey Moms, 

Sorry I am writing so early. We have to do some new things with the zone and send dats and stuff so this week we have to write in the morning. Kind of sad to see that nobody had written me except the automatic email that tells me how much money I have on my mission credit card ha-ha. Next week I will just have double the emails though. 

This week was really good. We had to do divisions with one of our district leaders as part of a training thing. I went with Elder Christopherson, he is the dl in the city Totonicapan. So I got to go and get a little more familiar with the zone. Toto is really pretty actually; it looks a lot like Flagstaff, really mountainy and full of pine trees. I am really glad I am here in San Cris and not there though. The whole city is built on mountains. You just walk up and down all day. And they are mountains, not just like little climbs. I was just walking straight up for a good half an hour, and then back down another 20 minutes. It's also a lot higher in altitude so it's super super cold, and since all the houses are cinder block squares without heating, it's freezing at night. It’s the same in Nahualà, the other city in our zone, super super cold. It doesn’t snow, but they wake up in the morning and all the rivers are frozen over and all. I think it just doesn’t snow there because there are no clouds or humidity or anything this time of year. Once the rainy season ends there isn’t another cloud for another six months. The other crazy thing about Nahualà is that the people don’t speak Spanish, they just speak pure Quichè. Even the church meetings and everything are just all in Quichè. The missionaries that get put there are usually there for a really long time.

This week the devils thing finally ended too, on the last day they ended up getting us. The last day is when the most devils go out, and they all just run around looking to make people dirty, but yeah they got us, we had some really important appointments so we just had to go out and do it. We were just running away from them, they move in packs, and just one caught up and got our shirts and a little bit in the face. It came off of my skin but I am not sure if it will come out of my shirt, might be another shirt that I'm down on again ha-ha.

I really like this area though, it’s actually possible to baptize. We found a family last week and we set a date with them to get married and get baptized on the 29th of this month. We're super excited about them. It was really crazy how we found them actually, we had gone and visited this crazy inactive lady, but she wasn’t there. But here brother was there working, they make Corte, and we just asked him if he knew anyone that we could go and visit. He is about 20, and he told us he knew of some girl that was having problems with her parents and that we should go visit her. He kind of gave us directions but we had to go look for quite a while to find the house. And when we finally found it, the only person there was this lady that we have the date with. We just started talking to her and she told us that she was just there washing her clothes at her sister in laws house, but that we could go visit them in their house. So the next day we went and found their house and all. They are just such a cool family. It’s just the mom dad and a little baby, but their story is really sad. They both were crazy drug addicts and traffickers and all, but when they met, they both wanted to change, and just decided together they were going to quit using drugs and drinking and change. They did that like a year ago and I think they have just kind of been waiting for something like meeting the missionaries to happen. They went to church yesterday and came with us to a stake activity where a bell choir from one of the Capital stakes came here to Toto. We put the date last night though and they want to get married and baptized the 29, should be awesome.

The bell choir yesterday was pretty cool too; I don’t think I have ever seen something like that before. It was like 20 something people and they played all the Christmas songs with just bells. I was pretty impressed. It was cool too because one of the kids that was playing came up to me afterwards and was asking me about the mission, and then he told me that he had gotten his call to here in Xela and he goes into the CCM next week. He will hit the field here in Xela at the start of next change. That would be cool to go and visit your mission before you start, see what its like and all and meet the missionaries your going to be with for the next two years. Anyways, sorry I can’t really answer any questions or anything this week, nobody has written me yet, next week. 

As for calling I talked to the AP last night, he told me that were just going to be calling from phones on the 25, 45 minutes max. Just let me know what time y'all want me to call and I will see what I can do. Next week just try and be online all day and we can write back and forth and get everything figured out. Can you believe that a week from today is Christmas Eve? Weird. Anyways, I love y'all, have a great week. 

Adam