3-18-13

Hey Mom,

Sorry I haven’t gotten any packages yet, and I didn’t make it to Xela this Pday, we went up to Toto and spent a little too much time playing basketball and so it will have to wait till next week. But for sure by next week it will have arrived. Sorry Grams. Also I did reply to her email and responded to all the things she had asked me...so you might have to check on that because I definitely remember sending her back an email. 

The zone is doing all right. Its kind of hard because we have such a big zone, but nobody is really baptizing. My comp and I put a date with this guy for the 30th but we're kind of nervous because he didn’t go to church this week and the 30th is Saturday of Glory here for Holy Week. That is literally bigger than Christmas here in this country; people go absolutely nuts about it. It's not even Holy Week yet and all the processions and carry of the cross and everything has already begun. Its kind of a pain because every night we have to walk around the streets where they have the processions because we don’t want to offend anyone or end up being crucified.

A few cool things this week. First of all, we worked with President Bautista and the stake president on Wednesday, it was sweet. We ended up setting a baptismal date with our investigator this day. I was so happy he was there for that ha-ha. I don’t want them to think were slackers or anything. But we were stressing this day quite a bit, but it was awesome. And the next day about half of the missions had interviews with President. They were doing them as a group for a training kind of thing, not a one on one interview. But some of the things he talked about were things my comp and I had done that night before and how that helped us have a good lesson and set a date. I was kind embarrassed and excited at the same time ha-ha. 

Something funny about my comp again this week. I think it was Friday night, but it was about three in the morning and while in bed I feel something get on my bed. The head of my bed is in the corner of the wall in the room where we sleep, and my head is at the foot of my comps bed. So I wake up because I feel the bed move and I am staring at the wall. I roll over and I am looking at my comps feet. He was standing inches away from my head. Needless to say I kind of freak out a little bit and yell at him asking what he is doing. He then just kind of leans over me and puts both his hands on the wall and in this super irritated voice says to me, ¨Elder, relax. Spirit Paradise. ¨ I was just laying there just super confused and then it kind of dawned on me that he was sleep walking ha-ha. I was still kind of freaked out, groggy and a little angry at my comp though so I keep yelling at him telling him to get off my bed.  He just steps down and says ¨Hey, relax. I don’t know why you’re so angry, I was just doing what you told me to do.¨  And then falls three quarters of the way back onto his bed and falls back asleep. I have no idea what kind of dreams he was dreaming buuuut, so weird. 

Also like an hour later he got up again and was just standing in our bedroom, but it woke me up again. I ask him what he was doing. (In a kind of angry voice) He responds to me in an equally angry tone that he was going to the bathroom. So he walks out of the room and into the bathroom, throws the toilet seat up, and just stands there. He didn’t go to the bathroom or anything, just stood there for a second and then came back into the bedroom and fell into his bed again. It was just funny though because my comp is just such a quiet easygoing guy, he never ever gets mad at anything. But now I know he sleepwalks. I'll have to be sure I lock the door every night, don’t want him wandering out some night ha-ha. 

The other cool thing that happened this week, we finally went to the temple! Finally! I hadn’t been to the temple since two Januarys ago in the CCM. Way way way too long. The temple of Xela was seriously insanely nice, and all of the temple workers that day were from Baul, so I saw a ton of people that I love from that ward. It was so great though. You kind of forget how nice it is when you don’t get to go for so long. They sent us with our whole group too, so when I went through I got to go with all my old buddies from the mtc and stuff. It was pretty sweet. Although, now I am a little afraid that the next time I will be able to go will be when I am going home...that’s still a while. 

Anyways, I will be sure and to attach some photos. 

Love you guys, have a good week.

Adam

PS dagger...too...the....heart. So alex is rocking an iphone5 and a new jeep and I'm using a samsung frijolito and lamborfeeties? why??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

3-11-13

Hey Mom,

Yeah this Tuesday that just passed was changes here. My comp and I are still together but the zone had a ton of changes. We went from having 14 missionaries in the zone to 26. A few of them are just here temporarily but they did open up a few new areas and stuff. A lot of the mission is in trios right now too because of all these people that are just visa waiting. It was super stressful trying to find all of the houses and arrangements for everyone but hopefully it will be a little calmer this week. 

For all the missionaries that are "waiting" we just brought mattresses for most of them to sleep of the floor since who knows how long they are actually going to be here, and I don’t know where they think we are just going to pull like 50 beds out from, but they all were not happy about just having a mattress on the floor. I was just kind of like uhhhh, get over it.  At least the newbies have their own mattress...Another kid was like can I get a new mattress? Mine has fleas. Uuuuhhhh. Welcome to Guatemala. 

For my comp and me though this week was good. We think we might have found a golden family. It's 5 in total all in baptism age, and we had the dad attend stake conference with us this week. He was so excited about going that he even went and bought a new shirt and pants (yeah, big deal here). But I was super stoked about this guy; he was sooo attentive the whole meeting and just seemed to love everything. Pray for us, I would like another gold family. 

Saturday was interesting too. We went out to this aldea in our area and were inviting people to the conference, and it was literally hotter than Africa outside. I don’t think I have ever been so hot in my life honestly. It was so hot that the dirt roads were covered in about 6 inches to a foot of straight dry dust. It was almost like walking through snow. It was almost unreal. When we got out of that area we had to take off our shoes and shake all the dust out. Of course we were wearing black pants and about up to my knee it was just brown dust stained ha-ha. 

We had to come back into town after that and buy an ice-cream. So hot. I am almost ready for rain season to be back. There is no winning here with the weather it seems. It’s either insanely hot and dry, but your feet aren’t wet and you don’t get blisters, or its pouring rain and cool, and your feet get blisters from being constantly wet. The good thing is my boots are still in really good condition so I should hopefully survive this rainy season all right. 

Funny story about my comp this week though,  he always just does Michael or Phil things that kill me, the kid always makes me laugh.  But a few weeks ago he ran out of oil to use for blessings, and we cant even buy food in my area the chances of finding real olive oil have to be slim to none. But he finds this bottle that says oil of the olive. So he just figured he hit the jackpot and when we get home, he consecrates it. Then like ten minutes later he just yells ¨What!? Are you kidding me?? I hate this country! ¨, So I walk out and ask him what’s going on, he shows me the bottle and points to the ingredients and the first ingredient is vegetable oil ha-ha. I just lost it ha-ha, I was dying. Literally was laughing about that for days that he had consecrated vegetable oil. This was like three weeks ago, and then this week one of the nights we got home and I was changing and I walk back into the kitchen and my comp is cooking chicken nuggets on the stove, and I look right next to the stove and the bottle of consecrated vegetable oil is half empty. He was cooking his chicken nuggets with consecrated vegetable oil ha-ha. Is that apostasy? Like technically it can’t be right? It wasn’t olive oil, but even still. I was laughing all week about it though. 

Anyways, that’s about where we are at here, apostasy levels are high. Love you guys, have a good week.

Adam

3-4-13

Hey Mom,

As for the hitch hiking thing, wasn’t the first time I’ve done it, wont be the last...ha-ha. Especially when your options are walk ten miles or hitch hike. Here it’s not a big deal either.  There aren’t really that many busses and literally everywhere you go you see people doing it. Usually the people just charge you like 5 quetz or something. They call them fletes and they are like poor people taxis. They even have little signs like the taxis on the top of the pickups that say fletes so everyone knows.

Things are good here in Guate. It’s still really hot in the day, but at least the rain hasn’t started yet. It has actually been really really cold at night. All the houses here are just made of cinder block and there is no such thing as heating or cooling in the house. So when it’s cold outside it’s cold in the houses, and when it’s hot outside, it’s hot in the house. There is really no winning here. But the last week the mornings have been really really cold and windy. Good thing I have Big Agnes here to keep me warm though. That was probably one of Dad’s better ideas he’s had for me. Really saved me actually.

We have been looking for new people pretty much this whole week. Lots of walking and only somewhat finding. We were with this one family on Saturday and we asked them if we could do some service for them or anything.  So they take us in on this patio place, and it’s where they have all their corn laying out so the sun dries it. They dry it all out, then take the kernels off, and then they boil it, mash it, and make tortillas. So we walk over to where this corn is and they ask us to help them take all the kernels off of the cobs. It’s pretty common I have actually done it a lot in the mish. Just this time they had some really freaky corn. I don’t know why but it was soooo spikey. Literally like no corn I have ever seen before, it looked monster-ish. But it destroyed my comps and my hands. You just take the corn in your hands and try and rub the kernels off pretty much. We were there for like two hours, and by the time we finished both of our hands looked like raw meat. My comp actually cut his finger pretty bad too. Who could have thought that corn could be dangerous like that?

In my city they are getting ready for Holy Week again. I am in a really catholic area and they go nuts about this all here. But one day we got to our house at night and they had made this giant carpet thing on the road. They do it to represent Jesus coming into Jerusalem and stuff, but its really just a whole new level of crazy.

 Another thing that was funny this week is we went to go visit a reference from a member. The reference family’s daughters’ name was Dulce Belen. Her name was Sweet Bethlehem ha-ha. My comp and I have just been dying about that this week. We keep saying it and I don’t know why but it’s a name that just kills me. And this morning my comp wakes up and was a little groggy getting out of bed, he just stands up while I'm still praying and he says super loud ¨Sweet Bethlehem its so freaking cold in this house!¨ It just killed me ha-ha. Middle of my prayer just started dying laughing, whoops. Repentance.

As for the 138 days thing, is Hunt really that close to being done? I get his emails but I usually just scan through them. I am starting to feel old though too, even though I still have a ton of time left. I was filling out my agenda for this change that’s coming up last night. My comp and I are going to complete 16 months this change. Also we will have our second to last general conference, and once the rainy season starts in a month or two, that’s the last season well have in the mission. It will just rain and rain until we get home and it’s just cold and snow. Such a really strange thought though. I try not to think about it but when you guys send me emails telling me Hunt only has 138 days left...it’s hard.

Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful week here, not much to share. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you next week.

Adam

2-25-13

This week I was in divisions in Toto too, really pretty sunrise. Toto is just built in the mountains, its really really pretty

Hey Moms,

I hadn’t heard anything about them opening a new mission here in Guate. Its called Coban the city? That would be really really cool though if they did that. Coban is in the North Mission but they would probably take a big chunk out of my mission. The only thing is that the part they would be taking out doesn’t have any of the mission there. The mission here land wise, only about a third of it has missionaries, but in that third part where we all are, is the only place where the church is. The other parts there aren’t any members or branches or anything. It’s all really spread out and the cities are all small. Coban is pretty crazy though if that is going to be the head city of the mission. There they only speak Queckchikel or something crazy like that. The missionaries they send to those areas are assigned there for like 9 or 10 months and have to learn to speak the language because the people don’t speak Spanish well. It’s also notorious for being super poor. It would make for an interesting mission that is for sure. Probably wont affect the missionaries here though. They just split our mission with the Rheu mission not even three years ago and we are the smallest of all the missions here in Guate right now. And Mission North is the biggest. We just googled it and found a Mormon newsroom thing that says they are going to open 58 new mission. =0. Even still though, that’s some pretty cool news. 

Also I didn’t really have time to write last week. That’s super cool that Dan is going to Uruguay on his mission. That’s where my Mission President served when he was a missionary. Also a change ago there was a sister missionary here in the zone that was from Uruguay. She talked so funny haha. They speak a lot like the people from Argentina, like they sing everything and everything is with the sh sounds. Like whenever she would talk to my old comp she couldn’t say Chicas, she would always say Sheekas. Always just kind of made me laugh.

This week was good. We did have another baptism on Saturday. I was super relieved; it’s really stressful sometimes. You just kind of panic and hope nothing bad happens so the date doesn’t fall, but it was actually really good. I played the guitar and my comp and I sang "There is a green hill far away". That was really good too, I got it on video but I don’t have enough time to upload that today. 

Yesterday something kind of funny happened too. We were out in that area that is really poor and really far from San Cris yesterday in the afternoon, and we usually get around in these micro bus things, but sometimes they only come around every half hour or hour, and we had an appointment coming up in about half an hour, so after waiting a while we decided the best option was to hitch-hike haha. I just thumbed up a beater pick up that passed us on the road and he pulled over and was like get in. Haha, maybe not the best idea. I have hitchhiked in Guate but it worked out great. We told him to drop us off in this area that would have left us like 20 minutes away if we were walking from where our appointment was. But when we were going on the highway there was a police checkpoint like 100 yards up ahead of us and the guy just pulls over and gets on this dirt road in the middle of nowhere. He just stops and yells to us, because we were in the bed, that he didn’t have a license so he couldn’t drive through the checkpoint but that he knew a shortcut. He took us so far out in the middle of corte-landia I almost felt like I was at home driving through the rez again haha. Like all the people were looking at us weird and yelling "gringos" as we passed through this crazy dirt road. The guy felt bad about having to take the detour and ended up dropping us off in front of the house where we had our lesson at haha. It was like a free rez taxi. 

We also taught some members this week how to make BLTs and no bake cookies. Hence the photo with the apron, I cooked bacon for the first time in over a year. Mmmm bacon. I also got my black ecos resoled this week. It's like I have two new pairs of shoes right now. I should easily make it now with shoes. They just had the sole on one of the shoes was really really cracked, but the tops still look really good, just need lots of polish pretty much every day, its super hot and dusty this time of year. Anyways, I hope everything is good there. I can’t believe Liv is driving now. That’s kind of a strange thought. 

I love you guys, have a great week.

Adam

2-18-13

Hey Moms,

How’s everything going? Things are good here. We are planning on having another baptism this Saturday. The guy was having second thoughts but I think we helped him get over them last night, so pray for us. I have a lot of faith the guy will do it though. The only problem is I don’t know if it will be this week or not. As zonies we have to baptize all the months, so were working super hard so the date doesn’t fall. Dang February is so short though. Can you believe were just around the corner from General Conference again? Like a month and a half, the last one just felt like a couple of weeks ago. 

Speaking of that though, I got grams package this week, and it was great. Plus the CDs Heather threw in, amazing. There was this one from Bednar when he talks about the tender mercies of the Lord. Needless to say I have been looking for more of those in my life lately and that’s made my week a little more interesting. The investigator that we have a date with to get baptized this Saturday, but he was getting a little cold feet, when we went to church on Sunday the Branch President asked me to help him out because the speaker had cancelled and wasn’t going to show up. This was 30 seconds before the first hymn, but I was just like, ok. After church our Branch President came up to me and was thanking me for bailing him out, and at the same time, our investigator with cold feet walked up to me. The President started talking to him and was just asking him a bunch of questions and stuff. And then he asked him about his baptism. He was kind of like, oh I don’t know, seems all a little fast. And the President replied to him, "I thought it was fast too when the Elders told me I had to get baptized after a week from meeting them, but I acted on faith, and look where it got me after 19 years." Then he just bore him a really powerful testimony about it, I was just standing there kind of awestruck. It really seemed to help our investigator out. 

But that’s where we are at right now, sorry we had to run to Xela for a little bit of an emergency and we ran out of time to write. I will let you know how everything goes next week. Love you guys,

Adam