9-28-13

Hi,

How is everyone doing? Big news this week with little Jack. That's so crazy and exciting honestly. That is something really cool to look forward to. Two thirty is not the most favorable hour of the night to have a baby, ask Dayoung what she was thinking? First timer, I guess you always have  to leave room for rookie mistakes.

Something really sad happened this week. The same day that Jack was born actually. It was kind of strange and bittersweet. Obviously the sweet part was that Jack was born and that I was getting a steady stream of emailed photos all day. But the bitter part was we got a call from the bishop and we went to go and visit a lady in our ward that night. She is a single parent and she has a daughter who is two and a three month old son. She lives with her dad but he is the only support she has really. But we get over there and start visiting with her and she tells us all that her baby had been sick for a little while and so she took him to the hospital. They found out that her son's heart is like three or four times too big for him and that it's about as worn out from overworking as an old mans heart would be. It was so sad seeing this lady like that and thinking about Jack. I can't really even imagine what something like that would feel like. They are going to see if there are any doctors in the Capital that could do some kind of surgery, but since it is highly unlikely tons of the ward members are looking into seeing if there is a way for them to get him up to the states and get him an operation. That would be amazing, especially since this family is not going to be able to pay for it, but there are plenty of members in our ward who are sufficiently capable of helping out with the necessary. There are some crazy rich members of our ward. 

There was a baptism this week. It did not technically count for my companion and me.  There are sister missionaries in the ward too, but it wasn't really their baptism either. The lady just showed up to church one day and was totally ready to get baptized. The sisters taught her a few lessons and she got baptized. We were able to help out too though with teaching her, and so that was cool. She even asked me to baptize her. The lady got married to her husband and then we had the baptism right afterwards. Her husband is also investigating the church now and hopefully he will get baptized soon also. The guy who did the wedding killed us though. He is a member and it was the same guy who married the family I baptized a while back. He just kept taking low blows at the US and I have no idea why. He was talking forever about how bad the culture is in the US because when women get married they drop their last name, and here they don't do that, they just have a bazillion last names. And then he at the end right before the he announced them husband and wife he said, ¨That your marriage doesn't tumble and burn like the Twin Towers in the US.¨ My comp and I just exchanged glances like...did he really just say that? One of the sisters in the ward is American too and she was literally looking at the guy with her mouth open. The best part though, was like halfway through his phone rings, remember all of this I am talking about the lawyer who is marrying these people, and he answers it. He seriously answered his phone and was yelling at the person calling, ¨NO, I'm almost done. I'll be right out. Yeah, I am leaving right now!¨Totally yelling. Couldn't believe it the guy answered his phone in the middle of a wedding ceremony. So classy. 

We found a few new investigators this week and we're hoping that with General Conference coming up that will help us seal some deals on some baptisms. Our area has been kind of tough. We had this one lady that was really progressing and then she just dropped off the face of the map. We had passed by her house like every single day and nothing. We could see lights in the window so it looked like they would be home, but they never ever answered. We were standing there one day and the same story, nothing. But my companion was looking at the door and he noticed there was a tiny little hole drilled about knee level in the door. He was just saying maybe that's how they had seen it was us, since its a giant wood door with no peephole or windows around, but I totally wasn't buying it. But the next day we went back and the whole was filled up with a little piece of paper or something. So we rant the doorbell and just stared at the whole. And sure enough, the little piece of paper got taken out and we looked right at the lady through the little hole. She still didn't answer the door either! We were amazed. Seriously though, we totally caught this lady and she STILL wouldn't answer the door to tell us not to come back that she didn't want to talk to us. Crazy what some people will do to avoid the missionaries. We were laughing for quite a while though that this lady would still not open the door even though we totally caught her. Tricksy hobbits.

That's about all for this week though. It was pretty eventful. I love you all and hope all is well. Introduce flat Adam to Jack for me so he isn't scared of me when I get home.

Adam

9-21-13

Hey Mom, 

How is everything going? This week was really great. The rain stopped a little bit and we had some really, really nice weather. We have been able to leave the office earlier in the day and getting more work done. We have some really good investigators that I am really stoked about. The lady that I blessed her baby, we have been visiting them a lot lately and she is really, really awesome. Her husband seems like he is warming up too, he came and played soccer with us today and we are getting to be really close. He was so stoked about church tomorrow, he asked me like ten times about church tomorrow and seemed like he was so excited about it. We have another lady we have been teaching too that I am really excited for. I am really, really enjoying my area actually. Were just in this really cool part of Xela and I just like the feel.

Time has been flying in the office though. We just always have crazy things to do and we go out and have to run and do this and that, it makes the time fly by so fast.  Nothing really exciting has happened though. Like I was trying to figure out what I had planned on writing you guys and I totally went blank. The work is good though; I’m loving it right now.

Something really funny that happened this week, I got a hold of the new EFY 2013 CD and I was putting it onto my computer, and I noticed that there is a song on there that was written by Colton Avery. I was just kind of looking at it and thinking.... could it really be? I listened to it and for sure it is. You guys have to look it up, its really, really good actually. I’m a fan. You'll have to ask Peggy and double check. That would be so cool if he got a song on the EFY CD. That was the coolest discovery I had from the week. 

Sorry this is a really short email this week, like I said though, I am totally blanking right now and I feel like nothing really that cool has happened. I am trying not to die thinking about the BYU football game. Hope y'all enjoy it. Let me know if my nephew is born this week too, that’s always important...

I love you all,

Adam

9-14-13

Hey Mom,

How’s everything going? Things here are good. Lots to do always. We finally have some investigators (now that we have been in the area working for a while). We have a lady that we had an awesome lesson with. She had listened to the APs a while back and we kind of just stumbled on her house one day. She had a ton of questions about the Book of Mormon and we read some stuff with her and left her with some verses to read. I love teaching. It’s so cool to get into peoples houses and really get to talking. It’s hard here lots of people have some odd beliefs and so when we actually get to sit down and work out their problems and ideas, you see how versatile and usable the gospel is. Religion down here is usually just I am catholic or I am evangelical. The catholic people are usually just born catholic and never really go, and the evangelicals are seriously wild. They believe in some of the craziest stuff I have ever heard. Especially when they teach anti-Mormon stuff. It gets unreal sometimes what people have told me. So we have that lady who is progressing pretty well, and the other part member families we have been teaching. One lady we have is seriously a Mormon. She just doesn't go to church. We got her to go with us once and I don't get it, she literally believes everything the church teaches and has no problems with the church, just her husband is lukewarm active and they don't wake up in the morning on Sundays. We’re pretty hopeful for them though, they really like us too, so were seeing if we can get some baptisms soon, which would be amazing.

This week the senior couple finished and went home. The office make up is a little different without them here. They had been here in the office for the last 23 months, that is a really long time to be here. Their last couple of days tons of people came into the office to say goodbye and everything. It was interesting especially since they didn’t speak a word of Spanish. They were attending my ward for the last two years and even though they couldn't talk to any of the people they made a lasting impact on the ward that was for sure. Since last week in church was their last week they had asked them to bear their testimonies and they asked me if I could translate for them, which always is really cool. They were getting a little teared up too when they were talking. I wonder what that would be like to serve in the same ward and never have changes, I bet it would be so tough or bittersweet to leave. I hope I know what I am doing though. It was nice to have Elder Fairbourne here just in case I didn't know exactly what to do with something, he was here to clear it up, and now I am on my own. I know I have said it before, but there is a thin line between financial secretary and excommunication...ha-ha.

Tomorrow is Guatemala´s Day of Independence. You guys will have to eat some corn on the cob to celebrate. Or you can just do what Guatemalans all do here to celebrate, take the corn, boil it into a mush, make the mush into a disc and fry it into a tortilla and eat it with some fried chicken. That would be the proper way to do it... They eat an unholy amount of corn here, especially this time of year since the corn harvest is going on. We had a family invite us over to lunch the other day, we seriously just had corn on the cob for lunch. I am not even kidding. Nothing else, just corn on the cob. They made us eat four each ha-ha. They call it crazy corn, and they cover the corn on the cob with ketchup, mayo, and this green hot-sauce, and that's how you eat it. I don't think I had ever rubbed fry sauce on corn before. They also eat it with lemon and salt, which is actually pretty good.

Lots of parties and stuff going on right now though. Since my area has these really big parks and markets in it that are in the middle of the city, I have felt all week that we were going to get robbed. Just lots of crazy drunk people everywhere. Something funny this week, we were waiting outside the APs house for them to get home so we could get our clothes out of their drier, and this drunk dude came up and asked us for money. We told him we didn’t have any and I am not sure how we got on this topic, but we asked the guy if he liked dancing, and he literally started dancing right there in front of us and sang us a song. Nice guy. We still didn’t give him any money.

 But that’s what’s going on here.

I love you all and hope all is well.

Have a great week.

Adam

9-7-13

Mordor

Hi,

So you guys heard about the earthquake? It was pretty strong. It's normal for this time of year though, we're getting into winter (or what is called winter) so it’s colder and it causes more earthquakes. For the first one I was with an Elder who is here in the office who is from the Dominican Republic, we were out walking in our area and I noticed that all the people started just running out of their houses. Not usually a good sign, but my comp didn’t even notice. When I saw everyone running I grabbed that kid from behind on the shirt and pulled him into the middle of the road. He finally realized what was going on and we just kind of waited it out. It was big but nothing like the one last year. This kid I was with though was killing me. He was yelling in Spanish right when it ended, ¨What are you people all freaking out about? I survived one way bigger than this. Haven’t you people ever heard of some country called Haiti? I felt that country get destroyed. ¨  I thought it was pretty funny at least. It was strong but like I said, nothing like houses falling down or anything, just some trees and buildings swaying back and forth. The road does this weird wavy motion too that is kind of surreal to look at. I felt three or four aftershocks after that but really, really small. One was pretty good at about two in the morning too, but for me it's pretty normal now. Nothing strong enough yet to really scare me. Maybe soon. 

Today was really cool though, we woke up at 4 and with the other secretaries we went to climb up to this really cool laguna. It’s in the top of an old volcano and it’s this sacred Mayan site. It’s cool because you’re at the top of a volcano. How many places in the world can you do that? It's nuts though, they have sacrifice alters everywhere and it's some crazy famous Mayan place. Nobody is allowed in the water. They say it has something to do with it being the mouth of a volcano; it pulls people down if they go out far enough, and they can’t get out and drown out there. Not even canoes or anything though can go out there. 

We left here in Xela about 430 in the morning and drove out to this city called San Martin, which is about 40 minutes outside of Xela, and then we got off the bus and had to pay some guy to take us to the foot of the volcano. Right at the foot there is this cool little hotel and stuff, but its just pure jungle and you have to just start climbing. It was about a 40-minute hike and it puts you on a lookout point on the rim of the volcano and then you have to hike back down inside the mouth of the volcano. The lake is seriously beautiful though. Since we were there so early we were the only ones there and it was so calm and cool. The water was so still it looked like you could just walk out onto it. It was pretty jungley though, the path is really narrow and has plants hanging down everywhere, every two seconds you would walk into a huge spider web. I just let Elder Marriott walk in front of me the whole time and knock them all out for me. But we spent about two hours up there doing that, and then we hiked back down and came back and showered. Now were just going to hang out and get some lunch. I’m pretty beat from the hike. It was cool just going with the four secretaries though (the APs didn’t go) so it was just a small group. It's always hard to go and do stuff like that with the whole zone, but since are just six in the office it's always pretty nice.

Our area is going good too. We have two partial families that we have been teaching the wives. One of the families surprised me last Sunday and asked me to bless their baby in Fast meeting. Five minutes before it started. I almost died. I was soooo nervous ha-ha. I had this little month old baby in my hands and was shaking like I had Parkinson's or something. Would have been bad to have dropped the baby. Five-second rule though, if it falls and you pick it up before five seconds, still good. But we are hoping to put some baptismal dates with them soon, their real struggles are the husbands though, if they would go to church and be pulling them along they would get baptized real quick. We are working hard though. I love you guys and miss you. I hope you all are safe and have a great week.

I'll talk to you soon.

Adam

Lots of photos this week. 

Tons of rain.

House damage we saw from earthquake.

8-31-13

Hey Mom,

How are things going? Sounds like everyone had a fun week at the cabin. In those photos everyone looks really, really different. Wendy and Josie look like they have grown a ton. I bet Alex was freaking out a little bit getting some dad practice. I can’t even remember the due date is, but that is pretty crazy that it should be this month. I have been trying so hard not to think about college football starting. It would probably be smarter not to send me updates ha-ha. My comp and I have been trying not to talk about it too much. It’s hard though when the two of us both had been at BYU, plus the other secretary that is here in the office went there too. We are pretty cougar heavy here in the office.

Things are good here in the office. It’s been another fun and crazy week. I had to go up to Huehue and close up a house that some missionaries had been in. That took all day. We have been running a ton of errands for President too. He had to run up to Momos so he took our truck (we have a Nissan Navaro which is actually really, really nice. I love driving it, its a lot like a Tacoma) and he left us his car and we had to take it to the dealer in the morning to get fixed. Then in the afternoon we had to go get the truck and drive him over to the dealer so he could pick his car up again. White knuckle driving. I don’t know if you have ever had to drive through rush hour traffic in Central American streets with Central American drivers with your Mission President sitting two feet behind you, but I would much prefer driving through a blizzard. So nerve wracking driving around with President ha-ha.

Driving here is so hard. You can never tell how many lanes a road is or where you are, because only about 20 percent of the roads have paint on them. One of the main roads here in Xela is 4 lanes across with two lanes in both directions, and seriously, not a single painted line on the whole road. No turning lanes. No speed limits. It’s chaos. Plus you add in the factor of all the micro-busses that people use to get around in, and they are crazy. They just weave in and out of traffic and stop everywhere. There are no bus stops here or anything, just whenever a person wants to get on a certain bus you just flag it down like if you where going to call a taxi. And they just stop in the middle of the road and you get on the bus. Honestly driving here was cool at first, but then the novelty wore off and now its just terrifying.  

The other great thing from this week though, was we finally moved out of our terrible house. We went on Monday and told the owner we were going to move out, she is this little old grandma and she got soooo mad. She kept asking if we were going to stay here in Xela or if we knew where we were going. I was just kind of saying uhhhhh nope. No idea. I didn’t want to make this lady feel bad but honestly her house was a dump. I was so dang sick of hearing those stupid geese screaming at five in the morning. She was super chaffed though that we only rented one month, she kept saying that the missionaries across the street (the APs) had lived in the same house for like four years and we only lived there for a month. But the whole time in my mind I was thinking, ``But yeah, the other missionaries have a hot water heater, and carpet and hardwood floors, and couches, and a washer and dryer, and they can stand up and walk through the doors, and there is no giant geese pen outside the only window in the whole house. Of course they have lived there for four years. If your house was like that I wouldn’t want to leave after a month.”  But I didn’t want to make her feel bad, so I didn’t really say much to her.

But our new house is sweet. It’s not like crazy nice or anything, but it’s big, it has high ceilings, and I can actually stand up straight when I am in the shower. My comp had a bazillion photos of Jesus too just in his suitcase so we put them all up over the apartment. Added a nice touch honestly. The night we moved though, like I said the lady was all chaffed with us so we just wanted to get out of there as fast as we could, we did one trip. All the furniture, all the suitcases, everything. One trip. We packed all our stuff in the bed of the truck and in the backseat, and had all four of us secretaries in the front two seats ha-ha. It was like playing tetras fitting it all in. We only moved like four blocks away but I was scared that everything that I own to my name was going to fall out and get left on the cold rainy Guatemalan streets. But we made it. We are in the new house now and it’s heavenly. When I wake up in the morning I don’t hear anything. No crazy geese scream. It’s heaven. I’ll attach some photos of the old house so enjoy.

 Thing are good in the area too. It’s hard sometimes when you only work for a few hours a night if you’re lucky. But I am hoping that we will have some luck. We have one partial family that I am really optimistic for. It’s hard some nights though because I have no idea where to go. Since we are both super new in the area and we only get a few hours to work, it’s hard. We don’t want to go visit the same people but we need referrals, contacting here during the night hours are absolutely worthless. My comp is such a stud though. He reminds me a ton of Spencer Eddy actually. But it’s always so awesome to have a fun comp, plus the other secretary is super cool too. That makes the office way more manageable.

Things are good here though, I hope you all are doing great too. I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Love,

Adam