2-11-13

Hey Moms,

This week was interesting. They ended up sending a few of the missionaries in the zone home this week, some for disobedience and others for sicknesses. Both are pretty rare. But things are going well in our area. We have another baptism coming up next Saturday, not this one but next week. He is super golden. I don’t know what it is but we have found a lot of golden investigators in this area. He just really wants to change his life and he is friends with a lot of members here. So he said he just is making the connections and getting baptized just makes sense. He showed up to church this week and we were just kind of showing him the chapel and all, and we took him in front of the baptismal font and we were just talking to him, and then we just put a baptismal date and he was like, ok, I'll do it. It's crazy when you find people like that. It’s so exciting and really makes all the crappy days worth it ha-ha. I really am enjoying the comp I have right now too. He is just super humble and doesn’t want to do anything but work hard. I don’t think I have ever worked so hard on my mission. It would be nice to see more fruits from the work, but I will never complain about finding a golden investigator. Changes are in two weeks and I am really scared they are going to change me. I really really don’t want to leave. It’s hard to accept changes and have the ¨I'll go where you want me to go¨ attitude. Especially when you feel like you’re in stride. But hopefully they leave me at least another change here. I wouldn’t complain about that. I am not even feeling the time go by either. I can’t believe I'm just down to the fingers now; I don’t need my toes anymore to count the months. That’s crazy.

Josh's talk sounds great. Though speaking of feet, Josh might not have hobbit feet, but his brother in law sure does. I always thought Tafty looked like Frodo from the ankles down. But I really enjoyed that talk too by E Christofferson. It's really what it all comes down to in the church; how much the men are willing, ready, and able to do. I have seen a lot of families either make it or break it here, and its always 100% based on the father. It's sad too because you see alcoholism destroy so many men here. That’s a cool story about his dad though. I really like that too. It's funny how the Sunday school answers are the things that will save us one day. Simplicity of the gospel. 

Alex was telling me y'all want to come and pick me up. My opinion on that is this; it would be better to wait until I am home and then come back. One, because as a missionary I can leave my mission, so all the cool touristy spots of Guate, I can't go to those. Plus, when I go home it's still kind of rainy season here. It would be better to come in the summer when the weather is really nice, and we can go apostate at the dance clubs at night because I won't be wearing a name badge. That’s just what I think though; it’s all up to you guys of course, especially since it’s your money. Anyways, I love you guys, have a good week.

Adam

2-4-13

Hey Mom,

So this week was interesting. We had multi-zone conferences with Elder Martino. He is the President over the Central America area. It was really cool, and since we're the Zonies he talked with us a bunch and did practices and stuff with us. It was so crazy, he is from Texas, but since he got called as the CA Area President he lives in the Capital here in Guate now. When I told him where I was from he was like Oh, you must know Perry Webb then. I was just kind of like uhhh...He's from my home ward. He said they had served as area 70s for a long time together. Pretty cool. We also had just a Zonie conference with him on Friday; it was pretty impressive just to say the least. 

Friday wasn’t my finest day in the mission though. Actually Friday wasn’t that bad, but from what happened on Friday has brought serious consequences. In the night we went and visited some less active members in this little pueblo that’s really far away. We actually go there quite a bit because it’s a really cool little area. All the people there live in adobe houses and are crazy poor. Also they don’t have running water there, they usually all get their water out of wells. So we went and visited this lady and she gave us this weird wheat drink when we were leaving. But like I said, it's well water. And they usually boil it and kill all the bad stuff so we don’t die, but this time she didn’t. She was really angry with us because we didn’t go and visit her son who was in the hospital because he had fallen and broken his arm. We would have gone, but she hadn’t gone to church in like 2 or 3 weeks, so we hadn’t seen her, and she didn’t call anyone and tell people that her son was in the hospital. So we were just like uhhh.... how where we supposed to know? She was just super angry and kept telling us we have to know these things as missionaries (elder=psychic), and that she was too embarrassed to call and tell anyone. Yeah we were just kind of shaking our heads, but either way, she was so mad we couldn’t say no to the lukewarm wheat drink. The next day my comp and I were not feeling so hot. So like noon on Saturday I just plop down on my bed and don’t move for like 10 hours. I was just in kind of this like fever coma. My comp just had boo on Saturday and then he was fine. But yesterday I was even worse. I just had crazy body aches and chills and a fever. Then I finished off all of the purified water we had in the house. We like camped outside the little store in front of our house this morning and bought like ten Gatorades and more purified water. I was toast though ha-ha.

I’m better today. We went into Xela and saw the nurse this morning, she gave me some antibiotics and the war is now on. I literally can feel the fight. I have some pretty normal bacterial infection, but she said that this medicine would clear me up in a few days. That will be nice ha-ha. This is really the first time I have been down and out in the mission. I couldn’t make it to church yesterday, we had a member come stay with me while me comp went with another member. I feel like I know a little more of what pops experienced in his mission though. Ha-ha. Hopefully it’s the last time.

Anyways, that’s pretty scary about Liv. That probably would be something that needs to be checked out fairly well. Just tell her when it happens though, a lot of it is all mental, like if she just calms down and relaxes, it will pass a lot quicker. That’s what always happened with me. Well, not that that has exactly happened to me, but that was always what helped me. 

So Groundhog Day also passed. That’s still a real holiday? I honestly don’t even know what that means if he sees his shadow or not. The Lance thing gave me a good chuckle too. Sometimes I wonder if pops tries to be Phil Dunphy, or if it really just comes that naturally. 

Anyways, I love you guys, have a good week.

Adam

1-28-13

This little girl was born a week after I entered the mission. That’s how much time I have been wearing the namebadge ha-ha.

The gallon of milk, that is the first time I drank milk out of a gallon, and not out of a box since I have been here. I drank the whole thing in less than 24 hours =/ Not the gallon challenge, just sick of boxed milk. It’s super gross. The boxes aren’t even milk. It’s vegetable oil with milk products... gallon milk was HEAVEN

Hey Mom,

I loved the story about Holly. I think that is so amazing that something like that would happen. You just think about it and...I don’t know, pretty amazing. Same with the thing what happened at the store. The Lord definitely knows what he is doing. That’s the thing a lot of times, we want these perfect circumstances, but now I think about it, I have never ever been in a perfect situation, or had everything just work out perfectly. But things don’t have to work out perfectly; they just have to work out. And they always do. Life will always go on.

We had some problems in the zone this week and my comp and I had to do a lot of... correcting. It was actually really ugly and we left off pretty badly with a lot of missionaries. A lot of people that I am friends with too. But we were talking about it and pretty much got to the same conclusion. Even though we had to do something we didn’t really want to do, correct people, it was necessary and now life just goes on. It was kind of interesting though too, because a few nights after we had the problems with these missionaries, we were talking with our ward mission leader, who got home from his mission about six months ago, and he was just talking about how importance obedience is, and how we as ZL’s have to remember where and what our priorities should be. We shouldn’t worry if people don’t like us, we just have to try our best to lovingly help people be better, and especially if they are doing something they shouldn’t. But like I said before, everything just keeps going. Life moves on and today we have different things we have to worry about. That’s what I was thinking about when I read the story about the elk.

I also got a really cool letter from Dad this week. It was about Ether 12:4 and how that had really helped him in his mission. It was perfect though because the next day I really needed that scripture. We were going to visit some people with a member that I really like here. He is a college student and this really fun guy, but while we were there we had to wait a little bit. He was changing because he had just gotten out of the shower. While we were waiting we were talking to his mother who had been less active for most of her life, married a nonmember, and now he is an alcoholic and they are just really struggling. We were talking with the mom and trying to help her, but she got really emotional and started crying, and she just got up and walked out. Her son came down a few minutes later and we just ended up leaving without seeing her again. But while we were sitting there waiting I saw that she had left her book of Mormon on the sofa where she was sitting, so I took out a sticky note and put that scripture on it and then stuck it on her book. Later that day we ran into her and she just kind of looked at us, and told us sorry about what had happened in the morning and that she had read the scripture. She started to tear up and said it was the most beautiful scripture she had ever read. I was just kind of like awe struck. I had totally forgotten I had done that, but it was just kind of one of those powerful moments. Thanks for the solid on that one Pops.

 Anyways, sorry I am a little short on time this week, we have to run down to Xela right now. I haven’t gotten any packages yet, but I'm hoping today they will be there. But I love you guys, have a great week.

Elder Morrow

1-21-13

Hey Moms,

How's everything going? Things are good here. The trio ends today. We were only in trio this week because the person we’re babysitting is going home today.  It’s actually been really fun having him, even though he is a little crazy. Since we have three in the house we’ve been playing kings of the corners every night until bedtime. That will dearly be missed. He is Latino and from El Salvador. We're just going to drop him off at the mission home tonight and yeah, that’s it for the trio. Its a little weird walking around with three, and people look at us like were from the kkk with me and my other giant gringo comp. I literally feel like the mafia walking around with three or something, it’s too much. That’s why it’s always been two and two. You can’t contact or anything with three. But like I said, the card games will be missed.

 My other comp is Elder C. He was the one that was a DL in Toto and they just moved him down the road a little bit and now we’re comps. He is a really good guy, he is super humble and a really really hard worker, so I am really looking forward to it.

We had two big things happen this week. The first was Friday. President Bautista and his wife came and worked with us. So yeah, we were walking around with 5 huge white people, and one Latino. It was quite the group. But it was super cool to be able to be around President and get to work with him. He came to our house in the afternoon and we all did a companionship study and got ready for the appointments we had, and then we got to talk about the zone and all and make some plans.

After we went to this appointment with a member family, the man we baptized last week, and his investigator wife. It went really well, we played a game with a stuffed animal that has to do with kissing certain body parts of a teddy bear (not my idea) and then shared a lesson. After we went with another one of our investigators who is really positive, and had a lesson with her. I am trying to think of new ideas and stuff, I'm getting a little bored of the usual lessons, so I’m trying to be creative. So we came up with this lesson plan were we play the card game spoons, remember how to play that? Well we play spoons and then teach a lesson that has to do with the game. There are actually a ton of really good lessons that you can pull out of that game. But we taught that to her, and then started talking about baptism. And when we asked her about if she had liked the baptism she had gone to a few weeks ago, she said she really liked it and wanted to do it herself also. President just smiled and had this kind of surprised look on his face. I was sooo happy ha-ha. Card games work I guess.

It was kind of interesting though, after that appointment, we were talking with sister Bautista, and she was just kind of shocked at how bad of conditions this lady was living in. And they weren’t that bad, I have seen a lot worse. But it was kind of strange to see how I've just kind of become numb to poverty. It’s super sad really, how some of the people have to live here. For example, this lady has a bunch of little kids and we’re pretty sure she has no husband. She says she does but something tells me she’s lying. I think I’m going to hit some crazy culture shock going back to the states.

The second really cool thing we did this week is we changed houses. Thank goodness too. We literally lived in the worse house in the mission. It was so so so unbelievably bad ha-ha. But we just moved out of the worst house in the mission to the best house in the mission. We moved into this brand new condo/apartment place. It’s like living in heaven. It’s nicer than any other apartment I have ever lived in, even those in BYU. It is big but not too big, has really nice tile floors and all and a hot water heater (first in my mission). We even have two big balconies that look over the city. We’re on the third floor. The people that built the condos live in the states and have a ton of money, and they just built it all to come back here and have like a vacation home. There are a bunch of the apartments that are just empty, and the only other person that lives across the hall from us is only here on the weekends. It’s all to ourselves pretty much. And there are no giant evangelical churches that have crazy evangelical concerts every night right by our house either (like the other house did). I’ll send photos next week. It’s by far the nicest and cleanest house I have ever seen in the mission. It reminds me a lot of the Campbells condo in Durango, and it even smells like a hotel room. Heaven.

Anyways, things are going good here. I love this area. It’s really big, great members, great house, great comp. Not a whole lot that’s not going great. That’s always good news right? Anyways, I love y'all, have a good week. Tell Alex congrats and give Dayoung a pat on the belly for me.

Adam

P.S. Alex, congrats man. So I’m going to be a Tio. That’s super weird. Either way though, I’m sure y’all will be great parents. You just have to be super good and focused with studying and all, it’s serious business now, not just the wifey you’ll be paying for, but the nard pup too. But is chipper seriously the first name your going to give him or is that a joke? And if it’s not a joke is he going to go by Chipper or is he going to go by Jay? I’m naming my first boy Dwight Schrute Morrow. That way he will have perfect genes, perfect blood pressure, and great sales tactics. Anyways man, I’ll be praying for the three of y'all, take care, and remember to get Dayoung on the beet cleanse diet stat, then for sure it will be a boy. 

1-14-13

Hey Moms,

Great email this week. I was just cracking up the whole time. As for the breastfeeding, tell Alex to not be such a little girl. I have been in the middle of a lesson, and had the mother do the ¨shirt off double breast feed¨. Literally the lady had two pups that were wanting the teat so she just took the whole shirt off, two birds one stone. I remember one time in a lesson too this lady’s kid walks up to us, shook my hand, talked with us, and then went over to his mom and lifted up her shirt and started breastfeeding. It’s also quite dangerous to gives talks in sacrament meeting and have to be facing the congregation. Those are the days when I just choose not to wear my contacts or glasses, better to be blind.

This week was great for our sister missionaries in my zone. First of all for our baptism Saturday, we had planned on singing a song one of the sister missionaries and I with my guitar, but we were out running all day and we couldn’t get back to the house and bring the guitar in time for the baptism, so we just decided to do it in the next baptism. Then in the middle of the service the guy that was directing just says we have a special musical number by the sister missionaries, we had no idea, I thought we had cancelled it. But the two of them go up there, and one of the sister missionaries plays Come thou Fount on the recorder while the other one sings. I literally just about lost it when they walked up there. Dwight Schrute level. One of the sister missionaries in my area literally plays the recorder, like the little plastic flutes that little kids play in music class in elementary. I was just blown away. I literally could not stop thinking about the episode from the office where they bury the dead bird and Dwight plays the song. I couldn’t hold it in, I had to leave the room with one of those fake cough episodes.

The other funny thing was the other companionship of sisters this week. The APs called last night and told us who in the zone will be having changes tomorrow, and one of the sisters in the other companionship had changes. But we didn’t have any minutes on our phone and it was Sunday so we couldn’t buy, so we just sent a text to the dls and told them to tell the people in their district. At like 11thirty we get a call and it’s the sisters. My comp answered the phone, but after like thirty seconds of indiscernible noise, he put it on speakerphone so I could hear also. The sister was literally just hysterically crying, like she was trying to talk, but she was also crying so loud we couldn’t understand what she was saying. My comp is one of those guys too that always likes to joke, and he just keeps saying to her, ¨Hma, calm down, calm down¨ like fifty times until she actually calms down enough to listen to what he was going to say, and he just says to her ¨Hermana, I know I have changes but I didn’t think you were going to miss me that much. ¨  And she just starts flipping out again. Literally my comp just lay in his bed for like 20 minutes with the phone on speaker lying on his chest while this sister was absolutely losing it. I have never seen a 22-year-old adult have a meltdown like that before. She wasn’t even the one with changes, she was freaking out so badly just because her comp was leaving. Sisters...she literally said ¨I am going to call president, this isn’t revelation! ¨ Like 100 times. Ahh.

 

This week was good though. The baptism was all pretty awesome and it was a good way to finish out with the change. I am feeling like I'm in stride now. The weeks are passing crazy fast, its kind of weird, like the longer the mission goes, the less and less I want to go home. I don’t want to leave. Maybe ill extend...

That’s cool S's leaving. I bet he will be such a stud missionary. He's always just been one of those guys. As for the family that we baptized, they moved. It was kind of a bummer but the guy got a really god job (blessings) and so they live in Mazatenango now, which is part of another mission. But we talk to them on the phone and stuff and they found the ward there and are going there now. Anyways, love you guys, have a great week.

Adam

1-7-13

Hey Moms,

How are things going? I am in desperate need for this package, my shoes have all taken a turn for the worst this week and I am really really hurting. I literally just have my boots left, and they are actually starting to fall apart a little bit too. They will be all right until I get those other shoes but still.

This is the last week here before changes and I am pretty ready for them to roll around. My comp is getting done with his 5th change here and it’s safe to say he has pretty much thrown in the towel. Our dats were so unbelievably bad this week. We still have the baptism coming up this Saturday but after that we pretty much don’t have any other investigators.

I am actually pretty mad at him right now. We had to go to Xela and get our cell phone changed out in the office and he just told me he wasn’t going to go, that I had to go with another elder if I wanted to go. So I went down to Xela with one of the DLs. But I have the new cell phone and so I have no way of communicating with my comp. I have no idea where he is and he has the keys to the house. So we have all the packages and mail from the office, and no way of getting into our house. Also my camera is sill in my house and I can’t get it. Ahhh. Sorry, no photos this week again. You can blame my comp for that.

The worst part too is I took some of the most amazing photos in the world today. We went for p-day to go look for these waterfalls that are in our area. It was literally the most beautiful place I have ever been in the world. We had to hike through the mountains for about two hours and when we got there, literally one of the coolest places I have ever seen. It’s possible that we found the actual waters of Mormon. It actually looked a lot like Sundance, when we were walking through the trails and stuff it reminded me a lot of what it looks like there. Rocky steep mountains and pine trees, I loved the smell too. I will send photos next week I guess. Sorry.

It was so so insanely hot today though. I can’t ever remember having a hotter day in my mission. Maybe in Huehue I had a few days like this, but it was definitely one of the hottest. The sun here is really strong too, it’s kind of hard to describe it. I always wear sunscreen, but the sun makes you feel like your skin is itchy and it gets really temperature hot. Add on black pants and a black backpack and you get cooking. It does cool down in the nights though and it feels really nice then.

As for New Years, that sounds like a lot of fun actually. I have no idea what the Gangnam style dance looks like, but I just imagine Alex standing out there like a bum with Dayoung going wild. Would have made for a good video. And I am super disappointed that Alex didn’t get his cotton eye joe on. Pretty predictable though

As for my new comp, from what I have heard from the AP is it’s going to be this dl that I spent Christmas and New Years with. The kid from Wyoming. He is a really good missionary and works super hard so it should be good. It will probably be weird to have another gringo comp but either way, if you work hard you don’t even feel the changes pass. I just want to baptize more. That family we baptized really got me excited for this area and I feel like I really can hit a good stride here in this area. I am ready to have some changes too where I really get worn out. Should be good.

They told my comp he is going to be the ZL in Brasilia, the zone where I started in Huehue. He seems pretty stoked about that. The mission is going to open two new zones this change. They opened one in Huehue and one in Momos. I think they are trying to get the mission all prepped for when the newbies come in. From what we have heard March is when the really big groups are coming. Should be exciting. Anyways, I love you guys. Thanks so much for getting that package out so quickly, it will greatly be appreciated. Have a good week.

Adam

12-31-12

Hey Moms,

So I still haven’t heard anything about them changing the dates of when I go home. In our email group with Hunter and all our friends, one of them said he got an email saying they moved up his go home date three weeks. But as for me, who knows. Maybe I’ll just extend anyways.

Christmas was really good actually. It was just kind of a nice day to relax and recuperate a little bit. It was just crazy dead everywhere, we went out after calling and tried to work a little bit, but without a whole lot of success. The only bad thing was that we couldn’t eat anything. None of the little stores were open and there weren’t any buses so we couldn’t go into Xela and buy anything. We ended up just eating a packet of refried beans and some sandwich bread that we had in the house ha-ha. I also had a ton of candy from the packages that I got so that held me over.

Grandma Magleby sent me some peanut butter eggs. Oh my goodness. They were gone in a matter of hours... she sent a whole container too, like 25 eggs ha-ha.

It is super hard to wrap my head around 2013. It can’t really be 2013 can it? Bummer too that y'all are going to the 1:00 schedule. We have church here at 9. It’s just a little branch that’s pretty excluded, so we just have the building to ourselves. It’s nice to go early and have it done by 12, that’s always been my favorite schedule.

We don’t have anything planned for New Years either. A member invited us over for dinner but I think I am going to go on divisions and be in Totonicapan for New Years. My comp is really good friends with one of the dls comps and so they have been begging to go on divisions for all of the holidays. For me it’s all kind of the same, especially if either way were not going to be doing much. So I think ill be staying in Toto tonight. Were going to pass the New Year with a recent convert family that I met and taught a few times when we were on divisions. I actually put the baptismal date with them too. So that should be cool.

I was thinking a lot about what I can do for resolutions. I have one goal that is a baptismal number, but that one is a secret (Elder Rogers, numbers don’t matter). The other one is that I want to have all of the Articles of Faith memorized in Spanish and English. I will probably have some more but those are the only two I have decided on.

This week was great; we baptized that family I had told you about. I forgot my camera at home so sorry; you’ll have to wait till next week for the photos. It was actually really crazy and hectic but it finally all got worked out. We went down to Xela on Saturday in the morning to get all the paperwork figured out with the lawyer, and when we were on the bus ride back my comp (we were on divisions again) called me and told me that the guy had just confessed to him that he was in a gang before and that he basically was the designated killer. He would make all the plans and then go and take people out. So we thought for sure he wasn’t going to get baptized because in cases like that the mission president has to come and do a special interview. But we got super lucky and called President Bautista and he ran out to San Cris and did the interview really quick. We had to start the wedding a little bit late but everything else worked out. It was super nice to finally baptize a family, like an actual husband and wife.

We have another investigator who is super super positive and is going to get baptized on the 12 of January.  It was cool how we met this guy too. We were playing soccer in the church last p-day and he just saw that the church was open and decided to walk in and see what it was like. He had gone to the same evangelical church all his life but a few years ago he got into a fight with the pastor and is looking for a new church. So we took him to the baptism of Saturday and on Sunday he went to church, and when we were in the Elders Quorum he asked us if he could make an announcement, got up in the front and said he had decided that he wanted to get baptized the 12 in front of everyone. My comp and I were just kind of sitting there like uhhh, did that really just happen? But either way, baptisms are baptisms. He even wanted to pay his tithing. We hadn’t even taught him that, but he saw the tithing slips by the President’s office and was trying to pay ha-ha. He is just a super humble and quiet guy too, his name is Jorgito Leon. His name is “little George Lion”. Thought that was kind of funny.

Anyways, I love you all, hope you have a great new years!

Love,

Adam