A Greenie No Longer

Well hello there again. Weird I`m writing again. Seems like it was Monday only like a week ago. OK well this week went really fast.

So this is our last week here. Changes are next tuesday so I`ll officially be done with my training and not be a greeny any more. So I could actually stay here longer but probably not for 5 months  Our President actually likes to keep us in areas for 4 changes (6 months)  sometimes but I doubt it. Me and my comp re-opened this area which just means we were both new to the area when we came. So one of us will change this time or next time so they don`t have to re-open it again. I'm thinking he`ll be made district leader here and maybe train again and I could leave. But hey maybe not. I guess we`ll see.

So this week was good. We have a baptism this Saturday which I`m excited for. We also have another date for the week after. It's with _____________. He's really cool. And when we do it we'll have to both be in the font to help. (He has a disability that requires 2 brethren to assist in baptizing him.) The one thing is that it's after this next change so I might not be here which would be kinda lame. Oh well all that matters is he`s baptized.......ugh but I really want to be there. 

We also have new investigators coming out of nowhere! The members always bring there friends and their always way excited to hear the lessons. We got a new one yesterday named _______. We're visiting her tomorrow I think and she is pretty excited. It`s like we don`t even have much time for contacting cause we`re walking across our area three times a day to appointments with all our investigators. 

So nothing really special happened this week besides the baptism dates and stuff. Can you believe after next change I have over six months here? Yeah weird. Almost 1/4 done. Well I don't want to think of it like that.

So today was awesome. We had our District P-Day. We went up to a waterfall here. It actually wasn't that big but we had fun. I'll send some pictures. It actually looked a lot like Oregon. It was weird though. The water was completely yellow. Oh well. After we went to the most amazing place. I`ll send a picture because it was truly amazing. There aren't places like it in Zacapa. (This was about 30 minutes away).

The Holy Ghost Teaches of Things That "Aren't True"??

Elder Layton Is Amused by a Local, Innocent Cow

Well hello again family. How is the snow going? I assume it`s still awesome. OK so Alexa is going to Peru? That`s so awesome! She`s definitely going to learn the best language in an awesome country. Also too bad about Mom being kinda sick and Tyson's family. I hope you`re feeling better Mom and I wish the best for the Adams.

OK so where to start I'm not really sure. In all honesty not a bunch of stuff happened this week but it was good. As I told you Elder Christopherson came to our mission to speak. We couldn't go to The Capital to actually see him though which was kinda lame but they had a camera and broadcast it here so we could see. He can speak Spanish which was cool but the sound was all messed up for a lot of it so we couldn't hear about half and when we finally could it was really quiet. So it was in Spanish and I could barely hear. ¡Que Bueno! It was really good though from what I could get out of it and I`ll remember it for a long time. 

Also one of the guys that spoke served his mission here in Guatemala and said "A lot of people ask me where my favorite area was in all of Central America (cause the mission was almost all of it at that time) and I loved them all. But I would have to say my favorite would be Zacapa...Why are you laughing?" Yeah it was pretty good. I actually really do like my area and just grateful I`ll probably be gone the hottest part of the year. The day after we had a Zone Conference with our President which was really awesome. It was really long but I didn't really care cause we learned a ton of stuff and I learned more about Christopherson`s talk that I couldn't hear the day before.

Unknown Church in Zacapa

OK let`s see...I`m trying to think of something else. Oh yeah we have an investigator who came to church (and loved it) and so now can be baptized. She has her interview tomorrow so I have to do divisions with the District Leader here and we`re going to baptize her this Saturday! It`s going to be awesome. Talking about baptisms that reminds me. There was two this past Saturday, from other areas. In the first they told me about two minutes before I had to give the talk on the Holy Ghost. It actually went really good I thought until I told everyone that the Holy Ghost teaches of all things that aren't true...Oops. I threw a "no" in there for some reason and everyone laughed but yeah it was funny. Other than that it was good. And after that, at both of them me and Elder Alvarado had to teach lesson 3 while they were changing. It went really good too and I`m definitely able to teach better than I was before.

OK That`s about all I got this week. Nothing else really happened. We just kinda walked around in the heat. I hope everything is going OK. Oh yeah good luck with being Coordinating Sister Briana. That`s awesome!

OK bye...Adios familia.

Understanding "Almost Everything" (Already?)

Hello family. OK mom I would like to start with saying I actually miss scraping the ice off my car for seminary so I don´t feel to bad for you. I'm not enjoying the heat but I'm a missionary and I'm enjoying that so oh well. It's weird - it's already starting to get hotter here and it never rains really so it always feels really hot and you can't escape it.

Yeah Mom I know Elder See. He's cool. He's not in my district but he's in my zone so I see him every once in awhile.

Just Say "NO" to coffee beans

That's insane that Alexa has put in her papers! I never would've thought that - that's really awesome. I'm going to have to guess she will go to Australia  Don't know why but it's going to happen. Also with Dallin and Micheal getting ready to enter the MTC ...or CCM for Micheal, good luck! You guys will love it. It's still weird for me everyone is going on missions. Well the Layton family will literally be all around the world teaching people. How cool is that?!

So for this week there wasn't a whole lot that was new. We had a baptism date for this coming Saturday but had to move it back a week because the girl is having problems at work and couldn't come to church. She has a testimony and everything and wants to be baptized but just needs to come to church again. I'm just hoping that if I have changes this time that she will be baptized before that. 

Also we have been teaching a man with only one leg. He's already been to church enough and absolutely loves it. He just needs to hear the lessons and I think he would want to get baptized. We'll get a date next time maybe. Both me and my companion would have to be in the water to help him out. That would be a pretty cool experience. 

This past Saturday the other Elders in Zacapa had a baptism which was really good. I had to direct the meeting and me and Elder Alvarado had to teach lesson 3 while they were changing. It actually went really good and I realized my Spanish is definitely coming along. In church the next day I could understand almost everything. Definitely some don de lenguas (gift of tongues) going on here. Oh yeah and then later that Sunday night the Hermanas in Zacapa called and said the person in their area who is getting baptized this Saturday wants me to baptize her! So I was happy about the until their Bishop told the girl we can't baptize them and we have to have members do it...Yeah so I don´t know where he got that. Obviously it's a good idea to have members do it but hey that doesn't mean we can't. Well I still might but we´ll just see.

Preferred Transportation

Enough rambling that´s basically it this week. Oh yeah I didn't tell you about the drunk man talking to me. Well yeah that happens a lot but this time it was during a lesson with Alfredo and the whole time "Hey I lived in Pennsylvania and can talk English Spanish and Italian." "Oh really well that's nice..." "Hey I lived in Pennsylvania and....." Yeah me and my comp were laughing pretty hard because he just kept saying that.

OK for real that´s basically my week. Hope everything is going well over there and enjoy that freezing cold for me. I guess Global Warming is only effecting this part of the world where no one actually drives...

Ok bye familia and have a good week!

Foto - Me on what I really want to start using to contact.

Spelunking

OK don`t freak out I wrote OK? Yeah sorry we had a zone P-day today and didn't get back until now. I hope everyone's week went well. I definitely have a lot to talk about and this keyboard is half broken so this should be interesting.

So I`ll start with our zone P-day. We went to a huge cave here. It was about three hours away and it was crazy. I am now convinced it was the very same cave Mormon abridged the plates in but I didn't find any more to keep as a souvenir. But first was a really steep hike down to it and then it got steeper and so we had to pull out the ropes. Hopefully you can see on the pictures how crazy it was. 

Once we got to the cave there was more climbing down. It was one of the freakiest things I've ever done. Remember that hike in Utah Mom? Yeah that was nothing. Out of our zone only me and four other missionaries actually got into the cave. It was amazing in there. There was a waterfall but the water seemed to disappear cause barely any was coming down into the cave. There was a ton of bats that kept flying out too. So we couldn't go extremely deep cause we didn't have more rope and an Elder didn't want rabies from the bats. So we climbed back out somehow and survived  I`ll try to send my favorite pictures of it. 

After we did that we caught a bus back but there was so many people the only place we could ride was on the top. Me and 5 other guys were on the top of the bus and about 20 inside (These aren't big buses). That was quite the experience too. I think we surprised a lot of people too, cause how many times have they seen big gringos clinging on for dear life to the top of the bus? I`m happy to say it was probably a first. And that brings me to here emailing you guys but other stuff happened this week too.

We got another baptism date so now we have one the 18th and the 26th. Both of them are girls about 20 (coincidence? I think not.) Ha OK just kidding but they both have testimonies but we just need them to come to church again. 

I think in a way my comp scared one of them into being baptized though. She asked what happens if she`s not and he shared a pretty blunt scripture and then told her the Pope believes in the BoM...Well anyway I actually think she has a testimony and this is something she wants to do.

What more?? We just walked a ton this week and got a bunch of new investigators from the ward and also a lot of people we need to re-activate. We definitely have our work cut out for us. 

Oh yeah I should mention an apostle is coming to our mission!! Elder Christofferson is coming. Oh but the only people that get to see him are the areas in The Capital so we`ll just stick around here in Zacapa sweating. OK I don`t have a ton of time and I need to do the pictures.

Mom I hope your birthday was good and Briana I hope you had a good year party. You hit your year the exact day as my comp! January 4th right? For his year we just burned a shirt and ate some food. It was quite fun.

Well I think that`s it for now! I hope everything is OK up there. I just want to say thanks to everyone who has sent me letters. I'm getting them but I literally have almost no time at all to write back. Just want to say thanks and I`ll try. OK buh-bye now. Hope you weren't freaking out too much cause I hadn't written and sorry for all the typos that are probably in this e-mail.