Moving Forward With Elder Bento

Another good week as always. I can't believe that it's already been a week since I talked to you guys. Anyways a lot has happened so let's see where to start.

My new companion is named Elder Bento. He is from Brazil and he has just a little over a year in the mission. He is totally going to teach me portugues. Vou voltar para a casa falando tres idiomas!!! Ha yeah it's pretty cool. We're working harder than ever but this week was a bit tough. With the changes and everything we basically had to re-establish ourselves in the area. We should have good success and it's obvious that my companion is a really good worker cause he climbed to zone leader with only a year.

So we've been working with with a few people this week. We had 8 investigators in church which is cool. The only thing is that they were basically all young men and women. Hey I'm not saying that's a bad thing because I love coming past their room and seeing it filled up. The only thing is that I really want to find a family. We have a couple who are potentials but we don't have any that are progressing. We are going to be working on that this week.

Hna. Odilma got confirmed yesterday!!! I actually feel really bad cause we got to the sacrament meeting late because we had to go bring another investigator so we came as they were singing the sacramental hymn....and missed the confirmation. Man I was sad but she understood. It's her birthday on wednesday and my companion and I are planning something special. Maybe we'll get a piñata or somthing. Also that day we have a meeting with President Stay so that should be fun. It will be one of our last meetings with him before he leaves.

Anyways this week also my time is short. My workshop about family history went awesome! No one believed me that I was related to Christopher Layton though. They said I just looked up whatever man with our last name and then invented stories hahaha. Finally I was able to kinda convince them that it was true but yeah it was cool. We also did some fun activities.

So anyways that's life down here in Guatemala. And Mom don't worry about it it will be cool to fly up and see everyone in the airport there. Man I can't believe how close that is.....it's really freaking me out. I don't want to leave. That's when the real life begins...Well everything I've learned here really has prepared me for the things that come. Have a good week family!!!!! Love you guys.

Letter and a Phone Call in the Same Day!

Man what am I going to tell you guys this week?

I was in divisions the whole week outside of my area so nothing new really happened. Also I'm going to be talking to you guys in a couple hours so I can tell you everything then. Also I'm really hungry right now so I'm having difficulty staying focused.......

Anyways we had Stake Conference this week which was awesome and right after the conference we had a baptism!!!! It was so cool too. Hna. Odilma is really awesome. She was SO ready to be baptized. She has a really strong testimony and has gone through so much stuff but the Gospel has changed her. I'm not sure if I told you guys but she used to hide from us and run away cause she didn't want anything to do with us. But we got lucky one time and we found her so she listened and since then has changed drastically. It has been such a cool experience to be here at this time. We are also going to be baptizing her daughter this week I think but we'll see how that goes.

The only other event is that Elder Guaman (my companion) is going home tomorrow. He's in the capital with another Elder that's going home from the zone so I'm on divisions today. Tomorrow I'm going to be receiving a new companion so I'll let you guys know who next week. I've been learning a ton these past changes and a lot of the is due to Elder Guaman. He is a really good missionary. Now the area is left in my hands so this should be interesting. Basically the whole zone has changes too. We are going to be receiving 8 new missionaries which is a lot considering right now there are only 14 in total. These coming weeks should be crazy. Well that's my time.

Hope you all have an amazing week and I'll talk to you in a couple hours. WOOOOO!!! Love you and see you guys then. 

(Note from dad: We were able to skype with Eric a little after we received this email. He loves his mission, his testimony is very strong and he told us we need to be more consistent in family scripture study. He just sounded awesome, happy and more like a man than a boy.)

The Angry Pastor

As always this week was really good. We had a cool activity with the young men and women in the branch and we got a lot of work done. Oh and I should mention, looks like we're going to have a baptism this week!!!

Anyways I should start back on Wednesday. We had a cita in an aldea which is basically like a little town outside of the main town. It is about three miles away. We went in a bus to visit a family that is really cool. The Dad and a daughter have come to church a few times. We got there at four planning to take the 5:00 bus back to Progreso. After the lesson though we helped them stack fire wood and then his wife made us food so we left the house at about 5:10....Anyways we missed the bus and decided to walk cause the next bus was going to come at 6. It was actually a really pretty walk but we started walking faster when we heard thunder and the sky got really dark. You guys know where this is going right? Anyways we were still a bit over a mile away and it started to POUR. Of course we didn't have umbrellas either. Anyways we took a nice bath and the bus came past as we entered the city......apparently a bus decided to pass by earlier than 6 and came by at about 5:30....So yeah that was actually really fun. We after went straight to a branch activity that we have every Wednesday and all the members were laughing at us cause we were still wet.

Lesson learned. In Guatemala in the month of May it is ALWAYS smart to have an umbrella.

Anyways like I mentioned we also had a good activity with the YM and YW. We did a Mini-Mission. Fridays night we got them all together and planned like we do as missionaries for the next day. The next day we got to the chapel at 6:00 to exercise! It was really funny they were all dying. Anyways afterwards we started studies like normal and they somehow were able to stay really focused. The spirit was really strong when we started to  practice how to contact people. They all tried and did alright. They sounded like robots though but hey probably better than my first contacts. So my companion and I did divisions with members of the ward and we went out to contact! My group was walking along and were really shy and didn't talk to anybody. I tried making it a game and told them that the first to contact a man with a mustache wins but still they wouldn't do it! So anyways I decided to do the first one to show them that it was easy and I contacted a man with a mustache and introduced the kids in my group. When they started talking I turned around for two seconds only to see my "companion" tell me "Oh my gosh what have you done?!" As I turned around I realized that my nice mustached man was actually a very angry Pastor! Ha oh man you guys should have seen how hard he rejected those kids. It was disgusting. One of the hardest rejections I've seen in my mission. The whole classic "John Smith can't save you", and "You guys are all going to hell if you don't repent". And other stuff that was really tough. Anyways the Young Women afterwards were crying and I tried to help them out but it was tough. Haha after a bit though they were able to compose themselves and actually had a really good day contacting. And now they all have the story that their first contact was a pastor. After in the afternoon we went to some appointments and had a really good day.

So yeah that's what happened this week. Oh also Mom I got the package!! The egg is completely destroyed though but maybe I can lick the caramel off the cardboard haha. But really thanks. You know me too well and the things I like. Also Mom I need a favor. I was assigned the topic of Family History work in a special activity that we're going to have so I don't know if you could look up just a couple of our ancestors and send me a couple of cool short stories about them to share.

Thanks for everything and I love you guys a ton. I'll call you guys Saturday night to see what we do about skype. If it doesn't work out I guess we'll just have to talk by phone....talking about that we just lost our phone this week.....I'll see what I do.

¡¡¡¡¡Adios!!!!!