Changes!

    Hello family!  We are getting closer to Christmas every time I talk to you guys!  It´s been really special to be able to really feel the real meaning of Christmas this season.  I love the gifts and stuff, don´t get me wrong, but really focusing on Christ makes this season really worth it.  And how much better can it be when I am lost in the service of the Lord?  Not much.  So let´s see how I´m doing.

     Changes were this week.  Elder Calero is gone, and now I´m with Elder Josec.  He´s from Perú, and really funny.  And another cool thing is that he is also my Grandson!  (O sea, Elder Mar, my son (the Elder I trained) is Elder Josec´s dad.  How cool is that?)

     The most important person we are focusing on is Wosvelí.  He was set to be baptized this Saturday, but there were some complications.  On Wednesday, we were finishing up with him by passing off some commandments.  But when we came to the Law of Chastity, well, long story short we figured out he isn´t married to his "wife" yet...  (You´d be surprised how big of a problem that is here.  Especially because his "wife" is a member...)  So we had to push the baptism back until the 28th of december...

     But something really special is that I´m going to have my first marriage/baptism in the mission!  We are going to have the wedding in the afternoon on the 28th, and immediately afterwards he´s going to be baptized!  I´ve heard that is really special, so I´m stoked to be a part of it!  He´s a little nervous, but he´s participating in the ward and everything, so it´s going to be a really special day.  Christmas Baptism!!!

     We´ve also got another baptism set up for January!  Martha is a recent convert who was baptized in August.  All of her family was baptized besides her husband Cruz (who was in the States) and one of her daughters Sharon (who´s 16 and got pregnant...) The cool thing is that Cruz is now home, and Sharon had her baby.  So we decided to talk to them when they got back, but they didn´t want anything to do with us.  Bummer.  But when we had an activity at the temple, they both came, and ever since then, they´ve loved the church.  They´ve come to activities, and they came to church this week!  They want to be baptized, and we are going to work with them for January!  Miracles really do happen, especially when a temple is involved!

    We´ve got some other good looking prospects that are liking the church.  We just need to bust our butts to make sure that they progress as much as they can.  

     Not much else for this week.  Just looking forward to Christmas!  I´m gonna miss all of you guys, but I´ll be home for Christmas next year!  Meanwhile, I´m gonna enjoy my time here in good ole Guatemala.  Until Next Time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. Jacob 1:19  Gotta be dilligent!

Photos!

So I´ve known this guy since the beginning of my mission, and until now we´ve taken this picture.  Stuart Little baby!

Yet another "Hey look, there´s some live chickens/turkeys/ducks in this bus.  I really am in Guatemala!" picture.

BAPTISM!  Like I said in the other email, the family wanted the service to be small, so these are the people they wanted there.

Hanny and I.  What an awesome little girl.

Ha.  (If you can´t understand, put it in Google Translate.  It´s funnier that way.)

Good Start for December

Hello Family!  How y´all doin? (That one´s for you Matt)  Hope you all are feeling the Christmas Spirit!  And some of you are gonna have a really white Chirstmas from what I hear!  Well, not here in the Land of the Eternal Spring!  Although the weather here´s not that great nowadays.  It´s just cold, without the snow.  Joy.  But what can you do, right?  Right.

     After a bunch of time together, I´m finally saying goodbye to Elder Calero.  He´s been a really good comp, one of my favorites.  He´s really chill, and has a good heart.  He just needs a push here and there to get going, but when he does, he´s awesome.  It´s been really fun with him, but I´m excited to see who I´m going to be with for the next little while tomorrow!

     (Just a side note, if you don´t know yet.  This change was changed to only have four weeks, because if it was normal, changes would have been on Chirstmas Eve, which would´ve sucked for everyone.  So they made some switches, and this next change is going to have eight weeks to make up for the lost two weeks.  Just so you know.)

     We had an awesome week this week.  It all came together on Saturday, where we had a BAPTISM of a daughter of a family we recently reactivated.  Her name was Hanny.  It was really simple, they didn´t want very many people at the service, which we respected.  But their 16 year old daughter who still hasn´t come back to church yet came, so that was way special.  It was simple and sweet.  There really is nothing like a baptismal service to get your spirits up again.

     Something really cool real quick.  We had a priest that we know baptize Hanny just as an afterthought, because we figured that would be better for him to do it and not us.  We didn´t really think much of it until Sunday, where he bore his testimony in Sacrament Meeting.  At the end he said, "I also am very grateful to my Heavenly Father for the chance I had to baptize Hanny yesterday.  I will be forever grateful to the Missionaries for this opportunity they gave me."  When he said that last part, he looked right at me.  I just felt so good inside, and the scripture of "small things make great things" came to mind.  I thought it was just an afterthought, but it was really a prompting from the Spirit to strengthen his testimony.  That was a really cool experience.

     We are still working with Wosvelí.  We are planning for his baptism this Saturday, the 14th of December.  He´s starting to get nervous, and in the last lesson we had he said he wants more preparation, but honestly he doesn´t need it.  He knows it´s something that he has to do, and we are going to make sure that he follows through with it.  His family is helping a lot, coming to the ward every week.  He just needs a little push, and he´s good.

     The Christmas Devotional was this Sunday.  The only thing was we got pushed back in a cita, and ended up seeing only the last half.  But it still gets me, especially the music.  (Christmas music is one of the only things that makes me baggy...)  It´s good to take a step back every once in a while and realize what the true meaning of Christmas is.  And we have the chance to devote all our time to help others realize that.

     Once again, we´ve seen some miracles by seeing some things go wrong only to lead us to a very good thing.  For example, we´ve been teaching this lady for a while now, and we had planned to not go anymore.  But one night in our planning sessions, we had the impression to go with her.  Well, we went, but she made up some lame excuse and said she didn´t have time.  So, when she shut the door, we decided to knock the next door because we had some extra time.  The man opened the door and was hesitant at first, but accepted to hear our message.  And he is basically the perfect example of someone who is prepared to accept this message.  (Not going to any church, but looking for one.  Knows a lot about the scriptures.  Etc.)  When we told him about the Restoration, he basically said "That makes sense."  A really neat experience.

     At this point I think I´m just rambling on.  So I´ll just stop now.  But I´m super stoked to be working here, because things are really starting to pick up.  I love being a missionary, and I´m scared about how fast time is going.  But I´ve just got to make the best of what I have left!  Until next time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. 1 Peter 3:15

Photos!

Making Christmas arts and crafts!  Just like home.

Thanksgiving Dinner!

Thanksgiving with a member family!

Taking a bite out of the massive turkey leg.

This is a big Christmas Tree that´s in the middle of Xela, right next to an old temple that´s still standing.

Temple!  We had a Stake activity where we went to the temple, so I took some pictures of course!

Another temple photo.  I´m a professional photographer, right?

Awesome Thanksgiving Week!

Hello Family!  Well, it´s December, and you all know what that means!  IT´S CHRISTMAS TIME!  YES!!!  I love this spirit.  Even though there´s no snow where I´m at, you still have the Christmas Spirit here.  And I have a really good feeling that December is going to be a really good month for us!  We had a really good week this week!  A lot of things fell into place this week, and it´s been really special to see the Lord´s hand in this area.

     First off, with Wosvelí.  He´s the guy we found whose wife is the sister of the Branch President in Momos, my first area.  Well, he´s incredible.  I guess he just wasn´t ready when other missionaries passed by, but everything we´ve given him, he´s accepted with no problem.  We talked about his baptism, and he´s set for the 14th!  He´s so ready.

     Another cool thing about Wosvelí.  He came to church yesterday with his whole family, and loved it.  The best part though was during Elder´s Quorum.  At the end of the lesson, we were planning for the Nativity Scene that the ward is going to do, and the Elder´s Quorum is in charge of the scenery, and some food.  Well, they were giving out assignments, and when they asked for light, Wosvelí just straight up says, "I´ll help out with that."  Man, he´s already participating in the Ward!  How pilas is he?  What a guy.

     We also had a little mini miracle this week.  When I first got here, we were working a lot with a menos activo family, and we finally got them to come back to church.  Well, until this week we didn´t realize that their nine year old daughter hasn´t been baptized yet.  They were inactive when she turned eight, and when they started to come to church again, they never got around to baptize them.  Well, we talked to them about it, and they agreed to having her be baptized!  This Saturday, the 7th of December, we are going to baptize her.  It feels really good too, because it´s part of a family that I helped reactivate!

     We´ve also been blessed to be teaching a lot of families recently.  It´s a lot better teaching families as opposed to just single investigators.  Everything is better off, support, stats, and all that fun stuff.  We are just really trying to have them come to church, and then the real fun starts!

     Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I can tell you now, this year´s dinner was a lot better than last year´s!  (I honestly forgot it was Thanksgiving last year, so I just ate a bag of popcorn...)  We bought a bunch of food, gave it to a member to cook it for us.  So we had an awesome dinner with a HUGE turkey leg, mashed potatoes, and broccoli.  (Missed the stuffing though..)  It´s was really good, and a bunch of food!

     It´s been a really good week, and I hope that this week is the same!  Pray for all the missionaries out in the field, they are working their butts off!  Love you all!  Until next time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S.  Romans 12:2

Photos!

Doing service to paint a house!  I missed climbing up scaffoldings with Dad, so it was a good reminder!  (Also, check out the shirt.  Bought it for about 50 cents in a store.  Boo yah)

Just passing by on the street, and we see some old corte lady cutting wood.  So we go to help her out!

Alright, this photo takes some explanation.  We were walking down this path and blue jacket girl was carrying that propane tank walking towards us.  As she saw us, she dropped the tank, turned around, and hid over in the corn on the right.  So we walked up to the tank and just chilled there haha.  Then when we had finally passed, she found the courage to retrieve the tank.  Then she, and the woman we contacted while chilling by the tank, carried it away.  Then we took pictures of them.  Mission Quetzaltenango forever!  

A Really Good Week!

  Hello Family!  ¿Cómo están?  Voy a escribir en Español esta semana, para que ustedes puedan practicar su Español...  Ha.  (Although Chase would´ve understood it.)  But yeah, I just needed a new way to start off my emails.  So there ya go.

     This week turned out really good for us.  It wasn´t exactly what we planned out, and our pool of investigators has really revamped, but when things are good, you can´t really complain that much!  God knows when we deserve blessings, and when they come, man it feels good.

     I´ve got to tell you guys a really cool experience I had this week.  So way back in Pancá, about a year ago, we celebrated the birthday of the Branch President there, and all of his brothers and sisters came.  There were two of them that didn´t live in Momos, but in Xela.  So fast forward to this Wednesday.  One of our citas fell, so we decided to contact a little close by where we were.  We weren´t too well recieved, until one of the last doors we knocked.

     And what do you know, out walks a lady, who I had seen before.  She told us she was a member, but that I looked really familiar.  She asked me what areas we had been in, and when I started thinking about it, I realized she looked a lot like my Branch President in Pancá.  So I put two and two together, and realized she was the sister that came to the Birthday Party in Pancá like a year ago!  And we just found her by pure miracle.  Wow, it was so cool talking to her about Pancá.  But that´s not even the best part.  She basically said, "I´ve been looking for the missionaries of this area for a long time now.  (She lives in our ward but assists another ward.)  My husband isn´t a member, and I want you guys to teach him!"  And when we went to talk to him, he is pretty much all ready to be baptized!  We just need to talk to him a little bit more!  How awesome is that?  Miracles exist guys, even when we don´t think so!  So that was the miracle for this week.

     This Sunday was Stake Conference, but it was Stake Conference for the whole country of Guatemala.  Why?  Because we had a special broadcast for all of Guatemala!  (So that means even Jeffrey saw it!)  Elder Fallabela, from the Seventy who is from Guatemala, conducted the meeting, and we also had Sister Wixom (Primary President), Elder Richard G. Scott (Who can speak Spanish, which is way cool) and President Eyring give talks.  It was really good, because all the talks were directed to the amazing people of Guatemala!  I learned a bunch, and I hope that the Guatemaltecos learned something too! 

     Elder Scott gave a really good talk about the family.  With the love that he has for his own family, and the act that he gave his own talk without a translator, you could really feel the emotion that he had.  Families are really important for everyone here, so hopefully they can put what Elder Scott said into practice!

     We had a Mom and her two sons (Leslie, Dylan, and David) come to the Stake Conference this week!  We were super stoked.  A member family has been helping us out with them, and they were the ones who basically invited them.  But Leslie really likes it, so we are working with her now!  

     We´ve also got a lot of other investigators that we are teaching right now.  Not as positive as the ones I´ve mentioned, but still really awesome.  We are really trying with Antonio and his family.  They´ve already stopped going to their old church to come to ours, but something always comes up on Sundays, and they can´t come.  But, with them I feel like just a bit of patience and they will be members!  Just got to be diligent.

     So yeah, it was a really busy week for us.  But I prefer business over not having anything to do!  So it was a really good week for us.  I hope that we can be diligent enough to take care of the people God has put in our path!  I love you all and I love this work!  Until Next Time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. 1 Timothy 4:16