Changes!!!...Oh Wait

      Hello Family!  This week there are changes!  And guess who has changes?!?..  Not me.  Jaja it´s been really weird for me.  I´ve been in Chiquilajá for 5 changes now, which is about the maximum for the mission.  But I guess I´ll be here for 6!  Go figure!  It´s a great area, I love the members and everything.  And, because we thought that I was going to have changes, we got a lot of people prepared for the supposed new guy that was going to come in.  But now I´ll be able to work with them, and it´s going to be great.  Although I´m the second missionary in years that has been in an area for more that 5 changes, I´m stoked.

     Our most progressing investigators so far are Lorenzo and María.  They are the nicest older couple you will meet this side of Guatemala.  Just amazing.  They only have one problem though... They know that this church is true.  They´ve prayed about it, and they know.  They are just afraid of leaving the church they are attending now.  They feel like they owe it to the church they are going to, because they´ve been going there for so long.  We´ve been trying to explain it to them that they owe it to God if they know this is the truth, but they don´t seem to understand.  We´ve also shared Matthew 13:45-46.  It´s been kind of a real test for me, becuase we can´t seem to make them understand.  But they know, and I´m sure they´ll act.  We´re just going to keep working with them.

     We had a really good lesson this week with some new investigatores named Lester and Ingrid.  They are a couple who have had a lot of contact with missionaries, and when they said that they had heard the message before, we wondered how we were going to go at the lesson.  But we just decided to go at it really slow, and make sure that they understand every little detail.  It was really slow for me, but I felt the Spirit stronger than in other lessons.  We made sure to ask a LOT of questions to make sure that they understood.  And we were getting responses like, "Wow, I didn´t realize that before." or, "That makes a lot of sense."  Follow the spirit, and you can´t go wrong.

     Which brings me to my next point.  I´ve been studying a lot in Ch. 10 of PMG about asking inspired questions.  We had been having a lot of problems with teaching investigatores, and the next lesson they had forgotten almost everything.  The good thing about questions is that we can let the people teach themselves.  When we ask a question guided by the spirit, they tend to think about it more, and they get more out of it.  It´s not enough, I´ve realized, to just teach the doctrine, and ask if they understood.  We need to do better, and the Spirit can help us to just that.

     We got hit with a stroke of bad luck this week with some investigators.  With Jorge, who was planning on getting baptized at the end of this month, he´s going to have to go to the capital for a sickness that he has.  So he´s going to be gone for some weeks.  Also, Antonio´s going on vacation for two weeks.  So that´s two progressing investigators gone for a while.  But we´ll be sure to get back with them when they get back.

     A lot of things this week have made me realize how much I love the people here in Guatemala.  They are so loving.  They are so quick to accept total strangers, let them into their house, and make new friends.  It really makes the work here a lot eaiser.  And I´ve basically been living with Latinos for 20 months, and I´ve been loving it.  I´m thinking that maybe this culture will inpact what I will do later in life, but we´ll see!

     So yeah, I´m still here, but excited to work with all the people we´ve been finding.   The mission is amazing, and I couldn´t even think about being anywhere else.  This really is the Lord´s work, and I am a part of it.  Let´s hasten the work!  Until next time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. Ether 12:4