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San Francisco el Alto.  What an amazing place.

Playing with some little kids!

Market Day in San Francisco.  Guys, this place goes crazy on Fridays.  It´s ridiculous.

Not only do they sell clothes, food, and the normal stuff in the market.. They have a special place reserved for animals!  Cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, everything!  It´s crazy!

Little pigs!  Man were they noisy!

Walking through the market.

Going to a member´s house, we have to cross a bridge with a beautiful view.  And this is the view we get from up high!

The difference between my shoes and the shoes of Elder Jerez...

San Francisco on Sunday mornings...  It´s a ghost town, seriously.  What people do here is Monday and Tuesday, they prepare everything to sell.  On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, they work hard, sell a lot of stuff, and get money.  And then on Saturday and Sunday, everyone either travels, or just stays in their houses.  Que dichoso!

Eating dinner with some members!

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Just you´re classic view in San Francisco el Alto.  Someone working on the mountain side taking care of their corn fields, with a waterfall in the mountain on the other side of the valley.  So beautiful.

We helped Luis and Marleni make a drawing of some ruins for their kids.  So Elder Jerez and I drew this up in about 20 minutes.  And I really like how it turned out!

This is what happens when the World Cup is going on.  Almost everyone inside their houses watching soccer, and the people that are in the street watching it as they pass by.  I´m going to make a collage of pictures that I have of "Things people do because of the World Cup."

Cooking dinner on a fire stove (what do you call these things?  It´s plancha in spanish...  But I don´t know what it is in english...)  while repping my american flag tie.

As we were cooking dinner, this bugger just crawls out of the stove.  No big deal.

Walking home at night.  That´s what I love about this place, is you can have roads in the middle of a bunch of trees, basically in the middle of nowhere!

Working in the corn fields with a less active member!

 If I ever decide to live in San Francisco el Alto, this will be the place where I put my house.

 After church with some members.  Luis is the one right next to me. (Man, I look really fat in this picutre... nevermind that...)

Just some more of the beauty of Guatemala.

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Just chilling outside of the dispensa with some good old chocolate milk.

Everyone at changes.

This is the beautiful land called Huehuetenango.

Me in Huehue.

A member in our ward makes bread, and this is his oven.  It´s really good.

Found this chilling in our house, just trying to get out.  Just be glad that I didn`t show you a picture of the bugs in our bathroom... ;)   THIS was the bug I was telling you about.

Look at the name of this school.  And when we asked, they said they have no relation with the church....

Getting to know the area from the back of a pickup.  (Also ignore the fact that my comp looks great, and I`m just... meh.)

For service, we made a bunch of chicken houses for the members here, something really necessary here!

Today we asked our bishop how we were to get rid of our trash.  He said, "Just go to the cliff and throw it off."  We were like, "Are you serious?"  And this is the cliff he was talking about.  I love this place, but man, I`m for sure in a third-world country.

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So this is the size of the average Guatemalteca.  And I thought I was the short one.  (She´s really pilas by the way.  Always helps us out, and going to go on the mission in March.)

Rainbow picture.  Cool

Elder Josec and I with some member kids.

Some members playing my guitar for Family Home Evening.  They wrote their own song, and it´s really good!

Please enjoy your view of a classic tortilla shop in Guatemala, with the classic corte lady.  This is as Guatemalan as it gets folks.

Elder Josec, Elder Pagán, and I as the three Wise Men in our ward´s Christmas Activity!

If this didn´t remind me of home, I don´t know what does!

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This is a member and I going to a cita.  He´s really cool, so I had to take a picture!

Does this not look like the perfect scene out of a scary movie?  We were walking to a cita at night, and I just looked to our right, and bam, that was the view I saw.  An abandoned corn field with a full moon.  It was sweet.

Birthday cake smashing! 

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I don´t know how well you can see it, but just on your normal bus ride, you have a basket full of live chickens clucking like no ones business.  Man, I love me some Guatemala!

An awesome view of the sunset.  It looked like there was a column of light just bursting out of the clouds!  It looked so cool.

A member asked us to help her by doing service.  Little did we know what we were going to do until we got to the house, and saw the mountain of clothes...

We did service by hauling dirt onto a flatbed truck...  Fun times!

We ate Mexican Tortas on last week, and man were they so good!  

Lightning Picture!!!  Try not to be too awestruck.

As we were talking to a member, her daughter was just having fun staying like this.  She stayed there like that for a good 10 minutes.

Great Week in the Land of the Lamanites!

    Hello Family!  How y´all doin?!?  (I don´t know why, but I always like typing with a country feel to it.)  Man, did we have a good week this week.  It just made me love the mission that much more!  It is absolutely incredible being a missionary.  Really thinking about it, who else would spend two years of their lives, right in the middle of everything, just to go talk to some random people in a faraway country about God?  Mormon Missionaries, that´s who!  Yeah boi.

     It is amazing seeing the energy of the ward here change recently.  I am seeing a lot more members taking the initiative recently.  For example, yesterday, we had FIVE member present lessons.  I don´t know about the other missions, but for here, that is really good.  Members were willing to go with us to citas, do divisions with us, and just help us out.  Man, the missionary work really changes when members help out.  (Hint Hint for those at home...)

     We were really blessed this week with something I would call a miracle.  On Saturday, we had been working hard all week, and we had some really good lessons, but we had yet to feel something really special.  So we went to this one guy we found this week named German.  We gave him the first lesson like usual on Tuesday, and we came back on Saturday.  

     We asked him the usual questions about his commitments, like if he had read the BoM, and prayed.  Well, he told us that he read what we left for him, and then wanted to read some more, so he did.  At this point, I was feeling really excited, but trying to keep it cool, I asked him if he had the chance to pray about it.  He said yes, so I asked him what he felt.  And the answer is the answer every missionary wants to hear.  "I just feel chills, you know?  Like I had a fire going on in my chest."  Is that perfect or what?  Wow...  WE were seriously so blessed to find him.  He came to church yesterday and everything, and even said yes to being baptized on the 23 of November.  It really was just amazing to live it.  What an experience.  So we will be definitely following up with him to make sure he gets baptized!  

     That story just goes to show you about the power of the BoM.  We should all try to use it more in our teachings, and in our lifes.  It really is the word of God.

     Just to talk more about Guatemala, Jeffrey has been saying that some spooky things have been going down.  It´s true.  Guatemala, and my mission in particular, is famous for it´s "black magic."  For example.  Yesterday we were going to visit someone at their house.  But when we got closer, we heard a bunch of shouting and people yelling "Get out!  Get out!"  So we were like what the heck?  But we knocked anyways.  A 12 year old boy answered and said, "Now isn´t a good time, we are casting out a demon!"  And shut the door.  So yeah, we just walking in on a group of people (including a evangelical pastor) casting out a demon.  Yeah, Guatemala´s weird.

      But yeah, it´s been a really good week, and I´m planning for an even better one this week!  Man do I love being a missionary!  Until next time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. Read 2 Nefi 22.  It´s a great chapter.  Also 2 Nefi 25:23,26

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Oh you know, just throwing a member kid in the air.  I´m going to try and get more height this week!  ;)

   Chalk up one more crazy food I´ve eaten here.  Can you guess what it is?  Just go ahead, guess...


You´ve got your guess?


Alright, I´ll tell you..


Blood.  Yep.  They take blood, fry it on the fire, stuff it with some leftover meat, and serve it.  Nice...  Now I can say that I´ve eaten blood...

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We found a really awesome guy who was really interested in our message!...  Ha

Temple!  The members are the second and fourth people, the rest are investigators that we brought.  And although we couldn´t go any closer, it was still special.

I just had to show you the cutest little member girl!  Guatemalan kids are so darn cute!  (And just try to ingore the big mass of who knows what on the side...)

This is the awesome sunset view that we view everyday, and I thought that you guys would like to see it!

Just the volcano that covers all of Xela!

We went up to the lookout place again, so I took more pictures!  In this picture, you can actually see my area, but to point it out to you guys would be too hard...  So yeah.

  Xela, here I come!

 Rockin the Mayan warrior look.

Just being a kid again.  And LOVING it!

Another "O Jerusalem" picture for you guys!