Photos!

Get this.  This is a typical Christmas dessert made up of:  Jello, apples, grapes, colored marshmellows, sour cream, and peanuts.  And it was actually really good.

Making some Xela famous "chuchitos."  Basically corn with a sauce and some meat inside.  The secret is the sauce...

Learning how to make Chuchitos.

Just some of the meats that they put in the Chuchitos.  And yes, that is a turkey head.

New Years in Xela

Burning up the corn stalks after the harvest.

Hoeing for service!  ;)

Christmas Eve with the Velasco family!  

Christmas at Midnight!

Christmas Package!!!  (Also, look at that thumb...)

My area

A big Christmas tree in the middle of Xela

Playing a game like Taboo, and some member drew this, trying to draw a gorilla.

Feliz Año Nuevo!

  Hello Family!  And Happy New Year!  We have officially entered 2014, the year that a Prophet of God called Elder Stuart to come back home...  How weird is that?  Can you believe how fast the time has gone?  Incredible.  Now it`s just time for us to make the best of a whole new year!

     New Year´s was just like how it was for my family:  Quiet.  New Year´s Eve was just a normal day for us, and then we had to be in our apartments at 9:00.  So Elder Josec and I played some games for a little bit, until midnight, and then went up to our roof to watch the fireworks. And then I went to sleep.  Fun right?  Honestly, for me it was.  I was dead tired, so I just wanted to rest.  So yeah...

     Actually, thinking about it, that´s how our week went for us.  This week was really slow.  We had a really low number of lessons taught, and some things just didn`t go our way.  It definitely was a week of really thinking about the mission, and how it has blessed my life.  I know I`ve said it before, but I know I was sent here in Quetzaltenango not just for the people here, but for myself.  And it`s been great.

      Anyways, we have had some problems with Cruz and Sharon.  Sharon ran away from home to go live with her boyfriend...  So we haven`t seen here for about a week.  And Cruz isn`t feeling that good about his fecha.  So we pushed it back to the 18th.  But we really need to work with him to have him gain a testimony about the Gospel.  Without a testimony, we aren`t getting anywhere.  So we are really working on that.

       Wosvelí has been in Momos all week, so we haven`t seen him yet.  But we`ve started the process to divorce him.  We haven`t been informed on how long it is going to take, but we are shooting for about 3 weeks.  But we`ll see how that goes.

     Because a bunch of people didn`t want to follow through with their citas, we had the opportunity to find 15 new investigators this week, one of the highest I`ve ever had.  Now we just need to make sure that we follow through with them so that they can all progress.

      I just want to tell you guys a really cool experience that happened yesterday.  We were having one of those days, where no one comes to church, and every single thing that we had planned fell through.  It was 7:30, and we were so tired.  We had just walked through a bunch of guys making fun of us, and went so far as to kick a soccer ball that hit me in the back.  Needless to say I was really frustruated.  I was thinking, "Let`s just go home, nothing good is coming out of today."  But we decided to go visit one more person.  We decided to keep on going.  

     When we got to the house that we had planned to go, some little kid answered and informed us that the person we were looking for wasn`t there.  But then some older lady came to the door, and started talking to us.  We presented ourselves, and she almost sent us away.  But then something changed.  It was like the whole atmosphere got calmer.  She suddenly just said to come in, and she gave us some leftover tostadas from their dinner.  We chatted, and figured out that she is really in need of the Gospel.  We left her house with plans to stop by this Wednesday.  I left that house thanking God for giving me the strength to keep going.  If I would`ve just given up and gone home, we never would have found that lady.  But we did.  God works in mysterious ways, and I am just now starting to see that.

     (That ended up being longer than I thought...)

     So yeah, Happy New Year´s to all.  Here`s to 2014!  Until next time!

     - Elder Stuart

     P.S. John 15:2 and 4

Photos!

Most of us Elders on New Year`s Eve!  Some of them bought fireworks, so we woke back up at midnight, and watched the fireworks for about 20 minutes!  It was way cool! 

We celebrated new years with a family here!  We made a bonfire with them, roasted marshmellows, and set off little fireworks.  It was way fun!

So we were looking for a truck to Pancà when this cement truck passed by, asking us the way to Pancà.  He was headed there for the construction on the chapel.  We told him we knew the way, and he offered to take us there if we showed him the way!  So we got to ride all the way to Pancà in a cement truck!

   We found this little water source (What do you call this?) on our way to a member`s house.  It looked pretty clean, so I figured why not?  (But not really..)

This is a little baby who was born here not to long ago.  Her family is Less Active, but they ended up coming to chruch for a baby blessing for her!  So everything turned out perfect!

I don`t remember if I had sent you guys a picture of the waterfalls here, but I went to go show them to Elder Mar, so we took some more pictures!

Happy New Years!

    Hello Family, and Happy 2013!  Time just seems to be flying, and look now, we are already in another year!  That sure was quick!  This past year was really crazy with everything that went on, but I have a feeling that this next year will be just as crazy!  Especially because I am going to be in the mission the whole year!  That is just crazy to think about!  But I hope that this year will be great for you guys, because I know that it is going to be great for me!  I hope that we can continue to feel the blessings of the Lord in our lives, and that we can remember him throughout the year!

    After we FINALLY got back to Pancà, we knew that we were going to have to work our butts off to make this week count.  So that is exactly what we did!  Even though everything didn`t turn out as we hoped, I felt good about it, because I knew that I did all that I could to make up for the time that we lost.  We ended up staying out until about 9:00 each night, which is really late for an Aldea (An area like Pancà)  We usually are supposed to come in at like 7:00, but we wanted to work more, so we stayed out later.  I hope that our extra work has payed off!  

     There aren`t really good stories for this week, because we missed a lot of the appointments that we had planed, so we really just went and visited a lot of the members and less actives here.  It was really cool, because one of the less actives that we have been visiting for pretty much the whole time finally came to church for the first time!  Even though it was to bless her baby girl, it still counts!  I was hoping that she would get up and bear her testimony about it all, but she didn`t unfortunately...  But we talked to her afterwards, and she seems really glad that she came to have her girl blessed.  So hopefully that means that she will come next week!  

     The President has issued a challenge for us as missionaries.  We are going to try and read the entire BoM before the next General Conference.  But not just read it, but to really study it.  We all have a notebook to but notes and feelings that we have.  I really like reading it and studying it this way.  I mean, I have read it before, but to really study it means that I am able to grasp more and more about the BoM, and I really like it!

     So this week wasn`t all that I hoped it was going to be, but hopefully this next week will!  Until Next Week!

      - Elder Stuart

     P.S. The scripture is 1 Nephi 8:30.  But it really is just better to read the whole chapter.  And if you can, look up Elder Bednar`s talk on the Tree of Life!