General Conference Weekend!

Hello Family!!!  


I hope that you all had a great General Conference weekend, because I sure enjoyed it!  Although it did make for less time in Pancá for us, it was worth it, because we got to hear the prophets address us.  I guess I didn´t really put together for me how important and how much of a blessing General Conference is for us.  It is a chance for us to hear the living prophets of today that God has called personally, and they are addressing us as a people in this time.  If you think about it, it is almost as important as the scriptures in my opinion.  I mean, the scriptures are prophets teachings, and General Conference is the exact same thing!  How great of a blessing is it that we are able to hear the words of our prophets and to heed their teachings!  I wish I came to this realization earlier, but better late then never!  I just know that from now on, I will look forward to General Conference!

Speaking of which, that was quite the bomb that was dropped on all of us!  Missionary ages have changed, as all of you have told me!  It was crazy, especially because of how I ended up getting to hear it!  To hear General Conference, we had to travel to Momos to see it, because we couldn´t get it in Pancá, so we planned on leaving early Saturday morning.  We woke up on Saturday and packed all of our stuff through tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, because today is P-Day, and tomorrow we have a District Meeting.  We headed out and started to wait for the truck that passes by Pancá and goes to Momos everyday at 8:00.  When we were still waiting at 8:30 for it, we figured that it wasn´t going to come, so we started to walk.  Now, this is about an hour ride by truck to get to Momos, all through dirt roads.  Our plan was to walk all the way to Momos...  Yee Haw right?  Not gonna lie, it sucked.  I had my backpack and a duffel bag with me, and I was walking all through basically nothing. I thought that we were going to have to walk all of the way to Momos!!!  After about an hour and 45 minutes of walking, the truck finally came!  It was about 10:05 at this point.  I was so grateful for it, because I was getting frustruated, and we were missing conference as of then!  Thank goodness for it though, because we were only about a little more than halfway to Momos!  So we got it and rode the rest of the way.

We got off at Momos, and rushed to the Chapel.  We got in and took a seat in the back.  The speaker was Sister Dibb, So we missed Elder Cook and most of Sister Dibb´s talk.  There were I think two other speakers before Elder Nelson, and I was grateful for them, because it gave me time to calm down and get situated.  Now, the conference was in Spanish, so I was still struggling to understand all of it, I was tired, and I just had so much running through my mind.  Luckily I payed enough attention to hear the announcement about the missionary age changing!  (Elder Nelson reinstated what President Monson said at the beginning what I missed)  I started immediately thinking of Jeffrey, and what he was going to do!  Then I started thinking about all of my other friends that all of a sudden became eligible for a mission!  How crazy is that?!?  Things sure are going to change!

But that was only part of the weekend.  I love hearing all of the speakers talk and give what they think is most important for us.  I got the gist of all the talks, seeing as they were all in spanish, but I will be looking for a Liahona or an Ensign in English, so I can read all the talks on my own time in my own language, so I can get all of General Conference!  I loved hearing it in Spanish though, it was different, but it really put it into perspective that I really am on a mission!  Also, another cool thing was that the chapel that I was in was the headquarters for the translation of General Conference into Quiche!  How cool is that?!?  One of the missionaries I was talking to said he got to go into the main room where they do all of the translations and take pictures, so I got to see it, even though I was late!  I just thought that was way cool!

But General Conference wasn´t the only good news of the week!  We have more dates for baptisms!  On Wednesday, we went up to the Pu Imul family (The family in the photo i sent you) and taught them again.  Santiago (the Dad) surprised us when he said that he wanted his children baptized!  He can´t be baptized, because he isn´t married to his wife yet, but he expressed the desire to have his children in the church!  I was so happy when I heard that!  We set a date for the 20, giving them time to attend church one more time, because they need it for the requirement.  But, we also got to see them at General Conference!  I was so surprised, even though we did invite them!  I´m sure it took a lot of sacrifice to travel to Momos just to hear General conference, but they did it!  That just shows how much the Dad wants them to be baptized!  They were in the Quiche translation room of the chapel, so we went and visited them at the end of the Sunday Morning session and listned to the closing prayer in Quiche!  Needless to say, I didn´t understand like any of it!  But it was still cool to hear!  So yeah, we have more dates for baptism!  I am so excited that I have the chance to bring some more people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

So now onto some questions I have been asked.  For the baptisms, they were Erlinda and Diego that I baptized.  We wanted Antonio to baptize all three of them, but he didn´t feel comfortable doing it, so he asked us to do it.  So the Branch President baptized Estevana, and I baptized the other two.  For travel times, like I said earlier, it takes about an hour to get from Pancá to Momos by truck.  Also, it takes about 3 hours to get from Momos to Xela by bus.  So it is pretty far from here to Xela.  But it is so different in Xela!  Here in Momos, you have to buy all of your food from street vendors or little shops on the street.  But in Xela, there are fast food restaurants, Wal-marts, and the like.  So Momos is pretty poor compared to Xela.  As for mail, they have said that it is pretty hard to get mail here.  I haven´t gotten a snail mail letter yet.  I got one dear elder from President Castillo, but that´s it.  So I don´t know how reliable the mail system is here.  So I just don´t expect to get any mail, and if I ever do, it will be awesome!  So sorry if I don´t get your letters, here it isn´t really reliable.  

Sounds like fun as always back home.  Woods Cross did pretty good in state, and I think it is because of Jeffrey!  Tell him good job from me!  Although they didn´t take first place, they still did really well!  Ryan also sounds like he is having a blast in the Drama Department!  So just keep loving life, and enjoying everything!

I love you all, and thank you for your emails always!  I look forward to them every week!  I loved this week, because I got to grow more in the gospel!  I love this work, and can´t wait to continue!  Until Next Time!!

     - Elder Stuart

Week Two!

Hello Family!!!  

     Sorry I am sending this a day later than usual, I had to run to Guatemala City yesterday for some visa stuff, and that took the whole day, so they are letting me use email today!  Thank goodness!  But I don`t even know where to start, or what to start talking about!  It has been such a great week and a half, I just want to let you all experience it also!  But, the best I can do is send it to you guys through email, so here we go!  

     I`ll start with my first Sunday!  It was such a great day!  First things first, we went down to the chapel at 8:00, even though our meetings start at 9:00.  Because the Branch President wanted to do something special.  The reason is because the day before, the 15 of September, was Independence Day here in Guatemala, and he wanted to talk about Independence and relate it back to the church.  So we had a flag raising ceremony, and sang the Guatemalan National Anthem (which I was completely lost on!)  We also read Articles of Faith 1:12, because it shows that we as a church still believe in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law of the land.  So that was the first thing we did.  Then we got to start Sacrament Meeting.  There aren`t that many people there, so me and Elder Maldonado had to help as much as we could!  Elder Maldonado played the piano, and I helped bless the sacrament.  Helping as much as we can, that is what we do as missionaries!  But I really like what Dad said in his email to me, no matter where you are in the world, you can still feel the same spirit no matter where you are, and it was so true!  Even though the meeting was in Spanish and I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, I still felt the spirit!  Plus, even more, the Branch President called on us Elders to give our testimonies, which I totally expected, so I wasn`t caught that much off guard!  It was such a neat experience, and while I was bearing my testimony, it finally hit me: I really am a missionary!  Here I am, In the middle of the wilderness in Guatemala, probably the only Gringo around for miles, and I`m giving my testimony of the church to others in a whole other part of the world who believe the same things I do!  It was such a humbling experience, and I loved it!  A good thing was also, was that we had an Investigator family that we went and visited the day before come to church!  So that was awesome!  This was their second time coming to church, and the rule is that an investigator has to come to church three times before they can be baptized, so they are one their way!  One of the best parts of the day was after the meeting though.  I just hung out with all the little kids there and played with them for like 30 minutes.  I bet it was so weird for them to see a white boy like me around them!  They are so nice though!

    Which leads me to my next part.  I absolutely love my area.  End of story!  It is one of the poorest areas in our mission, and for that I am so grateful!  You know why?  Because the members here don`t have that much, that are so humble that it blows my mind!  We can stop by one of the member’s houses and they will drop everything that they are doing and give all of their attention to us!  They are so willing to help us find others we can teach, and they want to help us with everything they can.  Plus they are more than happy to feed us whenever we stop by during a meal, which is awesome!!!  I was thinking about it the other day, and I came to the realization that they are richer than most of the people here in Guatemala.  The reason is because they have the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the greatest thing we can have in this life.  They will be the ones who inherit the Kingdom of God, and they will be Kings and Queens of their own children in heaven, which you can`t buy with any worldly possession.  Others might have the things of the world, but the people here have the things of the heavens, which cannot be compared to or bought!  

    I want to tell you a little bit about our investigators.  We have two main families that we are teaching as of now.  The first one is called the Pu Imul family.  They are the family that I told you about last week that only speak Quiche.  The Dad, Santiago, and the kids are all really interested in our message. The thing is, that they are really poor and live a far way away from the chapel, that it is really hard for them to come to church.  So that is the reason they aren`t coming to church.  Also another hard thing is the Wife.  Well, technically I can`t call them that, because they aren`t married.  That is a huge problem for us, because they can`t be baptized unless they get married, and it is going to be really hard for them to do that, because they would have to travel.  So as of now, we are working on getting them to come to church and really focusing on the children, because they have the chance to be baptized!  So that is the deal with them.

     The other family is the Pu Mejìa family.  They are a part member family, which means that the Dad, Antonio, is a new member, but the rest of the family aren`t members.  But!  We have dates for the Mom and one of the kids!  They are planning on being baptized on this Friday, so like in three days!  They are ready, and they came to church this week too, so they have all the qualifications for baptism!  I am so excited!  But, I am a little bummed, because we had a date planned for one more kid, but he got sick and didn`t make it to church, so he has to attend one more time before he can get baptized!  But we are really making progress on them!  I love this family so much, and I can`t wait for them to accept the gospel fully!

     Another big thing we had this week is we had like a neighborhood activity on Saturday, and it actually was a huge turnout!  We had about 80 people turn up, about 25 of which weren`t members!  So that is awesome!  We watched the movie "Joseph Smith:  The Prophet of the Restoration", and they were all interested in it!  To add to it, Santiago Pu Imul and one of his kids showed up too!  So that was really good news for us!  All the people there really enjoyed it, and I feel like it really helped this area a lot to do that!

     So yeah, these are the major points that have gone on so far!  So now I`ll answer some of the questions Mom asked me, so you all can know about where I am living! 

1.  My house, or shack as I call it.  It looked really bad at first, but I`ve grown to love it.  I don`t know how you all would do in it, but I`m loving it!  It is really small, but it has things we need, so Ï can`t complain!

2. Not dirt floors thank goodness!  They are straight concrete, because our house is a concrete slab with bricks around it and a tin roof.  So thankfully no dirt!

3.  We have running water, but it is so contaminated that we cant drink it.  We have a showerhead, so that’s nice, even if the water isn`t warm.  We also have this thing called a pila outside, where we wash our dishes and do all of our main things with water.

4.  Clothes are doing nice, we just washed them for the first time.  And it was so fun, because we did it in the pila with a washboard, so a lot different from a machine!  The shoes are holding up nice too.  I`m airing them out for sure, but I am mainly using my boots here, because it is a lot of hiking.  So I really am trying to take care of my things, because I need them for 2 years!

5.  The bandanna is so useful!  Now so much for the dirt, but for my sweat!  It is really humid here, so I start sweating pretty easily, so I can wipe it all off with the bandanna!  So grateful I brought it!

6.  It is rainy season for another month still, but we don`t have to worry about it much in my area.  It only rains at nights and very occasionally in the day.

7.  I`m making do with the food, it is a lot of tortillas, soup, rice and beans.  Crazy thing is, I actually am loving the refried beans here.  I know I said I would never eat them, but now I find myself craving them!  Weird!  Also, there are little tiendas all over, which are little family owned shops, and there we buy pure water, which is water in a bag.  So I have been drinking water out of a bag for two weeks now!

8.  The Spanish is definitely coming, I can hold my own in a conversation now, although there are still a few words that I don`t know.  But I still have to work hard at it, and really focus.  But when I put it into perspective and see that I have only been 2 weeks out in the field, I say I am doing pretty good.  That doesn`t mean I have to stop working though!  Plus, I’ve learned a few words in Quiche, which is fun!  I really want to learn it, but I have to focus on Spanish first, so no Quiche yet!

     Sounds like you all are having a blast back at home.  I`m not gonna lie, I miss you all like crazy, but whenever I start to feel homesick, I think of the families I am teaching, and I just want to devote as much time as I can to help them!  I really love hearing all about home, and all you are doing back in a normal life!  Thank you for continuing to send emails, I love looking forward to reading them each P-Day!  Keep having a blast, and I will let you know more about my life in the coming week!  Until Next Time! 

     Elder Stuart 

     P.S.  I am going to start sending a scripture home each week that I really like, so here is the first one!  D+C 128:22!  A really good one about missionary work!