And also, I have been forgetting to put a scripture in every week! Oops! But here is one for this week! Matthew 28:19-20. Jesus Christ is with us always when we are preaching the Gospel, and I know it, because I can feel him here with me!
Matthew 28:19-20
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Pictures!
Sorry, last week I forgot my cable, so I couldn`t upload any pictures, but I can this week!
This is from General Conference, and it is us as a Zone with our investigators that came to General Conference. We are acting like the army of Helaman. It actually turned out really well!
Last week for P-Day, we went over to a members house in Momos, and he had a lot of paintball guns that he let us borrow! It was a lot of fun! (I went 5-1, just for the record)
My Converts! On the very right is Carlos Pu Mejia. And from oldest to youngest for the Pu Imul family, it goes Laura, Santos, Rafael, and Juan. Such an amazing sight to see them all dressed in white after wearing their regular clothes, which are always really dirty! A great picture!
This is General Conference night, and we had to stay with Elder Schmidt and Elder Petingill in Momos, along with another companionship. So there were six of us sharing two mattresses. Needless to say, it was a very uncomfortable night!
Just your ordinary haul of insects for Pancà. We caught both of them within 5 minutes of each other. Makes me wonder how I even sleep at night! (But don`t worry mom, I`m alright!)
My First Six Weeks!
Hello Family! Well, I have officially reached my first transfer period in the mission field, even though I`m not going to transfer. It still feels good to have reached this point though! I seem to have had a lot of success recently, I hope that it continues to be this way!
Well, first things first, our baptisms went through! On the 18, four of the Pu Imul kids get baptized, and we also had one kid from the Pu Mejia family that got baptized. He didn`t get baptized when the rest of his family did, because he didn`t have enough attendences to church, but he did now, so he got baptized! So that`s FIVE baptisms! That is five souls that have come closer to Christ. It feels so good having helped with it also! It was so cool to see them so happy and filled with the spirit! Usually, the Pu Imul kids are so serious and hardly look you in the eye, but at the baptism, they were so happy and laughing and just having a good time! That just shows how much the Gospel of Jesus Christ can do for you! That is why I love being a missionary so much! I have to opportunity to spend two years doing this work, seeing the gospel change lives, and just being closer to my Savior!
Other than that though, not much has happened. We have just been visiting other less active members, active members, doing service, and such. We do have a family that we are still working with to get the kids baptized. The mom is not active at all, but the Dad is. He actually just called to be the second counselor in the Branch Presidency this week, so hopefully that will help the kids realize how important the Gospel is to their Dad, and will make them want to participate more!
We just got here to Momos for P-Day, and just got back from helping all the new missionaries to this area carry their bags to wait at the Zone Leader`s house until they can get to their respective areas. So we are going to have some new faces here in the Zone of Momostenango! I`m still in the same area, so not much will change, just the missionaries in their respective areas.
Well, I`m still doing great, continuing doing the work of the Lord! I love it here, and am ready for another week! Until Next Time!
- Elder Stuart
Photos!
This is a waterfall that we pass by everytime we go to our Ward Mission Leader´s house. (He is the one in the pictures that I sent last time. He translates for us into Quiche.) We finally to time to find a good spot to take a picture.
I found Paper Mario in Momos. No big deal. Of course, knowing me, I had to take a picture! Yay for nerds!
Sunday, October 21, 2012
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!!
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
Monday, October 1, 2012
Pictures from Panca
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| Mission Home of the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Mission |
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| Elder Maldonado and Elder Stuart |
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| LDS Church |
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| Elder Maldonado |
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| Jonny's Home |
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| Kitchen |
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| Bedroom (Jonny's is the Red Bed) |
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| Desk |
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| Closet |
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| Elder Maldonado |
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| Scorpion |
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| Spider |
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| Elder Maldonado |
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| Elder Maldonado |
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| Elder Stuart |
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| Elder Stuart |
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| Elder Stuart |
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| Guatemalan Family |
An Awesome Week!
Hello Family! I can`t wait to tell you all about the week that I have had! It has been just a really good example of how the mission life is! The mission definitely does have it`s ups and downs, but that`s all part of life, right? We just need to push through the challenges and strive to do our best in everything!
This week started out a little rough. We didn`t get back to our house in Pancà until late Tuesday night, because of the Visa thing I had to figure out on Monday. So we lost about a day and a half of work that we could have done. So on Wednesday, we went out to go and find some people to teach and Less Active members to go see. But on that day, either no one was home (which meant we pretty much walked about 45 minutes for nothing!), or they didn`t have much time to visit with us, because they were about to leave (which meant we couldn`t teach them a lesson!) Not to mention that we got lost on our way back, which sucked, because we forgot our flashlight, and there are no lights anywhere in Pancà, so we struggled over dirt paths through the woods for a while before we finally got home. So it was a rough day!
Thankfully, the next day was a whole lot better! We started off the next day helping the Garcia family (a really nice family really strong in the Gospel) with various jobs around the house. It felt good to do service for them, because when we do service, we are in the service of God. Then, they gave us the absolute best lunch I have had in Pancà! Lydia, the Mom, worked on a huge dish of Chow Mein for us, and after working for so long and so hard, it was much appreciated! Not to mention it was a nice break from the usual Beans and Rice and Tortillas I have had for the past couple weeks! It was just a good morning with a nice member family! Afterwards, our District Leader came all the way to Pancà, because we had some Baptism interviews to take care of! So we headed out to the Pu Mejia family, and we had the chance to interview Estevana, (the Mom) Erlinda, and Diego (The two kids)! They all "passed" if you will, and we were all so excited!
Their date was Friday, the 28 of September, the very next day! I was looking forward to their baptism the whole day! It finally came around, and Elder Maldonado and I started setting up for it! The Pu Mejia family came around, and I can`t even explain how much excitement I had for each of them! Plus, they surprised me when the two kids asked if I could baptize them! I was shocked! I thought for sure that Antonio, the Dad, would do it, but he didn`t want to, and the kids wanted me to! I was so surprised, but so humbled at the same time! I was so honored! So we started the service, and all during the service I was memorizing their names, because these Native names are long and hard, and I didn`t want to mess up! But the time finally came, and I baptized the two kids! I felt the spirit so strong, I wasn`t even thinking about what had happened at the beginning of the week. All I could feel was the Spirit so strong, and the glow from these three new members! It really made my mission so far! I am so grateful for the opportunity that I had to take part in bringing some of these souls here in Guatemala to the truth. I love that they will be able to feel what I feel when I am in tune with the Spirit now! I can`t wait to get back to work and find some others that I can help out with!
Not to mention this P-Day has been awesome! Since it is the beginning of the month, we get our funds for the month, so the Zone of Momostenango went to Xela and spent the day there. We played soccer with another Zone, went around the city (which was weird after being in Pancà for so long!), and bought a lot of food that we can only get in Xela. All in all a really good day!
A side note really quick, I am so happy that I have the opportunity to be in Momos. I heard today that this city especially has a lot of Lamanite blood in it, and is one of the most direct lines there is to them! Also, I heard that 6 different Apostles have visited this city. No, no Xela or even Guate, but Momostenango of all places! It is such a cool place to be, and I love it here! I am having a blast here, and I wouldn`t rather be anywhere else! I hope I was able to share my excitement with you all through this email! I love you all, and can`t wait until next week! Until Next Time!!!
- Elder Stuart
Mosiah 28:3
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