Week 4 Report - Guatemala MTC

I was ready for Joseph's first email this morning, I was able to do a few back and forth with him. He said that some of the other missionaries there in the MTC got packages with the MayanXpress, which is what I used to send him a package, so I'm trusting it did get there and is just waiting for him at the mission office. Too bad he didn't get it early though, that would be nice if he were able to write and send more. But as always, it was good to here from him.

A cool thing from this past week is that one of his BFF's Scotty got his mission call to Lima Peru, which is where he did a Humanitarian EFY trip this past summer. So it's cool that the three of them are all Spanish speaking for their missions, Joseph in Guateala, Talmage is leaving for Quito Ecuador on 19 September, and now Scotty to Lima Peru on 31 October. So fun. Joseph said "Words cannot express how excited I am for him!" Here's a picture of Joseph and his buddies, aka the Three Amigos

That was posted on Talmage's instagram in May, the caption was cute, the hashtags too - #tallesttoshortest

So anyway, back to the mission - here's Joseph's weekly report. He has just two weeks left at the MTC:
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    Subject:   Obedience                                     

Okay what a week!! Where do I start.

Well first I forgot to say last week but there was some sickness going around the CCM. 145 kids in a building all day helps disease travel quickly. Nothing too serious and luckily it wasn't that bad and I'm grateful for the rule we have to wash our hands before every meal. I only had a little bit of a fever, runny nose, and sour stomach. Elder Mendez threw up. That was great haha and it is really hard not to get sick when your around a sick person literally all day. But thankfully I never threw up and the sore throat and stuff only lasted for a couple days. Elder Mendez also had to blow his nose a lot when he was sick and was trying to run himself dry so instead of us both having to get up and go to the bathroom to get tissues every 20 minutes I decided to keep a stash of napkins with me in my back pocket. I used them too but I started carrying them with me for him. I'll talk about that more later.

Highlight of the week was we went OUTSIDE the CCM to CONTACT!!! Like this was it, we were actually gonna be teaching people and oh my it was soo coooool. We started off a little rough and didn't know who to talk to because we just went up the street to the temple and so like there were a bunch of members and other people walking but we placed 2 Books of Mormon (Book of Mormons?) and like 10 pamphlets. With one guy you could like see the light in his eyes when he realized what we were saying and it was amazing. I can't wait to get out there and do that sort of thing 24/7. Funny thing too is the next day we did it again but I think I needed to be humbled because the day before I wished we had more Books of Mormon to give out so the second time we went out I brought like 6 and the people we talked to were just not interested. This once guy selling stuff on the side of the road would't accept anything but the Bible and turns out some other elders had already given him a Book of Mormon. So yeah I didn't give away a single thing and it was a bummer. First taste of rejection on the mission was good for me though. Our purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ not force it down their throats.

The way sacrament meetings work here is every week every missionary is supposed to prepare a talk on one of 6 topics that are all in our purpose statement. faith repentance the Atonement Baptism Gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. Then since everyone should have one they just call people right then in sacrament meeting and you have about 5 seconds between when you find out your speaking and when you start speaking. So this week they said "Next we'll hear from Elder Wride and he is going to the Guatemala City South Mission." And then I was giving my talk. It was on repentance and they only need to be like 5 minutes and it went well. I definitely had help from heaven though in pronunciation and other things I hadn't planned on saying. It was a great experience.

This Tuesdays devotional was with President Christensen (3rd pic down), who is the President of the Guatemala City East Mission. There are 5 guys in my district going to that mission and the devotional was sooo goood. It was all about obedience which they seem to keep talking about. There's more I want to share on obedience but don't have time to so I'll just share this that he said. That everyone can be 100% obedient. The mission rules are not that hard. Just obey and you'll be blessed and you'll set patterns for the rest of your life because missions are a mini life. So be perfectly obedient guys. Both before during and after your missions. And I'd like to tie that in to this quote my mom sent me from Elder Ebert who got home in my ward last week. "Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every sadness, tragedy, every disappointment and heartache, every temptation and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him." (from the talk "The Fourth Missionary" by Lawrence E. Corbridge) We're supposed to obey because we need to prove to God we can be trusted because life is a test. We have the answer key in front of us, all we need to do is follow and obey it.

Also during the devotional his wife started to cry during her talk and he gave her a tissue and she said that that's true romance right there. The fact that he always had a tissue for her. When she said that I looked at Elder Mendez and his face was priceless hahahah. That's all for this week. Remember to be obedient