Week 6 Report - Into the Mission Field!

Elder Wride has left the Guatemala Missionary Training Center (aka MTC, aka CCM in Spanish - Centro de Capacitación Misional) and is now in the field - aka el campo. He's super excited, we're excited for him. We were happy to see some pictures of his face, first new pics in five weeks. No journal entries, but maybe he'll send them next week after he gets settled in? Still, I'm ok with pictures. Hopefully they will become a weekly thing now! His new companion is Elder Aquino from Peru and they are going to be working in the Lo De Coy area. One fun fact about that, that Joseph mentions in his email here, is that one of his MTC teachers, Hermano Herrera, lives in the Lo De Coy ward and works with the missionaries. Hno Herrera thought it would be fun if Joseph came to his ward, but the chances weren't good - Joseph was the only one from his MTC District going to the Guatemala South Mission anyway, plus there were sisters in the Lo De Coy ward. Well, Hermano Herrera mentioned it to the sister missionaries in his area, just so happened the sisters were transferred out and Elders were moved in. The sisters recognized Joseph's last name - Elder Wride - from Hermano Herrera's comments about a missionary in his MTC district, and couldn't believe Joseph was going to that area! So that's the first miracle of his mission. :)
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    Subject:   EL CAMPO!!!                              

So el campo means the field, as in the MISSION FIELD!!! We have made it and this is awesome.

SO the MTC/CCM was super great and my district was the best there was. The last night we watched a devotional cd from the Provo MTC with Elder Christofferson and he talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and it was awesome. As it ended everything started to set in. Like I'm gonna be in the Field! And meet my trainer! And President Shumway!! So as you can imagine it was a bit of a restless night. I had a hard time falling asleep and when some of the other Elders in my room had to get up at 2 (for Honduras) and Elder Mendez had to get up at 330 for El Salvador. I'll put in a link or something to the MTC pictures I never got to send at the end of this email.

Anyways so we also got our travel information that last night and had to go to bed 2 hours earlier because of so many people who had to get up early. Since the MTC is in my mission our travel was only liek 20 minutes. The Assistants came to pick us up and on of them I totally thought was a Latino except that his last name was Millich, not very latinoish. Well psych he's from draper haha and went to corner canyon. His spanish is just so authentic and he has darker hair and looks like he could be chilean or something. So that's the goal with spanish is to make it so people think I'm from Latin America because my spanish is so authentic with the accent and everything.

I haven't even gotten to the good parts yet haha so we arrived and took pictures with president Shumway and his wife and I think they sent those to my parents haha hopefully. Then we had like a little orientation and they gave us our blankets and some other stuff and a bunch of papers and had our interviews.

Then we got to meet our entrenadores (trainers) and it was totally like Christmas morning haha. The first thing they decide before any of the leaders or anything is who the trainers are going to be which I think is very smart. Trainers are the most important leadership position. My companion is ELDER AQUINO!!! He's from Peru and has 16 months here in the mission.

Scotty, I'm gonna make sure he looks for you when he gets home. I'm super glad I have a Latino companion although all the Norte Elders speak really good Spanish too. He's trying to learn English but doesn't know much so we're speaking English when we're en casa and Spanish out on the street but I still have to say most stuff in Spanish too so we can communicate at all haha but it's good. We will have the next 12 weeks together in LO DE COY which is our area. We are reopening it! Which is exciting although I feel like I totally don't know exactly what that means haha.

Elder Wride - top row on the right

After Changes and everything at the mission home a bunch of buses and vans took all the missionaries to their areas including all the other missionaries who were changing areas. There are a lot of missionaries!! Like buses full of missionaries. We ran in to a sister who just closed the Lo De Coy Area and guess what! My teacher in the morning at the CCM, Hermano Herrera, is in that ward! I was the only missionary in my district going to the south mission and he told me that I probably wouldn't go to his area because they had Hermanas. Then he told me they were moving the Hermanas out and some Elders in but like what are the chances that I go to his area. He helps the missionaries a lot in his ward and I guess he told the sisters that he was praying that a missionary in his district at the CCM named Elder Wride would go to his area haha and then we meet the Sister who used to be there and she sees that I'm Elder Wride and am going to Lo De Coy and freaks out!! Hahah so this is officially the first miracle of my mission that I'm going to Lo De Coy with Hermano Herrera, except now I'll call him Junior haha. The Sisters companion that was in Lo De Coy also happened to be in front of us on the bus and she had the exact same reaction as her companion in Lo De Coy haha.

What else. So we got settled and all that and then went out to get to know the area and contact some. We had some really good conversations with people in the street and it look promising. Hermano Herrera and the Hermanas that were here all said that this area is good but it's hard. So we're gonna need lots of faith and work real hard but we can do it. It being meet our goals which we set this morning as companionships and as a zone. It's really nice that pday is the day after I got here so that there's more time to get settled and all that. It used to be Monday here and the missionaries had to wait a whole week basically before they got settled.

What else haha the apartment is about what I expected and we made spaghetti for dinner. Things are gonna be good here and Elder Aquino is awesome. People joke that his name should be Aquisi instead of no because aqui means here and si means yes (no means no if you didn't know that) and he is always working and so it's like should we talk to those people and he's like Aqui si. So like yes here. He's a go getter and I can't wait to really get started. Since we're both new to the area (that's what reopening an area is I think) we have to get to know the area and all these people in the ward. We're meeting with the Bishop tonight and later this week the Ward Mission Leader and Junior which will help a ton since they know where the ward is at and who needs help and all this stuff. The goal is 2 baptisms by the end of the month and we have other goals to help reach that because its like a funnel. If you have 10 new investigators not all of them will go to church so to get those baptisms we're really going to have to talk to everyone everywhere and get them going to church and reading the Book of Mormon and if those things are done then it makes it possible to have baptisms because they don't just come out of nowhere. Last month they broke the mission record for baptisms. 105 for the whole mission in the month of July. The month before they had 99 and plan on keeping it up so it's a great time to be here in the best mission in the world. The job of missionaries is to get people to baptisms and help them after too but at that point it really comes down to the members so if there are recent converts in your ward or area make sure you fellowship them! We don't want people to be baptized and then go inactive just because they didn't feel welcome. Callings also help with that. Well that's all for this week. I'll put a link to my MTC pictures in another email actually. A lot of them. Like all the ones from the zoo are useless but everyone was a little click happy when we went to the zoo 3 weeks ago haha.

Have a great fantastic week and remember to keep reading the Book of Mormon and praying to keep yourself spiritually charged.

Elder Wride

 MISIÓN GUATEMALA SUR

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So, the link to the pictures didn't work, I emailed him about that and said he needs to give me "permission" or to give me his username and password for that drive so I can log in and download them, but he never replied. Probably didn't have much time today, maybe next week!

But we also received an email from the mission president - President Shumway - that included 3 more pictures - President and Sister Shumway

That would be so fun to be mission presidents! I'm assuming this picture below is all the new missionaries.

Another picture of Elder Aquino and Joseph, and I don't know who the Elder on the right is in the pic below (President assistant maybe?) Elder Aquino looks like a great missionary, I'm so glad Joseph has him as his trainer!

 

Joseph is super excited to get to work with him and to be in Lo De Coy!