Week 11 Report - Lo De Coy

                                                                              

   Subject: Week 11                                               

Buenos Dias!

So this week was really good. They just keep getting better and there are of course ups and downs but we have a lot more appointments in the evenings when we can't knock doors anymore and it's been great. We have had to practically run from appointment to appointment and my legs hurt haha. Elder Aquino walks so fast and I don't know how. I have longer legs than him but even when I match the pace of my stride with him somehow he still gets ahead of me. But the good news is that P90X every morning is paying off. Every area has a P90X disc for exercises in the morning and I never really did exercise at home except running but between the P90X of chest and back, plyometrics, and ab ripper X I think am gonna come back in super good shape if I keep up P90X for 2 years.

So this Saturday is Independence day for Guatemala and a bunch of other Latin American countries as well and on the 8th, a week early, there was a huge stake activity to celebrate with the two best marimba bands (marimba is the national instrument of Guatemala) in Guate directed by this guy here who is famous for marimba and is also a member of the church! We went with an investigator Ronal so he could meet more members and see the other kind activities the church does. 

He is such a blessing. a week and a half ago we found him. We had an appointment fall through because they were ocpuado (busy) so Elder Aquino was calling someone and I was trying to ask a guy on the roof of a house across the street if he'd talked to the missionaries before. Elder Aquino was leaning against the wall next to the door of a house we had contacted before and without even thinking about what he was doing knocked on the door. Then he was like why did I knock on that door. Well this guy named Ronal came to the door and he let us come in! And he was SUPER receptive! He could like repeat what we said about the restoration back to us perfectly when we asked what he understood about what we said. So that was on a Saturday. We invited him to church the next day as well and he was like sure. The next day he came to church!! We had been having a bit of a hard time getting investigators to come to church and with only a day notice Ronal came to church. Elder Aquino said in his 17 month in the mission he's never seen that. So now Ronal has already come to church twice and the stake activity and is reading the Book of Mormon and hopefully will be baptized at the end of the month! So like I said Ronal is such a blessing. And he's 20 years old and has his whole life ahead of him haha so he could go on a mission and then come back and get married in the temple and go on to become a General Authority and every time he speaks in conference I'll be like Ï remember him when he didn't know anything about the church and now he's teaching me. So I'll keep you all posted about Ronal but he so far he is killing it.

Here are some more pics of the independence day thing. I didn't get to celebrate the 4th of July in the US so it was really nice to at least be able to celebrate the independence of Guatemala here. The whole activity was to raise money for the youth to go to SOY which is basically EFY as far as I can tell.

I am starting to get the mark of a real missionary now. Once it becomes more tan and less red I won't be a greenie anymore.

Here is the view outside the stake center.

It's super pretty here, especially on the long walk to campanero, part of our area, it is amazing.

Elder Aquino has some more pictures but they aren't coming through so I'll try to send those some other time.

This church is so true!! It is really so so important to read the Book of Mormon every day.

Hasta Luego!
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So that's the email from Elder Wride for this week. I logged onto his drive and found a few more pictures - not sure exactly if there is a story behind them, but most are of food, lol. Looks like we've got some crepes - 

... Mmm, crepes with Oreo - the same crepe as above, must be a real big dessert crepe!

I didn't upload the one of the Great Value crunchy peanut butter, cause that is not a novelty here in the US of A.

I can't tell what the one above is, but I think the pic below is fried bananas

Not sure what this pic was for, but it was nice to get one of the front of his head. 

Looks like a companion missionary FHE? A movie night at home, with popcorn, yay!

(Sorry to post one of you half-blink, Joseph!)