January 2, 2012

this past thursday we made dinner for the whole ward and this is the car we went in to get the food, it is pretty ghetto. it was great!

the ghetto car, it was really fun going with the bishop, it was one adventure that i will not forget.....

i really was happy this day because i put a flower and bow in my hair! hahah

our ward eating!

helping making a drink for the new years dinner. it was fun!

December 19, 2011

my shawl

the first one we made. we are proud of it! it's amazing what hot glue can do!!!!!

cutting out decorations and a typical dinner: beans and eggs

me dancing hoop for the program

me and hermana pelaez

December 12, 2011

this is hermana mirtala, she is really short!!!

this is from jeronimo, he gave it to me because when i braid my hair i look like these dolls

this is hermana lusvis house and we are helping her make decorations, i have become more crafty since i've been here :)

planning session :) we eat a lot :)

yeah this is how we look when we plan. hahha jk

we are in the elders area. we were contacing as a district for them and these streets looked american! i also contacted a family all by myself i loved it!!!!

December 5, 2011

this are rollie pollies here, the small bugs that go into a ball when you touch them, but they are like on steroids here!! they are so long, they love our house, we are always sweeping them up. if we skip a day we are always stepping on them and hear crunch crunch....

we drew pictures. the first one was a guatemala sunset and the other is a home sunset!!! i really like them especially the home one... oh this a skirt i bought at the poca!!! it has pockets i love it!!!

my comp and i woke up early to try and get the sunrise.... missed it but we are determined to get it , it is from the roof of our house :) its 3 stories high.

feliz navidad!!!! this is the Christmas tree in the stake center. it's really nice!!!

November 28, 2011

the girls of the family we are teaching!!!

my district

so there are 2 doors that go to the baptismal font but we didn't have the keys and we needed to fill it, so i climbed over the glass;) it was lots of fun!!!

this is a picture of jeronimo!!! and our bishop he baptized him... it was a good night!!!

all the missionaries, the youth that danced at a program, and presidente maravilla

November 21, 2011

my first mosquito net. i did not like it... it did not let air in

my net now, i love it and our land lord put it up for me

my tanned feet... yeah it gets really hot here, and it's like that till april

a side view of the temple, the skies are so beautiful here.... its like a painting all the time and the sunsets are amazing

around the temple so so pretty... i love it in xela....

November 7, 2011

My Mission Area in Guatemala

this is how the crops look. and to think they had to clear all that and water it without machinary!

the mnts are so pretty! i love the forest here

this was from our trip to XELA and this village they cannot have any missionaries becuase they practice animal and human sacrifices... but it was a beautiful trip!

this is fiambre. it is what they eat on nov 1. that is the day of the dead, they do not have halloweeen here and that is how they celebrate, i'm not one to give up food but is one thing i had to rufuse, beets....

a pila this is what we wash clothes in, and dishes, and etc.

Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2011

HAPPY HALLOWEEN... so they do not celebrate halloween here...i was really sad becuase i love it so much.... but its okay becuase we got to do an activity!

okay so today we went to.... ready.... A BANANA PLANTATION... i was so much fun. its crazy how they do everything, i will never eat a banana again without thinking about that wonderful experience and also i got to see the Mexico border. hahha it was coool...

so there is no more rain. it has been replaced with the sun..... so much sun... it is way hot and i am starting to get tan lines on my arms and my feet.... hahah it is funny. but i honestly think i would take the rain over the sun because at night i am so tired it is crazy how much energy the sun sucks from you...but summer has started here and that means this heat is what i'll have until april... i will die.... hahha jk but i m so thankful i get to wear skirts instead of pants all the time. poor elders.

i love being here where we are contacting so much in the blazing sun and trying to understand the people and the culture. i love seeing how the gospel is so universal in any language place and country. even with the language barrier i can testify that the spirit is the one that teaches and the one that makes the difference. i am so great for the gospel and the people i meet each day and going to bed every night so tired. its great and truly amazing.

Here are pictures from the banana plantation:

Rain!!!!

October 17, 2011

The Rain

me blow drying our peanut butter because if we did not put it in the fridge it would get moldy. we use that blow dryer for everything, including our clothes!

Hermana Luzvis Birthday

Missionaries in My Zone

me trying to make
frybread... did not go very well....

6 Weeks!!!

October 10, 2011

i remember in one of President Thomas S. Monsons talks he said that when you are busy time flies, i am starting to realize that while i have been here. these past 6 weeks in the field have gone
by so fast.... i think back to when i left home and started my mission, i really do not feel like the same person any more, when i look in the mirror sometimes think "is that me?" i look so different than how i looked before.

i truly love it here. when i pray at night i think how blessed i am to be here to be knocking on doors and trying to speak to people in spanish about the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ.

but being on the mission is like life, we have days were we are so happy and everything is working out. then the next day everything falls apart, our investigators drop and we only have 2 lessons for the day. it is hard at times i'm not going to lie, but with all those times i know one thing that is consistant and something i can always rely on: my prayers to my Heavenly Father. i love knowing that we can talk with Him and just have that comfort from Him. when we are teaching people the first lesson, the first principle we share is that Heavenly Father is our loving
Heavenly Father... it is so true... that is so important to tell people because that is the whole reason we are on the earth. i am so thankful for the opportunity to share with others that Heavenly Father loves us and that He wants us to return to Him. that is why He has the gospel!

Pictures!

September 26, 2011

our baptism!!! janimy lopez lopez

all the letters i've been writing... yeah i started beginning of the month and just barely sent them! oh there are some that belong to hna pelaez! haha we want them to arrive so we made sure to put pictures on them!

October 3, 2011

This past wed we went to reu and that is a 50 min bus ride and oh man they stuff people into these buses. they take a school bus and put three people in a two person seat and try to fit more haha i love it but while we were almost there the bus ran out of gas half way up a hill... yeah a little scary but i just thought the Lord is watching over me, and after the bus driver ran and got
some gas we were back in business! once we got there we went to the chapel and we had a zone conference. it was great! it helped me a lot and made me rethink my mission and myself. i am so happy to have those moments when you see how you need to change and what can help you, i think what always helps us realize Christ and His example. but it was a good day for me and my
companion, becuase we talked about the zone conference after and thought of how we could improve our companaionship.
on friday we visited janimy she was the one that got baptized and its so amazing the seeing the difference in her countance... she really does seem more at peace and happier. that day we were soaking wet and she came in with towels and her scriptures and hymn book, i was so happy to see her carrying her scriptures and hymnal becauase before we visited her we would always ask her where it was and she had to go look for it, she just seemed more prepared to hear what we were going to teach her. i love it, i love seeing how the gospel can change people's lives.

2nd Week in Coatepeque

September 12, 2011

so i can tell you i have learned offically how to make the typical breakfast food here: beans and eggs! haha we've had it twice this week and i love it! i can live on it for the rest of my life. haha well maybe just the 16 months left :)

so this week... one day feels like a week! there are so many things and emotions that occur in one day that it is hard to tell you about just one day! but today we woke up and i made breakfast and my companion hung out our clothes that we washed last night (when you are hand washing clothes it takes up a lot of time! so we try to wash them every night and hang them up and get them before the rain comes which is about 1 pm here).

then we went to meet up the elders to get play soccer and my comp and i were laughing so hard, she is amazing! we have only been together for a week but it feels like we've known each other forever, we are very similar and we are able to think the same things during our lessons. right now she teaches the most because she knows spanish and yeah i do not know very much, i can only really bear my testimony and teach like two princples and that is a struggle. when the people are talking i can catch most of what they are saying but when they talk about other things that do not pertain to the gospel i get lost! hahah it's frustrating at times and my companion is so patient and gives me pep talks its great! i love having this struggle! haha what makes me be able to stop being frustated is when i think about our investigators, we got 5 new ones this week and we are excited about that.

Coatepeque

Hermana Peleaz and Hermana Willie

First Letter from the Field

Monday, September 5th, 2011
on wed we meet our fellow missionaries and my new campanion!!!! i love her!!! she is amazing! oh and her name is hermana Peleaz! she is from utah and is half dominican, and she is my height!!! that was the highlight for me!! hahah but she is way good at speaking spanish. i hope i can speak as well as her someday. we are in the coatepeque area and is about an hour from REU. we got to our home and it is pretty simple, it is a three bedroom and to the people here if you have three rooms a cement floor and not a tin roof that means you have money.. our area is new, my comp just opened it up the last change so we have been doing a lot of tracking these past few days. yeah i've been doing lots of walking here!
oh so when we got to the house we went straight to planning and then out to teach. yeah the first few days were a blur! so much spanish! i can understand a lot but when it comes to speaking yeah... a little hard... it was not until last night when we were teaching our investigator about the restoration that i bore my testimony and taught a principle. On a funny note, one of the new members that was baptized a few weeks ago has a nephew and he was making fun of me because he thought i was a mute, he had me say the closing prayer so he could hear me speak. when i did he was laughing so hard. so yeah i'm not going to lie it's hard! but after last nights lesson it made me realize that i need to trust in the Lord more... i need to remember that He was the one that called me here and He knows i can do it.
okay about my area, it's in a city and yeah its amazing! i love it here! it rains all the time at 2pm or three and sometimes it's way heavy rain. yesterday was! i hung my dress and tons of water came off!!! i wished i had more waterproof things too.... but i honestly love it! the food is so good! lunch we have a cook that we pay for and she cooks lunches for us, so we only cook for breakfast and dinner. the houses are really intresting, too. so like a mentioned before if you have a floor and not a tin roof then you have some money. we visited a member and she had a dirt floor and sheets of tin roof for her house. that is very common here. the people do not have cars. if they do then they are really really rich. so they have a bus system which is someone taking a van, actually like a mini vanish thing but taking off the doors and everyone crams into it! no joke!
they have ppl hanging out the doors and smushed inside, its great! it cost about 1 and half Q so about one eighth of a dollar to ride in them. one dollar equals 8 Q. oh and i forgot to tell you they do not have hot water here!!!! yes every morning is cold showers!!!! that is one thing i am not going to get use to! they also do not drink the water here so we have to have purfied water for
eveything! also we have to wash our clothes by hand!!! its great!!! i love it! now i feel more legit.
similar things here: they point with their lips like back home and go "shhhh" to get your attention! its great! haha

i'm eating a platno with beans and cheese stuffed in it!

it was so good! i loved it.

In the Guatemala CCM

Wednesday, August 3, 2011
so yesterday was one of my favorite days! we got to leave the ccm and go out and contact in the streeets! at first i was way scared to go because i do not know the language and because i am scared of cities but the teacher told us this is why you are here. you are here to teach and bring people to Christ so i went out and felt like i had the armor of God and i was no longer scared. we got on the public bus (which is a school bus painted red!) and crammed into it, it was about 15 cents in American money to ride the bus and they drive pretty crazy here! i am happy we dont have to drive on our missions! but we got out and at first i did not wanna talk to anyone! but our latin (hrm batlia) companion (there were 3 of us and we are all about the same height so we surprised quiet a few people haha) made me and hrm broadbent talk. it was amazing that with what little we knew people were able to understand us, we handed out 3 copies of the Book of Mormon and talked to 9 ppl. we only had 2 hours but i wanted so much more time! one of the people we talked with was a guy named Armando. he at first did not seem like he wanted to talk to us but after we talked about the Book of Mormon his whole countenance changed and he wanted to keep talking to us! he kept asking where the church was located at but we didn't know so we took his name a number and gave him a Book of Mormon, i hope the misssionaries will call him. i love it here, i was on cloud nine the rest of the time and i can harldy wait to go out to the mission field! it was so much fun! i loved it, i really felt the Savior's love and just wanted to talk to everyone. i love being here and learning spanish, i love coming closer to my savior and learning so much about the gospel. in our fireside last night we learned that we need to be converted first before we can teach and that when we teach it is not us but the Spirit of God that is teaching. i am so thankful to be here and to be among the Guatemalen people. i can harldy wait until i can talk with them and let them know the love the Lord has for them.

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011
it is going so fast now! i can not believe i have already been out for 6 weeks now! last wed i got to go to the temple and i loved it! it is hard and the temple brings so much peace, i'm so happy we get to go and that it's only a 2 min walk from here, i can just see it out the window.
so today we went out on our 3 week trip, which was going to the relif map, central market and miraflores museum. the relif map was a map of the whole country it was huge and we had to go on a two story tower thing to see it, where my mission is it is all flat land, and i've heard it's going to be really hot. i also heard that we have one Mayan ruin in my area, hopefully i'll be able to visit while on my mission. there are also about 3 native tribes in my area so i might have to learn another language too, but its not all for sure. the central market was 2 stories of goods. it reminded me a lot of the flea market in some ways. i did not get anything because i could proabably get stuff in my area and know how to bargain better later on. it's fun trying to speak spanish even though i know we sound terrible!!! but it's the only way we learn. then after that we went to the museum and it was amazing! we got to see a lot of the Mayan art and life style. we also got to see a mound of earth that has a Mayan ruin under it. it was so much fun seeing it! i wish we could have seen the ones on the tvs!

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
its crazy to think that we study the language all day and i still have so much to learn. but what would be the value of learning another langauge if only learned in 9 weeks? i love the teachers here they are so kind and they teach us so much, i am grateful for them. i also love my campanion she is so amazing, she is a history major and has so much to talk about i love listening to her. she is so bright and she makes me think about the gospel more in different ways. i love teaching with her and having campanionship study with her. she teaches me something new each day, and i hope i am doing the same for her. but one thing i do love about her is she knows how to have fun. everyone loves her and she just brightens our day.
so on Sunday we watched a movie called the journey of faith. it's a history documentry about the lehi and his familys journy in the wilderness. after seeing that it made me gain a greater appreciation for their journey, it was a hard one and when we read it in 1Nephi we do not think about the trial of it. it was traveling across a desert! i could never imagine doing that, but it shows me how much love they had for the Lord and his commandments. it makes me realize that my trails are not that hard at all.

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
wow its already almost over! 5 more days until i go into the field! i am so scared and happy all in one! one of the sisters that is serving a mission next to me wrote to us and she told some intresting stories... i am a little scared. i'm terrified of bugs... yes i am.. and in my mission, there are going to be tons!!!! that's what she told us!!! i am so scared! they say there are fleas and spiders... did you read that? FLEAS!!! i do not know about this.. but i'm going there for the people... that's what got me through all the other horror stories ( i will not share them becuase there are too many for me to write right now). i need to have a positive attitude.
as i look back on my experience of the ccm i've come so much closer to my Heavenly Father and i am so thankful to have that opportunity, now i will be going out to the people of Guatemala and letting them know of our Heavnly Fathers love for them and the Savior's love! i am so excited!

Hermana Broadbent and I in the CCM in Mayan Clothing