Guatemala City South

Hey mom, dad and family,

how is everyone doing. i miss you guys all so much and this letter will bring some surprises to you all.  here are the updates for this week.
Monday - so for our pday we went to Utatlan where we played soccer for a little bit and i hung around wtih my good buddy from utah elder ramos. he looks like a latino but he is a pure gringo. haha. but yeah so after that we went to mira flores which is the mall and we ate food there. i ate at dominoes and it was great. haha, i wasn't sure if it will lbe my last pizza for awhile so for that i ate there.  after that we went to our house where my comp took a nap and i was just thinking about all the good times i had in mixco. im going to miss this place. so that night we went to this families house for a family home evening because they are really special for me. like grandparents for me in the ward. so we had a fhe with them and it went really well. then we ended by them saying really nice stuff and complimenting me alot. i was pretty sad to leave them.  after we went to our mission leaders house to wait for The Call about changes. we got the call and our zone leader kept joking and telling my comp he was leaving and i was staying. i was kinda happy but still wanted to go. anyways we got the real news and it was that i had changes and that i am going to be leaving the area.

tuesday - So all day we visited some members in the ward and i said my goodbyes. it was hard at some houses but i know that i´ll see them again so that is ok with me. i told them that i would be back to visit in 2 years with my family. and they said ok. so get planning a trip mom and dad. haha. anyway we visited people all day and in the night we went to our mission leaders house where they threw a party for me. haha, it was kinda weird but it was really fun. we ate hot dogs and we had a family home evening and they just went around and were telling what an impact i had made. the coolest was listening to my convert. that was neat and she is such a special person for me. my first convert. but yeah. so that was pretty much that night and after that there really wasn't one dry eye in the room. then the mission leader and some other men gave me a priesthood blessing. i love the fact that we can do that and feel so good after. it made me think of when dad gave me his last one before i left on my mission.

Wednesday - so in the morning our mission leader has a tradition with the missionaries where he says the last prayer. we went to his house early in the morning and said the last prayer. it was pretty cool. then we were off. haha i have a lot of stuff and it was like a puzzle trying to get the stuff in. i told the guy he should work for ups. haha. but yeah so then we went to changes and i visited with all my friends  and we had a good time. president is getting sad now because he only has 2 more changes with us then he is gone and we get our new president. i can sense he is getting sad. 3 years here, i don't blame him. Anyways so here are the new updates. bum bum bum, drum roll. haha, I am now in Zona Florida Area San Fransisco with my new comp named Elder Velasquez from here in Guatemala. he is a really really cool kid and we get along really well. like peanut and butter. we work really hard and get alot done. the bummer is this area is in a dead spot right now but we are working really hard to get things back moving. some members were even mad that we are working because i guess the missionaries would just go and play games there but they are starting to feel better and feel a change. i love working hard and it makes me feel so good. so after changes we went back to the place and we just dropped my bags off and got right to work.

Thursday - so this day went really well. our new comedore i love her. she is so cool. such a nice lady and we call her mama linda. her name is mariella linda but she is like a mom for us so that's what we call her. she was so happy to have a gringo too because she told me she knows we work hard. but yeah so also something i learned, which caitlin is going to love this. In this exact same area Shane Smith, the elder who died about 2 months ago, served in this same area. how crazy is that. there are alot of pics of him here and our comedor even has a tie from him that has never been untied. it was so cool. i´ll take a pic to send next week. but yeah. so crazy. so we just visited some members in this area and it went really good this day and we just worked our butts off. but it felt so good. haha.

Friday - in the morning we had our zone meeting and all we did was just put goals for the zone and for our areas. right now our area has nothing but i put the goal for us to have about 2 baptisms this month and possibly more. i hope we can have more. then after the zone meeting we went back and worked really hard again. we're mainly just working with the members to get the trust back and to have the love and support from them and see if there are any possibilities in their families for baptism. then we will work on getting references once we get that trust. that really is the only way to do missionary work is to work through the members and get references. we got met  this one lady who had a sister who was inactive. so we went and visited her and found out her daughters' and mother aren't members either. so we taught them and they loved it. they said they are really interested and that we will be following through with them.  that was really neat. they also invited us for dinner tonight so that will be cool, they are going to make something typical from guatemala. so we´ll see how that goes, haha.

Saturday -  we were working in the street contacting some people and these drunk guys who i guess always bug the missionaries were talking to us. they were actually pretty cool guys and i think we can help them change. but we are staying careful with them but we´ll see what happens. anyways they were really funny and they told me that i fell well with them. which is a saying here like you are a good person to that guy. it is a huge compliment when someone says that. so something funny for this day we were teaching this one girl, but she couldn't meet this day so we got to teach her father and her cousin from el salvador. i thought everything was all good and we taught the lesson. then the cousin started talking in the end just asking questions. and had a weird accent. i thought he was just from salvador and had that, but then he asked me about the states and asked me to speak in english. ha i spoke and he told me he loved my accent and that he thought i was really cute. haha my comp just started busting up laughing and we found out that the kid is gay. i was a little freaked out. but yeah it was interesting.

Sunday - so we had a stake conference and it went really well. it was really spiritual and just awesome. they talked alot about missionaries and had some rms give their testimonies.  it was really cool and i loved it. an hermana from the other area came and visited me too, she had a friend in the choir, anyways my friend hermana guinac from lo de coy came and she brought me food. haha, cupcakes, brownies, and pringles. haha, it was sweet. i took a pic too but i forgot my cord but i´ll see if these people here have a cable here. but yeah that was really sweet of her to do that. then we also taught this one kid named angel who will be baptized this week. it will be sweet and will be my first baptisim here. we just found the kid last week too. haha it is a son of a member who wasn't baptized. then we went to our mission leaders house and just hung out there a bit and talked about some scriptures we were confused on. like d and c 82:22 i think it is. but it was confusing for me at first but i understand it now. look it up and let me know what you think. what i think is that we can have friends who are bad people. but they cant destroy us, but we can help them. like what elder clark our area president told us that we are here to change people, they don't change us. we know what is good and bad, they don't, we help them not the other way around. but yeah so that was cool. after that we set this goal with a family that we were going to come over every night and read a chapter of the book of mormon with them. when we got there they were all sleeping but the little girl came out and said she wanted to read with us so we read with her at the door. it was really cool. she told us that she loves it when we come and is happy when were there. she likes to fight a lot with her siblings but were helping her be better and were already seeing a change in her. but yeah so that is pretty much all. every thing is good.

so anyways here in this zone we are only allowed to have 1 hour of internet so not much time to do stuff. but if i dont have time i wont be able to chat, but anyways that is my week. i love this area and where i'm at. the members here are great and my comp is really cool. we work well together and im learning a lot from him. mainly on how to teach from the spirit and love these people more. it is such a different feeling when he teaches then my other comps. we truly teach to their needs, and it is sweet. but yeah so that is all. i love you guys and miss you all and i´ll talk to you later.

love

elder daniel w shipley

ha, puro 70. haha just kidding