Guatemala City South

hey mom,

i hope all is well, sounds like a lot of stuff is going on over there in Tucson but you guys are staying busy and that is good. anyways here is my week really quick, we don't get much time here so my letters will be shorter for awhile, ha, alright here it is.

monday,we played soccer for a little bit and i had the winning goal. i'm getting kind of good, but with the latinos i'm no where near good, they just dance around us gringos. haha. also, so we had a family home evening with this family this night that went really well. it is a family that we found that the mom is a member, but the 2 daughters and grandma aren't, so were teaching them now. we had a really spiritual lesson about eternal families and they loved it, it was really really spiritual. me and my comp have tried something new for teaching to where we don't really follow the lesson plans, but we just kind of teach more freely, after the lesson we ate dinner with this family and wow, that food was so dang good.

tuesday so the lady who washes our clothes, i don't know what she does, she says she washes them by hand but my clothes are super clean again, my shirts were getting pretty dirty from mixco. but they are somewhat clean again, also she irons our clothes. she says she is obsessed with ironing our clothes, i told her she would love you mom. haha but really this lady really is the best member i have ever met in my entire life. she is so humble, so nice, so loving, just everything, i call her mama leda because she is so cool. and our comedor is the same too, we call her mama linda. but yeah it was pretty cool talking with her. also me and my comp found a place that had a lot of ties, and we bought only a couple. but you´ll be shocked at how many ties i have now. haha, i have just a little over 120, haha, but yeah its kind of a weird obsession here in the mission.

wednesday so we went to visit this one lady who´s son is on a mission and her daughter was there as well. i was talking with the daughter who has a baby but is not married and just asking her questions. from the questions i asked i found out she was not a member. i was just shocked. haha, i told her what can we do to get her baptized. haha, she just said, well i want to be baptized but i need to clean some things up. i said well then let's get started, ha it was just kind of weird, she told me no one has ever asked her that question. missionaries have taught her but never asked her, and she wants to be baptized. the bad thing is that i found out some bad things about her from our mission leader so were not so sure if it will happen any time soon but were going to work for it. also this day was the birthday of this really cool girl in our ward so we went to the house and made a card for her that was hilarious, she was laughing so hard at it, and then we just bought a snickers for her. she loved it.

Thursday, so this one family that they are members we have been working wtih them for awhile. they have some problems in the house and are a pretty fighting family. we just didn't know what to do, but in our comp study in the morning we were praying and i had the strongest spiritual impression that we need to put goals iwht them, and my comp told me he had a impression that they need to read the book of mormon. so we combined the both and put the goal with them that they need to read the book of mormon 1 chapter every night until they finish. and that we are going to come every night and read it with them. it was really cool and they are excited for it, surprisingly but they say they were alright with it and think it will bring more peace into their lives. i can already see a change and a different feeling in that house, the spirit is starting to come back to them. haha, also with this same family though we found out that 2 of the girls don't show up on the church records for baptism, so were working on that with them to get everything fixed with that. and i told them the story of my social security accident, and how i had to go to the office and sit with a guy and all. then i compared it to if we are not baptized we can not go to paradise, but we have to go to a spirit prison and we have to wait and get things fixed so that we can return to the spiritual heaven. but if we don't want to do anything about it then we can't ever return back to heaven. it was pretty cool and they really got the point. one of the things i read in predicad mi evangelio is that we need to share more personal stories with people and then relate it to the gospel and it will be more effective. but yeah that was pretty cool.


Friday, so this day was the birthday of mama linda, the comedor lady, we bought her some flowers and she loved them and we had a really good lunch with her. it was fun, and we had a great time there. we also wrote a letter and attached it to this helium balloon she had in the house and we let it go for some guate to find. also i got to play with a snake and i was pretty freaked out at first but i did alright with it, until I'm not sure i think it was getting mad and i started getting a little nervous but still it was pretty cool. totally different than i imagined. but yeah that was a pretty fun day.

Saturday, all day saturday we had a service project with our mission leader that was pretty cool. we built a pila for this family. a pila is what they wash their clothes and dishes in. it is pretty weird but we built this big one because the lady wanted to have more water in the pila so we helped them out with that, we only got about half of it done though so we´ll finish it another day this week. but then after the service project we went to the mission leaders house and had our correlation with him. it was pretty cool and we got alot planned. one of the things were planning right now is that I'm going to be teaching classes of english for people in the area so we can find some new investigators. hopefully it will work out and we can find new people but we´ll see how that goes. then after we ate with the mission leader and we ate beans, i think I'm starting to like beans now, which is kind of crazy but still not totally, haha, but just a little.

Sunday so sunday was way sweet. we had stake conference last week so yesterday was our testimony meeting. me and my comp gave our testimonies in church and it went really well. we did it because before the members really lost the trust in the missionaries but we're gaining that back slowly. but the testimonies really helped and we received a couple references. one of them we went and taught yesterday the father, and we found out he has a family of 8, and he said he loved us so he invited us back for a 2nd visit and were going to teach the whole family. so that will be sweet. we also visited this one family and we just taught about how the gospel has blessed our lives, and i just talked about the family and how important it is to me and how it has blessed me to have a family to raise me in the church and to keep me on the right path. then i talked about how i can't wait to have a good wife that i will love forever and kids and to be sealed to all of them in the temple. i can't wait for that, but don't worry I'm not getting married anytime soon. haha. but yeah it was a really cool lesson and we had fun with them.

so there is my week. this week is going to be really hard for us because here everyone leaves this week out of town for a week called semana santa. it is a week where everyone goes to the beach to party. it is crazy but our area is literally dead. so were going to try to work hard but we´ll see how it goes. all our investigators are gone as well, so this will be a good week to find some new people. haha. also some things i thought of as well that i need, sun screen and the camera memory card, when is brother banner coming, i can't send the stuff till next monday, and that wont get to the office until next tuesday, but yes i have a lot of stuff to send home, but when is he coming, hopefully after next week. but yeah well i hope all is well and i´ll talk to you later. i love you guys, take care.

love elder daniel shipley