Guatemala City South: Week 52.

hey how is it going mom? i miss you guys a lot and i had a really good week and we worked really hard.

first off the news i bet you're dying to hear. well here are the new changes for me. Well i am going to be following here in San Francisco for another 6 weeks and it should be my last change here. im happy because i feel like we are going to have a couple baptisms this change but a lot next change, so i should be leaving this area really well. I am also a Senior comp here and my new companion is from Honduras, his name is Elder Hernandez.

he is a really nice kid and really humble. i don't have my cable right now so i will send you some pics next week. but yeah everything here is going good. those missionaries, one that is sitting down is my best friend elder durfey, he is from peoria arizona, we only lived like 5 mins from him, haha weird huh, but he is in the central mission. the one standing is elder erickson. he is really cool and is now my district leader. pretty much everyone from my group went up this last change. but yeah. so that is the big news. we are working hard here and we are having fun. but anyways here is a little bit about my week.

so elder mabey left last week and my last day with him was on tuesday.

Elder Maybe

we just went around saying goodbye to people for him and it went really well. he really is a great guy and i have a ton of respect for him. he was a great elder and worked hard every single day until the last. i am going to try and make that my goal too to work really hard until the last minute. until president polley releases me from my mission. so that was really cool and its weird that he is home now. and that some day soon i will be there too. weird huh? ha.

so with the family claveria. we had a lesson with the dad yesterday and it went really well. we taught him a little bit more about the book of mormon and he really liked it. he really loves the church and is progressing right along. it was a bummer because here in guate they put gates outside of the church, so i thought he didnt come to church, but when we had our appt with him he told us, i tried coming but i thought the church was locked up so i didnt come. haha i was so bummed. but yeah he tells us he wants to be baptized so we are going to work with him really hard to get that completed. he loves the book of mormon and everything is going along well.

we also found this new lady her name is Sharom. she is really cool and really nice. she is a black lady who does not assist any church and so we are hoping to get her to come to ours. she has a history with all the other churches but has never been interested in going to them. so we are really hoping that we can get her to be interested in the church.

There is also a new family that we found and they are called Roberto and Lilian. as i was contacting i dont know what happened. they were about to let us go and we were just going to leave but then the wife felt like she had to let us in. i felt dumb because i taught her about the gospel of jesus christ and then in the end she asked us why there are so many churches today. but yeah so next time we go with her we will be teaching her about that.

now to the part where it really starts getting interesting. we acutally put a fecha this week. but it fell the next day. i´ll tell you why. so we went there to the lesson with Erika and it went really really well. i just asked her a couple questions about if she really believed all these things and if she thought god was answering her prayers and she said yes to all of them so i asked if she wanted to be baptized and she said yes, and we were so happy. but then the next day totally stunk. i hate satan by the way. anyways we were walking and i felt a strong impression to go and visit her. we went over there and she was just bawling. it was really sad. she told me her dad who lives in another part of guatemala is really sick and she didn't know what to do. she asked me for my advice in what she should do. i told her to just go and visit her dad because she really thinks he will die soon so we were a little bummed but she told us she is going to try and do all that is possible to come back so she can be baptized. but we´ll see what happens. i have faith in the Lord that he will deliver her into the best.

Then we also have the Family Ana Maria. Ana Maria is a member but her kids arent. so we are teaching her son and daughter George and Delma. they are really cool and really nice. delma is a little tough to get through to but we had a good lesson with them. With George i got him to commit to going to church and reading the book of mormon and praying every single night. he is a really cool guy. but we really want that they can have a strong testimony so i think this thursday when we go with them we are going to put a fecha with them.

Then lastly we have the family from Rosa Maria, she is a really cool woman. it was really sad because this past week her mother died. her mom had Parkinson's and Alzheimer's at the same time and was in a ton of pain. it was kind of just a big weight off her back but still it is always sad to lose someone that close to you. we didnt know what to say but i just started talking about the spirit world and explaining it. she loved it. she asked me after, so does that mean my mom is probably around me right now. and i told her, I know she is here with you right now. and she wants you to be happy and that she wants you to keep going to church and being a faithful member. it was a really neat feeling. I have a lot of love for that family and i hope i can help them. we are going to go over there on saturday to give service to her and her family so that should go good. but yeah.

Well that is the main part of my week. WE have been having a blast here and we are working super hard here. I love this church so much. There really is no other church that can even come close to matching our doctrine. it really kills me that if you were to just read the bible and the book of mormon you can know literally all you need to know. but the main problem with the people here is that they are so blinded by what they want and not what god wants. we really need to start looking for what god wants from us and not a church that will meet our needs. I love this church and i love my savior Jesus Christ. I know all the things He did during his mortal ministry was for us and he gave us such a great example. well i love you all and i´ll talk to you next week.

love your son elder shipley

ps after this week i´ll have a year in the mission. haha.

I asked if he thinks he has mastered the language and he sent this (help Jon):

pues creo que mi espanol es mas o menos pero cada dia estoy mejorando en eso. espero que estoy perfecto cuando regreso a la casa. y a ustedes tambien, les extraño bastante y les quiero bastante tambien. yo amo este iglesia bastante y siento que estoy pensando en las personas mas ahorra y no tanto en la casa.