yeah last week i was feeling a little down but boy let me tell you I had a great week this last week, one of the better weeks of my whole mission but not the best. We are kind of having a hard time trying to get baptisms here, because when I came to this area it was just a really really dead area. We are finally starting to see a light at the end of that very long tunnel. ha. We are thinking we will have about 2 or 3 baptisms for December but it is possible that we will have 8 as well. We just need to work hard and get these people moving. We need to find some new people so we can keep it moving along smoothly and so in January there will be baptisms too. I think that is the hardest thing, trying to find that healthy balance in the mission.
ps the last picture I sent to you is our Thanksgiving meal we did for the zone today for pday, it was really really good. haha but it just wasn't the same because I didn't have that full feeling afterwards, which is probably good since we still have to go and work tonight.
Ha that pic you sent me is pretty funny. Thanks for sending that and that is a really cool quote.
Quotation by Elder Howard W. Hunter:
Little children are precious to our Father in Heaven. He loves them and looks after them with the same tender care no matter where they live or how they dress or look. He loves the dark, curly-haired Fijian, and the kind, brightly dressed children in Samoa. He loves the little English boys and girls who all dress alike at school. He loves the children in Japan. He loves the suntanned children in South America and the Lamanites. Our Father loves his children everywhere. When it is bedtime, loving parents in all lands kneel with their children to say prayers. It may be by a high, fluffy featherbed in the Alps or a little mat on the floor of a hut. But our Heavenly Father hears and understands them all. (See Friend, Oct. 1971, p. 10.)
It is so true, I feel so bad for these people here, we are currently teaching this one family, they are called the family Gomez and they are way cool. We are currently working really hard on trying to get them married and baptized before the 10th of December so that they can go to the temple dedication here in Guatemala on the 11th of December. Elder Uchdorf is coming to Guatemala but we are not sure if he will talk to us yet, we will see. I really hope he comes so we can hear from him. Anyway, this family Gomez, wow, mom I leave that house more humble every time we go there. They live up a hill and they have to walk that hill every single day, and lets just say, it is not a fun hill to walk up. It is like a quarter of a mile up and it is steep steep. Anyway, then you get to the house, they have tin sheets for their walls and roof and they have no electricity and barley receive water. they buy candles to see but we just recently learned they only use the candles when we are there so that we can read the book of Mormon with them. I wanted to start crying I felt so bad for them. Anyway for the little they have, they sure do have more than a lot of people. They have such a loving family and it would appear that, that is all they need. They have fun all the time playing silly games, cooking together and just doing random stuff. Recently here in Oratorio everyone is in coffee season where the people pretty much make enough money to support them for the year during these two months. So they just go as a family and pull coffee and the mom always tells us, "well we gotta go cut that coffee to eat them good beans for the year". Ha, they are just so positive about everything. I'll never complain again about having to eat beans, ha. anyway, it is just a miracle.
Quick question, can you get the direction of the patriarch Barney? I really want to write him and tell him how I'm doing.
So here is a little bit about what happened last week. We had our zone conference with President Stay and wow that was really good. It was a good spiritual butt kicker and really got me going. I left that meeting with a desire to be more obedient and work harder and just do things perfectly. Not waste one single moment. Sometimes we get tired here or depressed and we kind of just walk just to walk, but not when we walk, we talk and walk, ha, if there is someone in the street we contact them, if there is no one, we contact a door, we are just trying hard to always contact someone and it is really working good for us. Hermana Stay made me and my comp cookies and brownies (which by the way i think beat yours, haha) because we were the only ones completing with our numbers in our whole zone. it was pretty cool. but yeah it was a good meeting we had.
So a couple things that happened that were cool. One night we were buying these things that are called shukos, which are like hot dogs with guacamole, ketchup, mayonnaise and it is toasted and it is really good. I'll take a video of how he makes it so you can see how, then learn and when I get home that can be something we eat a lot, they are sooooo good. We were buying shukos and we saw one of our investigators Brenda and she hit us with some pretty big news. She told us, she is finally ready for her baptism. Ha, we were shocked. she said she was reading the night before and something just felt right and so now she wants to do it, but she made us promise that it would all be in her time. So we went the next day to visit her and we put the fecha with her 24th of December. We feel as though there is just something she is not telling us so we will see this week what happens. Also we have this man named Oscar. He was an old investigator and he is well prepared for us. He is the guy who has already read everything and he knows the church is true and we just had to get rid of some of his doubts, so we have been working lately on that with him and we got him to come to church yesterday. We went to visit him in the afternoon as well and I just asked him, where do these questions come from that you have, and he confessed, ha, he had a book of anti Mormon stuff, but the time he has been with us he is realizing that the book is lies and that we are really a true church. I told him to give us his testimony of the book of Mormon and he gave another really powerful testimony of the book. It was great. He is just a great man and is really moving along well. His wife was listening to his testimony too and she was even impacted by it. She won't listen to us for nothing but now she is starting to show that she is interested too so, we might teach her too. We put a fecha with him for the 10th of December, which means he will be able to go to the temple dedication.
Ha, there is so much I want to tell you, but my hand is cramping up but I'll tell you briefly the stories and then you can ask me after the mission. haha. There was this one day we were walking up and my comp felt prompted to contact this house and right when he was about to knock, the lady comes out of her house and was like, elders come in. ha it was weird, so we go in and she tells us, elders I was waiting to see if you knocked my door and when I saw you guys about to knock I felt that I should just let you in and you guys needed to teach me, ha, so we just went in and gave her an introduction of what we do, and then we left but it was a sweet lesson. There was another lady who we have been visiting lately and she was really sick when we went to go see her. We went there and she was laying in her bed and her kids were like, she is going blind. Then the kid was like you guys should give her a blessing, so we gave her a blessing and taught her just a little bit about the love of Christ and we just had a really spiritual lesson with her. It was awesome.
Okay, so I am going to end now, with just one last story. It was in the night time and we had about 20 mins left of working and when we were heading back we were about to go to our comedor to eat dinner and then go home. But when we passed a really dark alley I just felt we needed to go up it. so we went to the last house there and it was pitch black, and my comp was just like "let"s go, I'm hungry". So I almost fell in and I was like "alright", then I felt prompted again, 'knock the door', so I just told my comp lets just knock and see what happens, so we knocked and this guy came out and was like come in, so we go in and we were just talking and getting to know him and little by little we found out he was a member. He told us his story about his life and how sad he was that no one ever wants to help him and that the elders only come and want to teach the lessons but then they leave because he can't get married. I just started talking to him and found out that he lacked in his testimony a lot about the plan of salvation. Especially the afterlife. He was just asking me, does it really exist?, is it real?, what the prophets say, is it real?. We just sat there for a moment and I told him just really simply, "Yes, yes it is all real, yes there is a God, yes there is a spirit world, and yes there is a celestial kingdom and yes everything that the prophets say is true". Then I shared with him my experience about grandpee that I had in the temple and told him that if it wasn't for this knowledge that I had that literally all this exists, I wouldn't be here trying to convert people to this gospel. The work we do is an eternal work, not just for this world. We baptize people and open the doors to the heavens for them. I just assured him that we are here to help him, not only to teach him but help him. I told him we wanted to help him and I presented him with a plan for him and his wife to get married and he just started bawling. He said for once in his life he saw hope, and that he feels like we were really guided that night. It was an amazing experience mom. It is stuff like that that keeps me moving along here and makes me more and more scared to come home. I love having the Spirit with me, it truly is teaching me so much. I love This gospel mom, I love the Book of Mormon so much and really it has helped build my faith in Jesus Christ. I love all these people here and I'm so glad I can be here working hard for these people. I hope you all have a good week. I miss you all a ton and I love you guys so much.
Love Always
Elder Daniel Shipley
from Alma
23 And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.
24 And see that ye have Faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.
I'm not sure about these two photos, better I not ask.
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