I still haven't got your letter yet so I am going to get off for now but I'll try to get on later to see what you have to say. First off, though HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I was telling everyone that it was your day that day and they all say happy birthday to you too. What are you pushing now, 62, 63, haha just kidding your 55 now right? Wow that is amazing. now you just have another 45 years left to hit 100, you can do it. but you gotta be more healthy. So how was your birthday, what did you guys do for your special day? Dad told me you guys had quite an interesting experience in the temple with a Spanish session. But other than that he told me you would let me know the rest of your day. Is it weird to you that when I am in the temple in a Spanish session I can understand all of that. haha I think that is pretty dang cool. I haven't been to an English session in over a year now. That is just nuts to me. Here is a little bit about my last week.
So Last Tuesday being the first of November it was the day of the dead here in Guatemala. So we went to the graveyard again to do some contacts. It went really well and we got a ton of references for other areas. We did it over in Cuilapa. the grave yard was pretty big but not as big as the one from Mixco. The graves here are so weird though, they have the tombs in like boxes and they just stack the tombs on top of each other. it is weird but it is kind of cool. anyways when we were leaving I noticed there was a funeral going on, haha how could I not of noticed it, there were mariachis and everything. The final dance they call it. Anyway after the mariachis were done I just felt so prompted to go over there and talk to the family. my whole district was like, "no no no, its a private moment leave them alone". anyway we just walked up to them and I was like excuse me are you the family, the lady said very sadly that she was. I just offered her if we could sing a couple hymns for her and for all the people that were there and she allowed us to do it. It was amazing the spirit that was there. I was so overcome that even it brought me to tears. we sang a good 3 hymns and when we were done I contacted the family. I just assured them that this is not the end and that they would see their son again. That right now he is receiving the gospel and that he would like it if they would learn a little more about the gospel too. they accepted and so the missionaries in Cuilapa will be visiting them. It was way neat. I love moments like these.
Anyways this past week we were able to go to the capital and go to the changes meeting as you probably know since I'm short a bit of money. ha but i was pretty modest, I just bought the necessities. I ran out of eye contact fluid so I had to buy some of that. but other than that I just bought a pen and a couple snacks. In Oratorio there is nothing so I took advantage while I was there. ha just a box of poptarts. It was fun though, I hung out with my good buddy Elder Doran and we went to lunch. I miss that guy, and also my other buddy elder Erickson is now my zone leader. so that will be fun. but other than that we just came home that night exhausted.
So as far as the work goes - we were really sad this past week to find out some really sad news. It had quite an impact on me but i need to just realize that people have their agency and move on as President Stay tells me. So we had 2 investigators who were progressing along really well. Brenda and Sandra, we even had fechas for this week so they could be baptized. anyways they told us that they were going to be going to the capital until January, so that kind of stunk then we went with the other fecha we had Luisa and she is having some serious doubts and is avoiding us which is so sad but we will see what happens with them.
Meanwhile we felt inspired to go and visit this family who are called the family Gomez. They are super cool and really nice to us. we are currently working with the parents to get them married so they can get baptized and we just found out that 2 of the kids aren't baptized either so we put a fecha with one of the kids and we will get the other one when he comes home from his grandparents house. Then we also have this other girl who's name is Jazmine, we finally got her to come to church and she loved it. We have been teaching her for like 4 weeks now and just no progress but now we are starting to see a change in her. so that is really cool but we will see what we can get from them.
Mainly we are just looking for new people. We are contacting a ton and we printed off the ward list so we will be going with all the members on the list and seeing if we can complete families and clean up the list a little. We found a couple new people, one who had a history 4 years ago with the church but couldn't be converted because didn't want to give up his other church, but he told us that like 2 years ago something happened and now he wants nothing to do with them. He told us he has been reading his book of Mormon a lot because when the missionaries left him they told him to read the book of Mormon everyday and one day the missionaries would find him again. WEll we found him, ha and now we are teaching him once again and he says he knows it is true. Mom his scriptures are more marked than mine. It is great. His name is Oscar. We also received a new reference from our new comedor whose name is Soyla. She is really nice and recently her sister just died. we just shared with her really briefly the plan of salvation and she seems really excited to hear about it. so hopefully we can start teaching her and her family as well.
But yeah, the Lord is really blessing us here and we are really excited for this change. WE are ready to work hard and get things moving here in Oratorio. All we really need to do here to have success is to just be obedient. Wake up on time, do our studies, get out and work and the Lord is putting people in our lives.
I am reading the Book of Mormon once again and I'm doing a really deep study on it. Writing my thoughts on the verses as they pop in my head and it is really cool. I've learned that in 1 Nefi Chapter 8, Lehi explains 4 different types of people here in the world. I hope we can all strive to be like the people from Verse 30 of that chapter and that we can all endure to the end. I love the Book of Mormon mom and I am learning so much here. I appreciate all these things so much more. The Book of Mormon really is inspired for us and helps us be a better people. WE can Learn anything we need to learn from that book. It is just amazing. Recently I made a list of the things I want to do in my life and at what age I would like to complete these things. I can not wait to get home and get my life started. WE only have one life so why not live it to the fullest. The mission has given me a lot of hope and really if I set my mind to who I want to be, I can do what ever I want to do. But I need to set my mind and heart to these things. Ha I'm sure you'd laugh at my list, it's called 'Daniel Wayne Shipley: The plan to be successful'. haha maybe I'll write a book. haha just kidding. Alright well I better get going. I love you guys and I will talk to you later.
Love daniel shipley
Notice "THE TIE", it's the first of the month!!
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