Why hello there mother,

Well i see that you havent been on the computer yet so i will try to get on a little later to see what you have to say about the past week. My time is coming to an end here in San Francisco as i now have 6 months here in this area. so today and tomorrow i will be saying my goodbyes from the people here. I am really sad to leave here because i have made so many good friends here and i really feel like these people are family of mine. it is sad. but time to move on, meet new people and get to know more of Guatemala. I´ll let you know next week where im going to. changes are this wednesday. anyways i am doing great here in San Fran. we are having a lot of success and we have a couple of Dates for baptisim. alot will be getting baptized on the 8th of October. just a week after general conference. it will be sweet. anyways here is a little bit of what happened this past week.

So with Noelia and Kevin, they are still moving along really well and progressing in their marriage. i feel like we had a breakthrough with them and it was sweet. we took the President of the Elders quorum with us to their house. He was able to relate to their story a little bit and able to share with them what happened in his marriage and to prove to them that marriage isnt easy and that you have to work at it, and in the end people will be grand people if we work hard. I love the analogy that i always use here, something that i created, we have to work hard in order to have a mansion here  in this earth right. Well if we want a mansion in heaven then we must work pretty dang hard and be obedient here on this earth to achieve that mansion in the life afterwords. There is nothing we can do to force people but we can invite always.

Now with George, he is doing good and he was having a hard time with the baptism date for the past saturday. So i told him, look lets pray right now and we´ll see what the spirit tells us. so we all knelt down and we prayed and i kid you now the date of the 8th of october just popped in my head. and then it all made sense. he felt the exact same feeling too. he said he feels good about it because it would give him time to study the gospel a little bit more and to be in church more and to also be able to hear from the Prophet in General conference. So that was really neat for him to be able to feel that too and to know what he needed to do.

Also with Sharom she is doing good still and she is moving along really well. she came to church with us this last week and she really loved it. i was explaining to her about all the things we have in the church like the primary and classes and everything and she loved it. she said she was going to bring her kids the next sunday so that was a cool experience. but yeah we really helped her realize about the happiness in this life and that is when i learned that too. The true happiness in this life is our families. there is nothing else here that can bring us more happiness. but yeah it was a neat lesson with her.

Well yeah that was our week. This past week was the independence day here in guatemala. on saturday our ward had a party and it went well. they just did a lot of typical dancing and it was so sweet, i got some sick pictures and movies of it and it was really neat. also we were able to leave with the family reyes on divisions on sunday again. they were sad that it would probably be our last one. but they are such a cool family. definitely a family to come back and visit when you guys come here. we took some pictures like we were djs, haha it was funny. well that is pretty much all. i love you guys all so much and i miss you a ton. i really cant believe that i have 13 months now. yesterday i was working all day and didnt even remember it. until that night when my friend called me and told me happy 13th day. haha the time is flying by here and im trying really hard to make every moment count. i realize my time is limited and that i am almost out of here. and that scares me. well i better get going. were going to go play sports now. talk to you later.

love your son
elder shipley

Boat load................

Dark bedspread is Daniel's bed.

His mission closet is just as organized as his closet at home, which is good to see!

Bathroom - no shower curtain??

It's embarrassing, but those are ALL his suitcases.  Hopefully one will come home in Nov.

Study area.

  Conference.

Elder Falabella.

 Pres. and Sister Stay

 Lunch, meeting up with old comps.

This wonderful woman - keeps the missionaries clothes nice and clean.  THANK YOU!!!

 Enjoying some down time.

 Hiking.........he found this dog skull at the dump - maybe that is where the fleas jumped on!

One of his favorite families!

 Yes he shaved his legs - he had fleas and needed to shave to get rid of them - disgusting!

He LOVED his book!  I'm glad, it was a work of love!

Why hello there family. It is so good to hear from you mom and hear that all is going well.

This past week on Tuesday we had to go to the dentist office again. It takes almost all day just to get there and to get back. Which is a bummer cause we lose a lot of time.  When we got back we went with George, it was really good and we had a good time.  We taught him about how he needs to really think about what he is doing and the decision he is about to make. He told us he wasn't sure still so we just told him, alright we´ll go through the baptisim questions and we´ll see how ready you are. He answered all of them perfectly and it went really well. He felt a lot better after that and then we just bore testimony to him. It was really spiritual and we really helped him feel ready. We told him that on Thursday we would pass by and see what he had decided. He talked with one of the members who told him he wasn't ready to be baptized and it made me really sad.  He just had a lot of fear to do so.  We talked with george again and got him ready so we are going to try for this Saturday. Hopefully he will be baptized. i just shared with him the scriptrue in Alma about not waiting.  Now is the time, not tomorrow, not in 2 days, it is right now. we really have no idea when the Lord will come.

We also went with Noelia and Kevin and that went kind of well. Satan is really doing his work on them now. I hate satan, i dont know if i have told you that before. anyways we go there one night and Noelia told us that she was thinking of getting a divorce with Kevin and that they dont want to follow through with things. it made me really sad, but in that moment i just remembered in my mind to watch the movie together forever with them. so we set a appointment for the next day and we went to watch it with them. it went really good. first they watched a little bit and were sitting seperated. then kevin put his arm around her and then they started moving closer and closer. it was really funny. i think the spirit really touched them on that one. anyways we just bore testimony after the movie and they really liked it. they were so happy afterwords. i really hope we can save their marriage because if someone really truly is living the gospel it can save any marriage. we just need to humble ourselves and be better people ourselves. It´s like what President Monson said, we shouldnt look for what we want in a spouse but what we want them to see in us. then the perfect person will come along and all will be ok.

Sharom is really coming along really well. She really is enjoying all of the lessons here and it is really cool.  She believes but since last Sunday was election day she couldn't come to church.   I really think she will be baptized. The sad thing is that I probably won't be here to baptize her but I've learned that's how the mission works. you need to work hard in your area and expect all missionaries to do so, so that when we go to another area we have people to work with. We started teaching her about the plan of salvation, and at first she was just like no it's impossible, we couldn't of existed before this earth. It is impossible. Then we just showed her a couple scriptures and she really knew that it was true. She said how beautiful it was to know the truth. God sends us here to progress and to learn so we can be like Him. Our potential is huge and we just need to live this life being obedient.

Wednesday night, Hermano Colindrez's father died. it was so sad. i feel so bad for him. he was out on visits for the night because he is the elder's quorum president, and we were eating dinner with the family when they got the call. it was sad, he came home from his visits and i could tell he wanted us to leave because he was just tearing up but still trying to hold it in, so we just headed out and i told him that it would be ok and that thanks to this gospel he knows what is going to happen and that it is a happy time, not a sad one. Thank goodness for this gospel that we have that we literally know perfectly where we will be going after this life. if we didnt know this, what would be the point of living and doing the things that are challenges to us. yeah this church may be restricting, but God asks us to live it. Are we really willing to obey God, or are we just going along with life. If we Live the way that God wants us to live, we will have no problems and we will be with our families again. If not... well there is no promise as the Savior said so himself.

I love this church mom and i love My Savior and all He did for us. Especially God for preparing such a great plan for us.


The conference yesterday with Elder Falabella,  was really good. He is really an inspired man of God. He truly receives revelation for us.  He just mainly talked to us about how we need to support our wards here more and do the work of the Lord. He said that Every single person that is called in the church is called from revelation.   To say that the person who called the bishop doesn't have revelation is the same to say that the prophet doesn't have revelation. So we need to be careful. Also anything bad we say about the bishop or any leader in the church, that will fall upon us in the judgment.  He also talked about a new thing the church is trying where we work from the center point of strength.  He used the example of Ammon.  Ammon baptized king Lamoni who was a Father, and then his wife.  The servants were converted and others. He then asked us, now do you guys think that Ammon baptized thousands?   We were like yeah, and he said no. Then he showed us in chapter 19 about how he called other people to go out and baptize as well. He compared this to our wards. He said that it is literally impossible that we can baptize everyone here.   We baptize one strong member then that person spreads the gospel and baptizes another. Then those 2 baptize more, then those 4 baptize more and more and more.  He also told us we need to stop speaking like bums here and we need to use professional Spanish.  I really learned a lot from him.

Love Elder shipley

Hey mother,
I am so glad to hear you guys had a great week, I forgot my agenda today so it will be a struggle to try and remember everything we did but I will try hard to do so. 

First off I am so happy for Ashley and Lindsey.  I can't wait to come home and visit them. They are such an inspiration to me and to a lot of people here too. A member asked me in her primary class if she thought I was being blessed because of my mission, and I told her, of course I do, my family is getting baptized and are coming to the truth and God is happy with them. What other blessings could I want. but yeah, I'm so happy for them.  

Here is my week from what I can remember.
 

Last week we had a district meeting and it was really cool. Our zone leader Elder Esteban, who is my brother in the mission, taught us a little about our purpose and just got us to remember why we are here. He had us write down some of the reasons we are here and here are the things I wrote: serving people, changing lives, seeing the Lord's hand in the work, being happy always, visiting people, lessons not contacting, learning something new everyday, my family getting baptized, going to the temple, language I've learned, and good people I have met. Those were some of the things that I like about being here in the mission. I really have learned so much here mom and I wouldn't trade places with anyone right now. I love my mission and I hope that the people who ever consider going will just go.
 

This last week was Hermana Reyes birthday so I bought her a negrito and made her a card and she loved it. I forgot to take a picture but the memory I´ll never forget. We also shared a message with them and it was really cool. ha, I shared your testimony with them. We read it out loud and it really is a pretty powerful testimony. After we were done I gave them all a copy and then I invited them to go and write their testimonies down in their journals so that they could remember that forever. I've figured out when we are the most full of the Spirit, we need to write our thoughts. It is really neat. I also gave them the pencils, stickers, little hearts, and the ctr rings. They were one short so we had to draw sticks but yeah, haha, it was a really neat lesson and really spiritual.
 

There is this new sister that we are now visiting,  Her name is Sharom, she is from nicagura and she is really cool. She has 2 daughters and is just a really nice lady. She really likes the things we are teaching and she almost came to church with us yesterday but something came up with her cousin or something so she had to go to the hospital. Stupid Satan. ha, but we´ll get her next week. she really does believe in Joseph Smith and we watched the short video with her and she loved it. She said afterwords,  "He is called of God right". haha we were just like, uh yeah. ha  We have an appointment with her tomorrow so we´ll see how that goes.
 

George needed to come to church yesterday but he didn't come so he can't be baptized this coming Saturday, I was really bummed about that, and next week are elections on Sunday and apparently he is working so I might be gone before he can be baptized. It is sad but we´ll see what happens. I really hope we can get him baptized but we´ll talk with the president to see what happens. He is still really pilas and is moving along well and things are going good with him.  He tells me that he knows without a doubt that the church is true and that he has no doubt about it.  He is just a little nervous but we´re working with him on that so he is not scared.

With José, he is really cool still. He came to church yesterday and he loved it again. He says he is really starting to know that these things are true. I remember before the first time he came to church we asked him what he thought the true church would be like, and he was just like, well I´d imagine they would be playing the piano and give talks and take the sacrament and teach us the word of God. Haha we were just like wow you have to see our church then. He came and yesterday was his second time and he whispered in my ear during the sacrament, it´s everything I imagined. It was really neat, I love that guy and I really hope we can get him baptized as well. We have an appointment on Wednesday so we will probably set a fecha with him but yeah it was awesome.
 

I had to teach the lesson yesterday in Sunday School. haha 1 hour of me talking pure spanish. I thought it was going to be hard but it was actually really fun. Instead of teaching from the gospel principles book, I taught them from the seminary teachers book for the Book of Mormon. Haha it was awesome and the class loved it. I taught about how Nephi and Laman and Lemuel are so different and how we need to be like Nephi and the Lord will always deliver us out of trouble.  For example what would of happened had we not retrieved the brass plates?  We would have lost  a lot of really good doctrine. I'm personally kinda mad at Martin Harris for losing the plates of Lehi, I wanted to read those. I think that I´ll ask for those right when I get to heaven. haha, but yeah there is no doubt in my mind that this church is true mom. I love this church so much and the more I study it I learn how true it is. How if we give up a little here on earth we will receive a lot in the world to come. If we are into the worldy things here, we can expect that it will be a pretty day with God.  I try really hard to do my best everyday and I'm exhausted at the end of the day. I don't even have a problem wtih going to bed at 10:30 anymore, I start going to bed at 10 now. well I love you guys a lot and miss you all and I hope you have a great weekend. i´ll talk to you later.

love elder shipley

Danny's family

Hello mother and family and everyone else.

"With that He was brought before the gentile rulers in the land. Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, interrogated Him once, and Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Judea, did so twice, the second time declaring to the crowd, “I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man.” 3 Then, in an act as unconscionable as it was illogical, Pilate “scourged Jesus, [and] delivered him to be crucified.” 4 Pilate’s freshly washed hands could not have been more stained or more unclean.

This was also a telling time among those who knew Jesus more personally. The most difficult to understand in this group is Judas Iscariot. We know the divine plan required Jesus to be crucified, but it is wrenching to think that one of His special witnesses who sat at His feet, heard Him pray, watched Him heal, and felt His touch could betray Him and all that He was for 30 pieces of silver. Never in the history of this world has so little money purchased so much infamy. We are not the ones to judge Judas’s fate, but Jesus said of His betrayer, “Good [were it] for that man if he had not been born.” 7

Those paragraphs are from a talk by Jeffery R. Holland and I just love those 2 paragraphs from that talk. It is so true. The questions is, what is our 30 pieces of silver that we are going to do to give up our savior?  what are we going to do to sin against the lord?

(I had wrote to Daniel about the Atonement)

I had a pretty decent week. started out not to fun. Apparently if you don't have hot cheoteos for awhile and then all the sudden you eat 2 big bags within 1 hour, you get pretty dang sick. haha, that is exactly what happened to me. i was pretty sick mon, tues and wednesday. Monday all day my comp had to go to the dentist for his braces so we were there and it was funny, I was doing calls for the nurse and making appointments. I guess I have gotten pretty good at making appointments with people. I was 100 percent successfull. haha.

AS for Ashley and Lindsey, Wow i cannot believe that. First off that is just amazing for Becky, what an example she is for them, but really you, mom, them coming to the house and seeing how happy we are as a family and then them seeing the change in Becky, there is no wonder as to why they want in too. What does Margaret say about all of this?  Anyway share this scriptre with them that i love, from Romans chapter 8
 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I love that. Tell them that I love them alot and that iI am so happy for their decision to be baptized. I miss them alot and I wish I could be there with them but I´ll be there in spirit. and I´ll be thinking about them all day long. But the most important part is that their Heavenly Father is really happy with them and really glad for their deecision. He loves them and I always like to think of baptisim days as a party in the heavens. God is celebrating and all the angels are celebrating too that another soul is coming into the right path and making the right decision. I'm so happy for them.

 Let me get to my week now, like i said i was pretty sick so the first part kind of stunk but we worked extra hard the 2nd half of the week and we got alot accomplished. this week we went to the temple which I might say I just absoutely LOVE going there. I was thinking about just being in there and how you can literally hear nothing. You can find the most quiet place in the world but still you can not find the peace that we feel in the temple. It is just amazing.  Also we had House inspections as well. they went well and also Hermana Stay officially told me that we are allowed to use contacts because she uses them too. haha.

Ok with our Investigators.

So it was cool on Sunday Jose and Noelia and Kevin came to church. they are from the Family Claveria. We had a really cool visit with them this past week and we taught a little bit more about the things that we need to do and the Book of Mormon. Jose is really coming along and in church he loved it all. He said it was everything that he could of possibly imagined it to be. with the piano and all the calmness and everything he just loved it. i really think he will probably be baptized real soon.

With George, we are still teaching him but not so much with Delma anymore because she heard some stuff and idk it was just really weird. When we were there I just told her that she didn't have to listen to us if she didnt want to because she was just like staring at me really weird.  I just told her how she has her free agency and all that stuff and she kind of felt relieved but she says that she will continue studying the church so she can find out if the church really is true or not.  With George we still have the fecha with him for the 10th of September and so far he is good for that so we are working for that. I really hope he can be baptized. the last time we taught him we taught about the authority and how true the church really is and you could just see in his face how happy he was getting when we could actually back up what we talk about with scripture. There has been so many things that I have learned about how true the church really is and really, there is no other church that is even close. Not one even holds a breath compared to our church, but don't worry mom, I am really respectful about how I teach. haha, but I just love teaching about the true church and really pointing out to the people that we are real and that the things that we have in our church aren't wishful hopes, but they are truths that we have.

Also a really cool story that happened. and this has strengthened  my testimony that God puts us in peoples lives when we need them. There was this lady who is the grandma of this one family we visit who are members. The grandma isn't a member, but she usually cleans the house in the morning and then goes and picks up the kids from school.  One morning we were walking and I dont know why but I really felt the urge to go and visit her. So we were walking over there and right when we knocked on the door she comes to the door and was just like elders please come in.  We went in and we sat down and we just talked with her for about like 40 mins. right when we were about to leave she tells us, elders I dont know if you know this but right before you came, I was cleaning the dishes and all the sudden I started having a nervous attack. I felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I started praying really hard to God that he would send someone to come and help me. In all honesty what could she of done if she was to have a heart attack right at that moment. she could do nothing. She  goes on to tell us that right when she said amen to her prayer we rang the door bell and she ran to go see who it was and there we were. haha, good thing we were listening to the Spirit. After she says that she let us in and she could really feel the Spirit with us and just felt a peaceful feelling come into her life. She immediately felt calm and better and was so happy we came. I know for a fact that God puts us in people's paths. I know that we have the Spirit with us and that when we go to visit people they can feel that. I love these people here so much and I love helping them so much.

The photo of the baptism is of the two elders from the area next to mine. elder doran and elder tijerno. elder doran is my bud, who I work out with. They had a good baptism and they invited us to go and be the witnesses. so that was cool.  I'm loving my time here and I really feel like I'm starting to focus more in the work. and not so much in home. but yeah, well until next week. we are going to be writing more in the mornings now so try to write the letters on Sunday now, so I can write you. I love you all so much and miss you guys.

Yes, he IS a Shipley!!

love your son elder shipley.

where is a photo of your apartment?did you get a good report with the mission president - remember if you are a slob it is a direct reflection on me

always do your best - you want to not only remember this for the best two years .................
but the best you could do for two years!!
haha yeah but I feel better now, and I still love the hot cheetos, haha my mom here from san francisco says I cant eat anymore, she says that if you send me them I have to throw them away, and I just say, they are too sacred, I can't do that, but next time I´ll eat them more slowly. The solution, yes send more, the small bottles only last me like a 2 weeks and a half. They go really fast, I just had to buy a bottle right now but it was a big one, idk if it is cheaper here but a big bottle here is like 12 dollars, and yeah share that message with them at the baptisim. let me know how it goes, also i´ll get the picture of the apartment for next week. i forgot about it but i just wrote that down so i´ll get it. and yes hermana stay was really impressed with our apartment, she says it was one of the cleanest apartments, she says that you taught me well.

 God puts people in our paths for a reason so that we can help them and bring them to the gospel. I remember a seventy asked us, do we really love these people? Then baptize them. What are we waiting for?  Sometimes we are just too scared what people might think or say, but are we really ashamed of what brings us so much happiness? We need to get out there and share it. You are always so good at this mom but i think every member in the world always needs to improve. The one thing that is destroying the church and leading people away is the lack of love and visiting.  All the menus actives that we visit, they all say the same thing, every time,  they left the church because they just didn't feel the love that our church preaches. It makes me really sad. I hate when people say that the church is true but the members aren't. We need to improve that, and it starts with us. Just some thoughts I have been having lately. haha. Anyway, thanks for the letter you sent me, it really inspired me on a couple things, also that talk is really neat. I really enjoyed that quote you shared with me. I have realized we are a really special and chosen generation. This is the time that we need to act. It says in 2 Nephi, for what are we procrastinating our repentance.

First we have the family of Ana Maria.  We ended up putting a baptisimal date with George and we are still working really hard with Delma. The advice that President Stay gave me I think that will help us a lot with her so we will be trying that out, but she is rather hard. We also have their brother who we are now teaching who´s name is Renee and I think he will probably be baptized the same day as George.  We had to move the date to the 10th of September, it will be better for them.  We taught them pretty much from the bap questions just so we could see what we lacked and what we needed to still teach. we kinda have an idea of what we need to do now with them so we will be working with them really hard. Everything went really well with them and  after the questions we had a little testimony sharing moment and it was really neat. It really was pretty spiritual. Testimonies are just so powerful, they literally beat any scripture battle.

We also went with Rosa Maria again and we had a good time over there with them. We were just visiting to see how she was doing and what help she needed and etc and we had a really good visit. haha she even made me some famous bbq chicken. it was soooooo good, haha I miss so many things from back home. She is also the one who made the grilled cheese sandwich.  We  went there and gave her some advice of what she needs to do and she told us she was really depressed. I told her to go out and try to find some work and keep coming to church and to just follow the gospel, then we gave her a blessing and her daughters too and it was really neat experience.

We also went with this one family named the Claveria. They are the ones that will probably be baptized before I leave.  At least I hope so. They are really cool and really nice. The dad, jose, is a really funny guy and he is always just so interested in the gospel. He has so many good questions and now has told us that he is really interested in getting baptized. So this week we are planning on going there to teach him a little bit about baptism more and the blessings from the gospel and hopefully we can get him converted. He really is a great guy and has a great heart. The rest of the family is a little bit more hard to work with but we are working little by little with them. For now we are just trying to serve them so they can feel the love and see the example we set for them. So hopefully it´ll work.

That is kind of the big news that happened this week, a lot more happened of course, haha, anyways for my one year day, because I bet your dying to know what really went down that day. well in the morning since Thursdays are our planning days we went out and we got a snow cone, I know rebels. haha but it was good, then for lunch with Mamalinda.

 We ate pizza and ate cake and it was so dang good. They have a cake here called tres leche cake. It is the soggy cake I explained when I was in mixco that I didn't like, but who would of guessed, I love it now. haha,  You should learn how to make it. We had a great time talking about the mission and other stuff and then we were all off to work that day. That night we ended up going with the family Reyes, who is one of my favorite families here and we had a great time with them. We ate some sandwiches that were really good and then we burnt the shirt.

Well that is pretty much all I have for the week. I love you guys so much and I miss you a ton. I love the mission so much and I am so glad I am here in Guatemala and that I am serving in the time of President Stay. He really inspires me and I learn so much from his wisdom. The love from him is just so unreal. i just can't even imagine being in the presence of President Monson or even Jesus Christ. There is a scripture in Romans chapter 8 that talks about the love God has for us and how literally we can't even comprehend the love He has for us. There is nothing that can tear us apart from the love that God has for us. I love this church so much and I love my Savior. I know that this is the true church and it is funny, all we really need to do is just read, ponder and pray to know that it is true. That is all we ask, we're not here to convince people but to share what we know to be true.  I´ll talk to you guys next week. i love you guys and miss you a ton. btw, the countdown starts tomorrow, 365 days until i come home, August 23rd 2012,

love
elder shipley

 Missionary haircuts!

Payback!!

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.

Elder Interiano

Elder Thornton

Elder Flake

Elder Keele

Elder Barrett

Nora, Boris and Flor from Mixco