Please send Ashtin Letters!!!!!

If you want to send anything else she would like pictures and of course food. But mostly she is starving for LETTERS. Thank you.

Current Address:
Hermana Ashtin Wilcoxen
Mision Guatemala Este
Apartado Postal 951-A
Guatemala, Guatemala C.A.

 

12/23/2013

So this week the ward had a reenactment of the birth of Christ and the girl who was going to play Mary left the city that day....so guess who got to play Mary? Me. Only because I am blonde. We dont even know if she was blonde for goodness sake haha. It was slightly embarassing, I wont lie, but it was fun. I also found out that day that the next day I had a talk in sacrament...haha. So I woke up early on Sunday morning and wrote that. I talked about how much of a miracle Christ is in our lives. Without Him, there is no point. Life would be pointless. I love thinking about Him through Marys eyes. He had a family. Im sure that it broke His heart to see His mother in pain, watching her son, who had done nothing wrong, suffer and be persecuted. I am infinitely grateful for Him and all taht He was wililng to do.

 

We had a cool experience this week. My comp decided that to gain the confidence of the leaders we should go to their houses early in the morning and give them service. So we planned for the RS President and bishop. But the morning we were going to the bishops house, I just couldnt stop thinking about the RS President so we decided to swithc the days. Turns out the day we went to her house, her and her mom said taht lately they havent had the animation to do anything lately and it was good to have someone make them do something. And the bishop told us taht the day we went, he almost called us to help his family out that day, but he was too embarassed to. Its amazing how the Lord guides every aspect of this work.

 

We had a zone activity for Christmas and we watched the movie planes. IT WAS SO CUTE! haha. and also the last movie I will watch for a year. But the conference was good. We visited an asylum for elderly people and sang to them and the message President Watts gave was an answer to my prayers. For Christmas we have plans with several members and an investigator who we randomly found who felt bad for us so she invited us over for lunch haha. 

 

I hope you all have great Christmases :)

 

 

12/16/2013

Dear Family,

So this week we had changes and I have a new comp! Hermana Munoz from Honduras. She is so awesome!! I am learning a ton from her but she is also really fun. I am really looking forward to this change! Hermana Reyes leaving was hard, but luckily I got a super awesome comp. The first couple of days were very different for me because only I know the area, so I had to plan everything by myself for a while which was hard, but we got through it haha.

 

This week I found out that I have a long lost daughter I dont remember having. We were at a members house and we were talking outside and this little blonde blue eyed little girl comes around the corner crying for her mom and I asked who she belonged to and the member was like I dont know. So we tlaked to the girl and she stopped crying and just sat with us...I was there for about a half hour and no one showed up for her...so I dont know really what happened with that. We decided the only logical explanation is that she is my daughter haha.

 

Yesterday we had like a church miracle! It was the primary presentation, which is always super cute! But we had almost 50 more people there than usually are there. A bunch of less active members came. One lady who hasnt come for two months came with a non member friend who is interested in the church! We had two of our investigators there. It was just a super awesome day! All of the recent converts were there. Such a good day!

 

The Lord answers our prayers! I have said this about a million times I think, but thats because its true. This week I had no idea what to do, so I just prayed that the Lord would help me through it and we were able to work every day and visit members and contact, and it was great! 

 

For Christmas here they set off fireworks like all the time. Like at 6 this morning...like why are you even up at that time? But yeah. Tomorrow we are having a missionary Christmas activity and we get to watch a movie, possibly Tangled although I doubt it because Hermana Watts says that we cant watch a movie with a kiss because we will get baggy haha.

 

Anyways, love you all! Have great weeks! I will talk to you in like a week! Yay!

 

Please send Ashtin Letters!!!!!

If you want to send anything else she would like pictures and of course food.  But mostly she is starving for LETTERS. Thank you.

 

Current Address:
Hermana Ashtin Wilcoxen
Mision Guatemala Este
Apartado Postal 951-A
Guatemala, Guatemala C.A.

 

Dear Family,

I am so jealous of your snow...our cold weather is completely gone and I am back to sweating as a habit again haha.

So the mission has standards of excellence and this week we met a lot of them which was so exciting! They are really focused in on getting 18 hours of looking every week, which doesnt sound like a lot but its three hours a day, and we have other lessons and also random reunions and so much stuff to do but we got our 18 hours. Plus an extra half hour and it was so great! President Watts was  like if I told you that if you got your 18 hours, I would give you $1,000,000 I gaurantee all of you would have 18 plus. Now I am saying that this is revelation from God to save His children in this mission...will you get your 18 hours_ and I was like...okay...yeah. I feel so bad for not getting them before. So we were really happy to meet our goal this week! (I cant figure out the question mark so _ is a question mark)

We have cambios this week so I am getting a new comp Wednesday :o I will let you know next week who it is!

So we have to use the buses here a lot and we have taken to talking to all the bus drivers. As a side note, contacting on the bus is my favorite because they cant run away haha. But anyway, so we have made a couple of friends with the bus drivers here and its so nice because theres this relatively large hill in front of our house and twice now one of our frineds has seen us and driven us to the top free of charge. And we were late to an appointment one day and the driver went out of his route and didnt pick up any more passengers to get us there on time! We paid him more of course, but it was so nice!

 We have a couple of new investigators who are so awesome! They accepted the baptismal invitation and I was so happy! The granddaughter works on Sundays so we are trying to work through that right now, but we will see what happens :)

As a part of the Relief Society, we are performing a pioneer dance and me and another hermana had to teach them all the pioneer dances haha. It is a lot of fun!

Final thing, President Watts told us we need to be more bold so I have been trying to do that, and it brings the Spirit so strongly! Not only that but everytime I declare what I know to be true and dont fear that they are going to be offended or what not, my testimony grows infinitely stronger and it is amazing! I encourage everyone to not be afraid to share what you know! Love you all! Have great weeks!

P.S. If anyone was wataching the Christmas devotionall...the little boy who winked at the girl during the song hahahaha. I was dying.

 

 

 

Current Address:
hermana ashtin wilcoxen
mision guatemala este
apartado postal 951-A
Guatemala, Guatemala C.A.

Ashtin got some Pumpkin Pie for Thanksgiving

Hello dearest family!

So "winter" has offically hit Zacapa. And by winter I mean its like the very very very beginnnig of fall for for us. It is SO nice except for the cold showers now are not very nice haha. They are just cold. I kid you not though, its like it has snowed here because the people are legitimately wearing winter coats in the night and I have seen a couple of winter hats...thought of Kelly haha. All these hipsters...haha.

The ward has started a consejo de barrio which I think is ward council in english haha. But I am SO excited for it because the attendance at church has been slowly decreasing and we need to do something. I really think that this is going to help them a ton as they start working together as leaders and start focusing on how to help the other members.

 So I kid you not...I think I am just meant to be a marriage counselor haha. We had another couple this week who during our first visit just openend up and told us all of their marriage problems and everything, everything that is going on. And then two days ago some guy was like what church are you guys from? like in the middle of the street and jsut started talking about how his wife is mad at him and what not...Good thing I took that marriage prep class ;)

We had a very interesting lesson this week haha. So a ton of people here are evangelical and there is a less active member who we are visting because we are kind of teaching her non member husband. Well they are both evangleicals and during our lesson where we are explaining the importance of both the Bible and the Book of Mormon they start like randomly shouting like halleluigha and praise the Lord and what not. At one point she starts like banging on her Bible and is like forgive me but this is what I believe and at one point was like on her knees and then they both started singing....I was just like oh goodness. It was all I could do to not laugh haha. We just ended it by bearing our testimony of what we know to be true and that they dont have to agree but we cant deny what we know haha.

I hope Thanksgiving was good for you guys! I hope that we can all be thankful for Gods hand in our lives. I am realizing even more now how much God has guided my life. From where I lived, to my friends, to what room I chose to live in at BYU, to my classes. Everything. It is so crazy to think about but He really directs our lives, especially when we are trying our hardest to do His will. LOVE YOU ALL :)