Pics at bottom
Sept 8

holy heck this week has been crazy. so i told you guys that i had changes. well you wont believe what the changes were. i am going back outside of the capital (that doesnt usually happen) to be a sister leader out there. basically i do everything normal except we have to do divisions with the hermanas that were in charge of. in a month we are supposed to do divisions with every group, there are 7 companionships. so we will be starting that this week. im so nervous haha. im grateful for this opportunity to be put in a position of leadership, although i dont know i was chosen exactly haha. but thats what God wanted I suppose.

But so I am in Chiquimula. I will be able to do divisions in my old area!!! woohoo!!! Never thought I would see Zacapa again. We are 3 hours from the capital. So on Tuesday i came out here, then the next day we had to go back to have a reunion of liders and it was super awesome! all of the zone leaders and President and the assistents and the other hermana leaders. I really liiked it. The mission has a goal of reaching 20 baptisms fper month for every companionship. IT is a lofty goal but it is a promise form a Setenta that we would be able to acheive it. So me and my companion are being super bold right now. We dont have time to waste. We invite people to baptism from the first time we ever talk and ask them to accept a fecha too. It is crazy but I have grown as a missionary already in this last week and I am loving it. I love my new companion. Shes from Argentina. Hermana Bustamante. I will send pics next week. But yeah, I am loving this change. I am nervous because I feel a lot of responsibility to be perfect haha but I am excited for the opportunity to grow and I want with all of my ehart to acheive this promise of 20 baptisms in a month. ELder Alonzo promised it to us before this year ends. Its crazy to think about that, but its possible, and we are going to accomplish. 

I am already exhausted haha. We have traveled so much in this last week. We had about 3 days to work last week and they were all like half days for other activities, and yeahh. But we are just going to give it everything and then rest when we get back to our houses haha. 

I love you all and I hope that you have great weeks! :)

Sept 1

Well, I am officially leaving this area. After 6 months. My second area. Leaving my 4th companion, my hija. I am sad. But also, I am looking forward to my next area...at least I am trying to be happy about it. Im sure I will be fine once I get settled again, but I will miss these people so much. They have truly impacted my life and changed me as a missionary and a person. I love them!!! Its crazy how people I never knew existed, nor could speak to a year ago, have such a profound impact on my life. Ahh but "asi es la mision". I will let you know next week where I go. I think the worst part is finding out who replaces you. Its weird. Anyways.

We finished this week, well Friday, with a baptism :) Joseline is her name if I havent talked about her before. She is 16 and super awesome! She was so excited to get baptized! But as Satan doesnt like it when people get baptized, he tried throwing in some problems, but he will not win. So that day it started raining torrentially. So much so that a tree fell down in the interstate, creating a huge backup that stopped everyone that was going to come. It was supposed to start at 700. She got there at 730 and her mom had left work at 5 and still had an hour left in the traffic. So we waited. And took pictures. And waited. And chit chatted. But her family was all able to make it eventually. There were like 40 or 50 people there in the baptism. And she was so happy. At the end she bore her testimony and was like when the hermanas first came to the house, I wont lie, I didnt want it. But as I kept listening, I felt an emptiness in my life be filled, and then I got super excited and I loved it and I am grateful for this gospel. AHHH! there is no better feeling than to know that someone was able to come to the gospel becauase we did something.

Well have great weeks! Love you all! Lets start my (hopefully) third and final 6 month area!! Woo!



Aug 25

Dear Family,
Well this week has been very different, but amazing! So on Thursday I completed a year. A YEAR! Can you guys believe that? A year ago I was at home. I feel like I just left! Crazy how fast the time flies. It is insane. We celebrated by having a conference with Elder Alonzo who is the new 2nd consejero in the presidency of the area. Well after hearing a super inspiring talk by President Crapo, Elder Alonzo gets up there and was like if any of you guys want to go home, I am willing to sign your papers. He told us that he has the ability to see into our eyes and see our life. To see when we made a mistake, with you, and what we did. He was like if you have been thinking that you want to go home and dont want to be here, I will be more than willing to help you. But if not, you need to talk to your President and work out your problems. He was like you know who you are. And we are all just like......oh gosh. But the rest of it was super great! You can tell he truly takes his role as someone who cries repentance to all nations very seriously because he sure did cry it haha. But at the very end of all of the talks, he gave us a promise that if stop thinking about home and start putting into practice the things that we learned that day, that we would by the end of the year see that we will be having 5 baptisms every week! Well, I believe in that promise, we just have to change the way we are working to a better way and we will acheive it :)

I also got to do divisions with the hermana liders and it was so great because I got to go to her area for the day. After being in the same area for almost 6 months, it does get difficult to not get thrown into a routine and to just walk and be like I know everyone here haha, but when you go to a new area for a little while then everything is new, you dont know anyone and it helped me to remeber what is my purpose, and it was a really good experience for me.

On Saturday and Sunday we had stake conference and another 70 was there and it was so awesome! I learned a lot from those sessions.

This week we should be having 3 baptisms and we are very excited!! the frist baptisms of the hermana Flewallen :) One is this 16 year old girl who is so excited, she is basically jumping every time she talks about it. Its so cute!

I love this gospel so much and the ways that I have been able to change personally and see change in other people. I love that Heavenly Father has placed people in my life here in Guatemala who always help me when I am struggling. People here seriously have impacted my life and changed it for the better and I will never forget them. Its crazy how a year ago, I couldnt even talk to the majority of these people, but now I have amazing friends out here! I love it :) Have great weeks!



Aug 18

Dear Family,

So I have two stories that I want to share with you guys this week. Okay, the first one is that we have a fecha for the 30th and she is a daughter of a less active and she is so super awesome. When we first met her, she said she wanted to find which church was true because seh felt an emptiness in her life. So we started teaching her and she said she felt it was true and that she did want to get baptized and that she wants to enter the temple! So we are all happy about that. We have also been working with her mom, who is slightly harder BUT she is reading the Book of Mormon and she is coming around. Before she didnt even want us to come to except on Saturdays. Well yesterday, they didnt come to church, so we went over to their house to see why and they had had some problems and the daughter si wanted to come but they couldnt. The mom came out and was like I just wanted to tell you thank you for everything that you are doing for my daughter. I hadnt had the chance to tell you before, but thank you for everything and it was so sweet to hear her say that! And then she was like and so maybe we can plan a day during the week that you can come over!! AHH!! I love the Spirit and I love seeing people change with the gospel.

And okay so yesterday we had an activity that was musical and so we went with our ward mission leader and another hermana from the church. So afterwards he was like I want to visit people with you, so we tried a couple people who werent home and were like ughhhh what do we do? so finally we decide to go to an investigators house (the one i wrote about last week that wrote the paper about us) but the thing is he had gone to the activity that day so we had already seen him, but Heavenly Father wanted us to go there, because we had a super spiritual lesson with him. I have seen him change so much in these past 6 months and with the extra help from Rafa, he is so close to baptism. SO CLOSE! He just has to get over his fear. Ahh, I love how Heavenly Father guides us to things like that. And I love when the members help, because its nice for the investigators to hear a different testimony than from us..

I hope you all had great weeks :) Love you!