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!

8/11/2014

Well, I feel like I just wrote to you guys because I basically did.

 So we are having a lot of miracles here. We are confronting a lot of desafios too, but we really are seeing the hand of God here, and I love it! So I think I told you about Jely last email. Well on Sunday she came to church WITH HER ENTIRE FAMILY!!!!! It was so exciting :) Her two sons and her husband, who we havent actually ever been able to talk to! It was so awesome to see her there, and I know that she is ready, we just have to make sure we stay there with her, which we will be doing.

So idk if you guys remember Cesar, but hes the investigator that was getting over a lot of addictions and what not, but didnt want to get baptized and stopped coming to church and kind of asked us to stop coming. Well. We saw him on Saturday and we were like hey and went to talk to him and he was so excited to see us and told us that a member had seen him that day and invited him to church, and he was like i think im going to come. And then he said he read the last text that we sent to him that was like even though you dont want to, just know that you are always invited to church and was thinking about that. And then he saw us and was like okay, well im going to go tomorrow. and he came!! all by himself! now granted, he left after the first hour to go to another church, but he told us why he decided not to get baptized, which he hadnt before, he just got defensive and told us basically to stop wasting our time. then he said he wanted to talk to us, but felt bad for how he acted so he didnt want to. so who knows...maybe this time it will work! 

Also, we have this investigator who is a journalist and hes been our investigator for 6 months now. He loves the church and likes going, but he is rather....doubtful of everything. he just has lots and lots of questions and lots of things have happened to him in his life, but he always listens to us and i can see him changing and its amazing. but yesterday in our cita he was like the next time you guys come, ill show you something i wrote as kind of thanking you guys and he said its titled "how to talk to someone with a hard heart" haha.

So that guy carlos from last week...he came to church and liked it and brought his girl friend with him and she really liked everything too! it was so cool to see.

If you guys would like to pray for someone with me, please pray for someone named Xiomara. She is so awesome and pilas, but we just need a little additional heavenly help from God :)

love you guys! have a great week!!! :)

8/6/2014
Dear Family,

Oh heck. Well as you can tell it is now Wednesday and i am just writing because we went to the temple today so we didnt have a pday on monday. its been such a weird week. i feel like the week is just starting but tomorrow is already thursday...my schedule is super messed up!

anyway. Okay. We have found straight up the most golden person ever. Well, up until this point. And we didnt even find him. He came to us really. So a member called us and said his neighbor is interested in learning about the church so we call him and he starts telling us this story. oh goodness gracious. so hes been like super catholic his whole life, like super catholic, even he says that. he speaks english btw (he also asked me if i was from germany or something because i was struggling with my english...how embarassing haha) but anyway so his life started falling apart he said and he had a ton of questions that he realized his church wasnt answering. so he owns a recycling business and they brought in a box of bibles and in this box he found a book of mormon. he said that he doesnt know why but he couldnt throw the book of mormon away. he kept it, but never read it. then he moved a month ago right by our members and found out that they were mormon. these members are super pilas and shared a liahona with him and he was like i read it and i just felt a burning desire to get to know the church better. we met with him and we were like when is best for you? and he was like no, this is important i will arrange my schedule for you guys and were like...haha well okay. and then yeah, he accepted the baptism fecha right there. he was still kind of like well yes, i will, i need to know more but i think so. so were like woohoo! we call him to ask him something else and he is like...yeah, anoteme por esa fecha. like write me down for that day! he is a miracle, and i am so excited to see him progress!

also, we have another investigator jely who weve been working with for the past couple of weeks and we have seen such a growth in her. at first, she was kind of cold towards us when we talked aobut jose smith and what not, but now, she is like SO excited to learn aobut all of this. idk if i already wrote about this but we read to her from 3 nephi 11 and explained to her the way God wants us to get baptized and she was like kind of skeptical and i showed her a picture of a little girl getting baptized and we asked her to be baptized and she didnt answer. she tried handing the picture back to me and started crying and was like i think im believing it. i feel soemthing and idk how to describe it. it was so incredible. we explained that little kids have no need to be baptized, which had been a worry of hers for her son who isnt baptized. it was just such an amazing thing to see such a great change in her. shes a "tough" woman who doesnt cry and the last two citas has started bawling. haha, i love it.

we are truly witnessing miracles and i know its the gospel and the spirit testifying of the truth. I know that the book of mormon changes lives. that if people honestly take the time to study it, they will recognize it as a book of God and will recognize that His church has been restored upon the earth. that we can be saved through the power of the priesthood. it is such an amazing thing to be able to testify of. i love it :) and i love you all! miss you!

Welp, a lot has changed here in the zone! new zone leader, new district leader, new elder in our ward! Its crazy, but its been good!

Its also starated to rain again. It was pretty dry for about a month and then last night we were knocking on a door and i heard this sound and i was like...hna i think thats rain and we look over and you can hear the rain pounding on all the roofs and its getting louder and louder and we were like ahhhhh get your rain jacket and so as im trying to do that, the phone falls out and were scrambling around and acting dumb haha and these people are watching us from across the street and are like hey!  come here so we went inside so we coudl get everything together and we contacted them and talked to them a little and it was super cool because God gave us this perfect finding opportunity with two girls our age and they were like yeah, sure! come back! so we shall see :)

We have this investigator named Jely and we were going to drop her but we went back one more time to tell her and she was SO INTERESTED. like she had a ton of questions about te book of mormon and she was like yeah, i want to read it more and figure out if its true and can i bring my husbadn adn kids to chruch too and were like...um yes, yes you can haha. they didnt end up being able to come but it was still nice because i think next sunday they should be able to.

I have learned a lot that happiness doesnt come from your cirumstances. Sometimes i have the tendency to think that because of my circumstnces, i dont desrve to be happy and its just so not true. I love that God has made this plan so that we are happy. I have learned that a lot this past week, and i htink i am improving a lot to not get so down so quicly. my comp is never upset. in like 3 months, i have seen her upset like 3 times and shes in the beginning of the mission, which is iwhen people are usualy the most upset haha. shes been great for me!

my birthday was good! ate lots of cake and spaghetti from pizza hut! but it was weird not talking to you guys. it felt like a normal day, only now i feel super old. no longer a teenager. oh well, life goes on. 

Well, i love you all and i hope you have great weeks :)

 

Oh my goodness. Okay so this week has been incredible. So okay, I wont lie, the whole time that Ive been training my hija (her training is over now) has been kind of a struggle, and I couldnt figure out why. Like we would have pilas investigators athat wanted to get baptized and then something would happen and nope. And it was so frustrating. It got to a point to where we basically had  no investigators really and I didnt know what to do. So we started looking for all the ways that we needed to change so that we could have more success. Our prayers became more real and we started dropping those investigators who didnt want to progress. Well, we are seeing miracles right now. Between Saturday and Sunday we were able to put 5 more fechas. One of them is a family!!! And then we have a couple of other investigators who I honestly think we could put fechas with. I know Heavenly Father is preparing people and I love that when we truly try and tell Heavenly Father that we want to find His escogidos, that He leads us to them! And the best part is that we DONT HAVE CHANGES!!! wooohooo! This will be my second 6 month area. I am excited because I will be able to be here for my birthday, my year mark, and my hijas first baptism :)

So Xiomara is our investigator that is getting baptized on the 2nd and she has a shoulder problem. Got in a motorcycle accident and broke her shoulder a year ago but up until now the doctors are finding out. So she is getting surgery on the 6th of August. Well she said that she would come to church on her own. Well at like 9 she was just leaving so I was like okay. and then at 930 i started getting worried. She finally calls at 945 and she comes in and I find out afterwards that she had gotten into an accident! But then came to the church anyway. She stayed for all three hours (okay actually she left to go to the doctors with some other members and then came  back!) and the elders gave her a blessing that was so special! And ahhh, she is so awesome! She came to church despite getting in a car wreck. She is being worked against but she is fighting because she actually wants this and ahhh its just so great to actually see!

I love the mission so much. I cant believe i completed 11 months today, thats insane! Love you  all!

 Rainy Season, this happened in 15 minutes

 4th of July, Check out the shoes

 Too bad Ashtin isnt having ANY fun on her mission

7/7/2014

Oh heck so I have to tell you guys what happened on Sunday. Well okay, first I have to start with Saturday. Okay so we had been having an...interesting day haha. Pretty hard day if I am being serious, but we ended up going to a baptism of the elders and this lady is so flipping cute. She was so happy to get baptized and shes this little old lady, and yeah. But while I watched her get baptized, I remembered and felt so strongly in that moment why we are here. The trials and desafios dont matter at all when we get the chance to see another soul enter in the door to salvation. Like words dont describe being able to know that we were a part of bringing one more of Heavenly Fathers children back to Him. So anyway, I left that feeling good! The day continued as it had, but we were looking forward to our cita with the guy who is getting baptized in two weeks. We have the cita and yeah. We go back home and I am exhausted. We get a message from the guy we had just had the cita with telling us that he is thankful for all of our help but he cant change and he will no longer be continuing with us and coming to church. I heart broke in that moment. After that day, that was just kind of like the straw that broke the camels back. That night I prayed and poured out my heart to Heavenly Father and then tried to read a little about Christ because I know that He knows how I feel, and well I still felt pretty down, but I felt better knowing that I can relate a little bit more with Christ.

I woke up feeling good because I woke up determined not to let Satan win this battle. I would not give up that easily on this guy who has come so far to give up at the last minute. So we called him and the Spirit totally led that conversation. I dont think I would ever say what I said to him without the spirit. I asked him if he really loved God because when he says that he cant change, he is denying Christ and His ability to help him. He is denying His sacrifice. He was like yeah, tiene razon and we talked about other things too. In the end, he ended up coming to churhc. He showed up looking rather uncomfortable, but he stayed all three hours which he never does, ever. And he left smiling and looking very content. I know that Heavenly Father helped him out and helped him to feel better through his obedience to this mandamiento. I love seeing what obedience to the commandments does for people! Anyway, it was just an amazing experience for me to be able to see how Heavenly Father helps us to change.

Hope you all had a great Fourth of July! Love you!

6/30/14

Dear Family,

So this Sunday was pretty cool! Our investigator who has a fecha came! Even though he says he doesnt like the experience of going to church haha. And then a couple of less actives came to church! And I was so excited to see them! One of them haha okay so I asked him if he was coming to church a while ago and he was like yeah and I was like are you lying to me? and he didnt respond and I looked at him and was like I am a representative of Jesus Christ...do you know what that means? And he was like yeah. And I was like so if you lie to me...youre lying to Christ and he was like...oh. And so I was like are you coming to church this Sunday? And he was like yes and he came! And yesterday was the third time that he has come! And all of his family are members and usually only his mom comes or his dad sometimes and yesterday 6 of them came!! AHHH! It was so exciting :)

I have learned, and I wish I had done it earlier, to be very bold about our message and who I am. I am a representative of Jesus Christ and our message is true. It is for the salvation of everyone! I love the Spirit that comes into the lessons when we are bold. I have always admired the courage of the prophets and apostles for how bold they are but loving and I am trying to emulate them....even though I am far from them hahaha. But I am working on it. I cant believe I only have 8 months left because I still have so much to change!

So we have been praying that we could find this recent convert Hugo because we havent seen him in 2 months. One day nothing was working out and I was like whyyy haha and we went to this members house and we left the house late for our next appointment but I didnt feel anxious about it or anything which I usually do and we walk out and THERE HE IS! walking by at the exact moment that we left. It was such an answer to our prayers!

Love you guys!


6/23/14

Dear Family,

Well this week we had our final conference with Presidente y Hermana Watts! It was so sad! We got there and they talked to us for the last time, giving their final talks, they showed us our new president and his wife. Presidente y Hna Crapo. Gosh, it was so sad haha. Like so afterwards they had us all talk to them one at a time and take a picture with them. Hna Watts started crying before we could even take the picture...me too. I told them that I would never forget them because they have influenced my life for the better. They have taught me so many things, and I am the missionary I am because of them. Hna Watts said that she wouldnt let me forget them. Shes like we will keep in touch. When you start dating, you will have to introduce the guy to President Watts before you get married haha. I love them so much and I know that Heavenly Father sent me here partially from what I learned from them!

So in the mission lessons with members present is a super important thing. The goal is 20 a week. So we try our hardest to have a member always when we are with investigators which isnt as easy as it sounds haha. But one day we had members with us for six out of the 9 hours. six hours. Guess how many lessons we had with a member. A whopping zero hahaha. I was just like...oh my heck. But it is the effort that counts and for one reason or another we werent able to visit those people. It was just kind of a funny day haha.

Saturday at 11 at night they told me that I had to give a talk in church the next day and i was like como and they were like no en serio. So I stayed up until 1 thinking of ideas, got to bed at 120, and woke up again at 5 to give it. I gave my talk and here they have this little rd blinking light to tell you when you need to stop talking but I didnt know what it meant (i figured like okay wrap it up but it means right now end it haha) so i kept going. i blame it on my lack of sleep.

we have this investigator who is super awesome he has a fecha and he just really wants to change. I love seeing how the gospel makes people want to live better. to give up the good for the excellent. To get rid of their bad habits for good ones. It is only Jesus Christ who can make that change in people and it is such a blessing to be able to see that change in other peoples lives. to play a small part in it!

Love you guys!