Christmas Season!

Hola Todos!

First i want to say that last week everything with the crazy latino guy and the computer worked out! I think it was the fact that i spoke horrible spanish to the guy that he gave up on having me buy it, so i didnt have to buy it, and we just left this really angry latino man in his internet cafe haha. i will not be going back there again.

Well, thank you for all your emails and keeping up to date once again on everything in your lives, and sorry i cant write you all personal emails, but i am going to try to send handwritten letters to all of you for christmas, but since i have almost no time we´ll see how that goes but im going to try my best! Its good to hear that you are all getting ready for christmas, its so weird to me that christmas is only a couple weeks away, its a different world down here and on the mish with realizing how fast the time flies. Yes people celebrate christmas pretty good with lights on their houses and fake christmas trees which is nice and reminds me a little of home and setting up our own tree and going out with collin and dad to put up lights, those were some good times. but, people here also think that fireworks go with christmas too. so its pretty strange/hilarious/annoying when you see 4 year old kids running around with m-80s and other exploding firecrackers and such with no parental supervision and to hear bombs going off at 3 in the morning while you are trying to sleep. its a little different down here in the heat of guatemala but we still try to find the christmas spirit nonetheless.  

Well this past week has been super crazy and busy like usual here in the mish, and im here in an exciting time where things are starting to change. Our mission president has been teaching us that we need to work with members more to help out in the work, and we are starting to do this new thing where we go contacting with members to invite their neighbors and such to family home evenings where we come and teach their neighbors and friends a lesson in the house of the members. so we have been trying to go with members to go contacting and to do these types of lessons, and some members are super pilas and go with us and invite half their neighborhood to these noche de hogar lessons, and some members look us in the face when we ask them to go with us contacting, and just straight say no. the mindset of some of these members and thier audacity to just say no to a commandment of lord like that amazes me sometimes, and our ward is struggling because a lot of members are like that where they just dont want to do crap, but its getting better and we are working with the leaders to get stuff going. my invitation for you all is to just help out the missionaries as much as possible because you have no idea how much better the work is when members just help out a little in doing little things. So most of the work this week was doing that trying to find more people to teach. 

We have also been working with this really old lady named Juana who really likes church and has actually seen the temple with some members in Quetzaltenango. Her challenge to get baptized has been the permission of her husband who is a crazy evangelicist. misionaries before us have tried talking to him to try to get permission for to be baptized, but none could, but elder clyde and i thought we might be able to, so we fasted and talked to the husband, and although it wasnt easy talking to this crazy evangelical guy whos like 80 and doesnt know what the heck is going on the world, we were by a miracle able to get permission for juana to get baptized. entonces we have a fecha for this saturday with her, and i know it was only through the help of our heavenly father and the spirit that we were able to get permission where elders have been trying for a year to get permission with her. that was a pretty cool miracle that happened this past week. 

Oh something else that was pretty cool this week is that one of the volcanoes we see from our back patio of our house erupted (Everything is fine though, dont worry) a little this past week, and a ton of ash fell over the city of Reu. So we woke up one of the mornings and it was kind of snowing! except it was blazing hot and dusty, but we said that it snowed for the navidad haha, so that kind of got us in the christmas spirit. 

Something really sad that happened this past week was that we had a lesson with our recent convert andy, and apparently the day before, sisters or someone from the ward had come over and talked with him and his wife about temples and baptisms for the dead. something we have not taught him yet, and he freaked. he did not like not knowing about baptisms for the dead and said that it was blasphemy and that if he had known about that before he was baptized he would not have been baptized. we were shocked and we taught him the best we could about it and how its a doctrine of love and mercy of god, and how if he knows joseph smith is a prophet and the book of mormon is true that baptisms for the dead is true, but it didnt matter what we said, he just doesnt believe it. so we dont know if he is ever going back to church or what and it is really sad, and its kind of frustrating that i could speak better spanish to try to explain it to him better, but i know that joseph smith was a prophet and that his church is true, and i think just trying to explain it to him reaffirmed my testimony in that doctrine and the love of god for everyone of us no matter what we have done. 

So that was sad, but yesterday was Elder Clydes birthday, so we actually had a little dinner with andy because he still wants to be our friends  and we´ve been through a lot together, so we had a dinner with him, and today we are going to have cake and pizza haha, so that is pretty exciting and what we are doing for p-day today. I really like the christmas devotional last night, and instead of making me baggy like i thought it would, it just made me really happy and realize how great of an opportunity it is to be out here. i want to make the most of the time that i have out here and to be the best missionary! Im in Guatemala for goodness sake! So im excited for this holiday season and to continue learning and to talk with you all in a couple weeks! Oh and changes are this week, so im pretty sure that elder clyde is leaving and im going to get my first latino comp on wednesday! so that will be pretty interesting and i hope he is a good guy and im pretty excited and nervous too. its going to be a crazy week, but i hope all of you have an amazing week and feel the spirit of christmas and take advantage of the festivities back home! I love you all and wish you the best! FELIZ NAVIDAD!

-Elder Henderson