Well i am sure that everyone is wondering why i am emailing tuesday instead of monday, and i hope you arent freaking out that i might have died in an earthquake or something because i didnt, but there was a small earthquake a couple days ago. No, the reason is that yesterday we had our mission christmas devotional/activity and we got to go to this place called Xetelul which is like a little theme park place and honestly the nicest place in all of guatemala. it kind of felt like a small disneyworld or something, and all of us were kind of shocked at how nice the bathrooms and everything was, but thats a different story. So we had to go there and it was a 2 hour bus ride from where i am at, plus the program took close to all day, so i didnt have time to write yesterday. so here i am today!
Well there is a ton of stuff i want to write about, but i dont have enough time like usual because this computer is incredibly slow and i couldnt connect to the internet for a good 20 minutes and trying to figure out how to work a computer in spanish is actually a little bit difficult haha. so i am just going to write about the most important stuff.
- So i got your email dad saying that fedex delivered my package last week. the bad news is, i have yet to recieve it. i thought i would get it yesterday at the activity because the whole mission was there and the assistants brought all of the packages, but i didnt find mine, so im going to ask around and talk to the assistants about what happened, but as of right now, i dont know where it is haha, but ill let you know next week if i am able to hunt it down or not, because i am going to need contact solution soon which is kind of important, so hopefully its just sitting in the office or something.
- About calling next week, (I cant believe christmas is in a week and i will be able to talk to you all!) as far as i know right now, they pretty much leave it up to us on what time we want to call on tuesday, the only thing is that i get only an hour. So ill find out more next week on wether or not i will be able to use skype or just call or whats going to happen, so ill let you know when i write next monday whats going to happen, but if you guys want to send me the skype names or whatever i need to skype you all just in case i get to do that. and also if you want to figure out a time that is best for you all, that might be a good idea too. Im super excited to talk to you all next week and see how you are doing and tell you some crazy stuff about the mission and guatemala! so i hope you all are as well.
- This past week for me has been really good, ive just been working hard with Elder Cachipuendo to get to know the area and the members and work with the few possiblities we have right now. We have started doing a new thing where we are eating with different members everyday for lunch so that we can get to know everyone and do this new thing where we go contacting with the members. At times its been really good with some pilas members that want to help out in the work and cook us an awesome meal, and other times, i've eaten some pretty sketchy food, and the members dont want to do anything. it just depends, but it makes my days interesting trying to get people off of thier butts and work with us or trying to gulp down who knows what on my plate haha. My area is huge like i said last week, so we do a lot of walking and Elder Cachipuendo and i talk a lot about our family and lives, and its pretty cool just to hear how life is for a member growing up in a different country and culture and to share some of my personal experiences and just learn from each other. I am teaching him english a little bit, and sometimes its funny when we are walking and these punk kids try to yell stuff at us in english, Elder Cachipuendo says stuff in english i say stuff in spanish and they just get really confused haha. So its been really fun learning a ton of spanish and working in this new area.
- We actually have a fecha for this saturday! It is this guy named Fabio who we have been teaching for these last couple of weeks. he is really humble and really poor, and the thing is that he lives about an hour away from catarina, and the place where he lives is only acesible by this rock and dirt road that winds through these hills and valleys in the jungle of guatemala. So everytime we go to visit him, we have to ride in the back of this pickup packed in with tons of other latinos (Yes it does look like one of those sterotypical beat up pickup trucks with like 30 people packed in the back) and tke an hour ride on this incredibly bumby road through the jungle to get to his "street" then we have to hike up this trail to get to the top of this mountain/hill where he lives with his family in this little shack. Its always anadventure for us to go and teach him, but he has some strong faith and desire to learn more, because every sunday he makes that treck to go to church. He isnt the sharpest guy on the block, but what he lacks in intelligence he more than makes up for in complete humility and faith. even though he and his family literally have close to nothing, he insists on feeding us everytime we go and visit him and we feel so bad. he is a really cool guy, and i am learning how to teach this gospel really really simply which is good for me, because it makes me get down to the basics of this gospel. we have a loving heavenly father who wants the best for us. he does everything in his power to help us grow and to learn how to be better people and how to have true happiness and peace in this life so that when we die, we are ready to inherit everything that he has if we do did the best that we could and did what he said to do in this life. Simply it is such a beautiful message of hope and happiness, its really sad and frustrating when people look you in the eyes and tell you that they dont want it and they dont need this message in thier lives. it really hurts, and i can only imagine how our heavenly father feels everytime we sin or reject his teachings in our life when really, he gives us EVERYTHING. All he does is loves us and does everything in his power to help us, and yet we just figuratively look him in the face and tell him no and go sin or whatever. I am really learning how great of an absolutely amazing blessing the atonement his and how much more i have to learn and how blessed i am and have been in my life, and just seeing the pure humility of fabio, makes me realize that i might have more intelligence or more stuff, but he has happiness. happiness in this gospel his priorities in order where god and family come first and nothing else matters. I am trying to have more of that kind of attitude in my life and learn humility and faith from not only fabio but from these humble people here.
-Well, just to talk about the activity a little bit that we had yesterday, it was the mission christmas "Celebration." so the whole mission got together and president talked to us for a little bit, and then since we were in a theater in the Xetelul place, different missionaries got up and did little acts and talents and stuff like singing, and it was really cool. i got to see other missionaries from my group in the MTC and Elder Cyde and everything, it was really fun. its really cool the brotherhood that develops between guys out here that are completely different, tal vez estamos de diferente países y todo, pero compartimos estas experiencias maravillosas y tiempos dificiles, y basicamente llegamos a ser hermanos en esta obra, es muy calidad y especial que no creo que pasaría en un diferente lugar que aquí. We also got fed an amazing lunch and everything just reminded me of disneyworld, it made me a little baggy thinking about that and all the vacations weve taken over the years as a family.
Anyway, those are the highlights of my week, and im really excited to talk with you all in a week about everything! I hope you all have a good time getting ready for christmas and everything baking cookies and what not. FELIZ NAVIDAD!
-Elder Henderson
P.S. sorry i couldnt send pictures again, this computer is really horrible and internet kept going on and off, so next week for sure!
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