A la grande! El tiempo pasa rapidísimo como siempre! ¿Qué tal? ¿Como están ustedes? Ojala que tuvieran un buen Halloween!
Well my good friends and family,
Another week has come and gone and what a week it has been. First off, thanks for the emails once again, it’s always good to hear from you all and see how it’s going in your lives.
Curt and Holly, it’s all good that you didn’t have the chance to write me last week, I know you guys are busy, speaking of which; sounds like you had a busy and exciting Halloween this year with the boys. I think its super funny that everyone was dinosaurs and that you had a baby dinosaur attached to your stomach haha. Curt, I hope that this adobe job works out because I feel like that would be pretty awesome, ands no I didn’t know all that happened with your dad, that’s really tough but at least you were able to help him out a bit. I didn’t know cars were cheaper in Utah; I may have to keep that in mind for after the mission.
Mom, I'm glad you enjoyed my testimony and that you were happy to talk about me in Sacrament meeting haha. I'm glad that Kelsey and Luke were able to enjoy Halloween with Landen together, although I don’t really know what’s going on with her, I hope everything improves. That’s awesome that you were able to go to the temple again even if it was by yourself, when I get home I will totally go to the temple with you. I really do love that place.
Dad, thanks for the updates again dad. Last week when I was getting ready to do the baptismal interviews I was thinking about all the stories you told of interviews you did in your mission haha. Thanks for all the updates with Collin because he hasn’t written me yet, but that sounds like a good plan to have him go to BYU-I, because for me, college helped me out a ton before the mission.
Well, to answer your question a little bit, last week I did end up doing a couple baptismal interviews. The whole time before, all the elders in the office were siking me out with all the crazy baptismal stories that are out there, and to be honest I was kind of nervous because I had no idea who I was going to be interviewing. So we get out to the area where I was going to do the interviews, and I meet up the elders out there and it ends up being that I interviewed a 13 year old kid they had been teaching. His name is Jason, and he was actually scared to talk to me at first, but then we just got some chairs and got talking. It was kind of awkward at first because I show up to his house which was just a shack in the middle of this jungle forest and his whole family was just sitting there watching me while I was doing the interview because they don’t really have a sense of privacy down here so we had to go behind a banana tree to do the interview haha. But anyway, the interview was really good and really simple because he was just a 13 year old kid and he was super nervous but I went well and he passed the interview. After wards I got to go interview his friend who is also a 13 year old who was going to be baptized. The only difference with this interview is that he has a slight mental problem where he doesn’t learn to well, but when we started talking he was super excited to be baptized and he told me that he was willing to go to church every Sunday and read the scriptures and pray. I also asked him if there was anything in his life that would impede him from getting baptized, and he told me that he hit his brother. It was a really sweet moment and I told him that hitting his brother was something that he shouldn’t do, but that he could still get baptized, and he was super relieved after that haha. So it was a pretty cool experience to talk with these two kids who really just wanted to be baptized and be in the church. After the interviews we stayed for the baptism, and the church is super tiny! Literally the church is the size of our family room back home and the kitchen combined. Something had happened the plumbing and the water because the baptismal font water was all brown and muddy, but these two kids were still just as excited to get baptized.
As for the rest of my week, it was pretty good. President brought in a third assistant to the office to be trained before Elder Newell, the current assistant, goes home the end of this month, so we have been getting used to yet another new person in the office. Oh and by the way, president has told me that I will be bringing in my replacement this next change the end of November and I will be training him for the whole next change until January and I will then leave the office. So yes I will be spending Christmas here in the office which should be pretty fun getting the mission Christmas activity all planned out and everything.
As for my Halloween, we didn’t really do anything to celebrate, but Elder Sanchez and I helped a family move in our ward which was good to get out and do some service, and I guess it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, there will always be a need for people to help people move haha. But yesterday is what they call down here El Dia de Los Muertos. Pretty much it’s a day where people remember their ancestors by going down to the cemetery and bringing flowers and food to the tombs of the dead. Everyone here is buried in sepulchers above ground here just FYI so yesterday there was just a ton of people in the cemetery drinking and partying and “remembering their dead.” Nothing crazy happened, but some missionaries actually went to the cemetery to go contact people which I assume was a pretty good opportunity to talk about the Plan of Salvation. The tradition is that everyone eats this local food called Fiambre. Which is a plate filled with different types of meat like sausages, wieners and just a bunch of mystery meat with a ton of different types of vegetables with egg and cheese mixed in covered in this like red sauce stuff which is like vinegar and salt or something. In theory it should be a pretty good plate of food, but it tastes really kind of weird not to mention the fact that I was eating a ton of mystery meat and vegetables that were doing who knows what to my already parasite infected digestive system, but it was fun to be the part of the Guatemalan tradition haha.
But yeah, it’s been a pretty good week, we have been really trying hard to work in our area more to have some baptisms, but we really don’t have anything going for us. Elder Pulsipher and Elder Sanchez and I have been really trying to study well together and have the spirit so that we can be able to get out to our area as much as possible and find some good people to teach, but everything we´ve had has been kind of falling through lately. It’s been really quite a struggle because the ward we are in really has some leadership problems and the members don’t support the missionaries a whole lot because of problems they have been having with the sister missionaries, so it just a big mess of problems, but I guess that’s why we are where we are at, to help solve the problems and push the work forward in this troubled ward. My stress management skills have improved if anything haha.
I am really doing well, I’ve learned a ton here in the office and I am continuing to learn things that I think will make me a better missionary in the field when I leave the office in January. I love you all a ton, and thanks for all the emails, love and support you send. I hope y´all have a superfantasticaliciousawesome week!
Con todo el amor de un guatemalteco canche,
Elder Henderson
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