One Crazy Week...

My good ole family and friends,

                

This past week has been pretty crazy and busy, and for that I'm getting my email out a little late, but I’ll get to that later.

Thanks so much for all your emails and updates, especially your email dad, I really enjoyed your thoughts and experiences from your mission. I can definitely agree that in my mission I have felt a lot of frustration and stress over things that really in the long term aren’t that important. I think I really have learned the importance of just doing what I need to do and controlling myself, and being a good example for those around me because I can’t and shouldn’t try to change them. For example, my companion, Elder Sanchez, is just a little weird and a bit irreverent. While we pray and are in lessons with people he likes to annoy me and mess around which can really frustrate me at times when I'm trying to have the spirit and he’s just laughing or saying something during a prayer. But I think what I am starting to realize is that I shouldn’t get angry and tell him what to do and try to change him, but instead I just need to love him for who he is with all of his craziness at times, be patient, but be a good example. I can be a positive influence to help him become a stronger missionary. So thanks dad for your thoughts, I think it’s taken me awhile to start figuring all that out, but I think my time here in the office has given me a bigger and better view of missionary work and why I'm here.

Mom, haha I'm glad you enjoyed that surprise text message; I will explain later on what all happened with that.

Curt and Holly, thanks for the emails, I hope the online lesson stuff continues to go well curt, and that you all can have an awesome thanksgiving!

I also want to make a shout out to my good ole boy Dan, thanks for the email, and I'm glad everything is going better with you man!

As for my week, one word pretty much sums it up, crazy.

It was one hectic with investigators, the president of the area coming to our mission and an emergency trip to Xela.

So to start off, I once again have some bad news from our area. So the lady we have been teaching, Lidia, did come to church on Sunday which was super awesome, but later on in the week we went back to teach her, and apparently the wind from the fans in our church had gotten her sick??? Yes, Guatemalans have a lot of strange beliefs of things that get you sick, and this one is no exception… so anyway we were talking with her, and for some reason she was just not that positive anymore, we have taught her about the Book of Mormon and challenged her to read it, but for some reason she just won’t read, it’s really quite frustrating, and to top it all off we found out that she is living with a man that is married to another woman… so yes, we feel like we hit a thick wall her, and we´ll have to see what happens but it’s not looking so good. To be honest all the people we have been teaching have all kind of turned sour on us and don’t really want anything, so I feel like once again Elder Sanchez and I are at square one in our area. We have the goal of baptizing in December, but it’s really going to take some creative thinking and guidance from the spirit to accomplish it.

So the big thing this week was that President Amado, the area president came to our mission to talk to all the missionaries. It was absolutely awesome, he is such an inspired man, and really opened our eyes to a lot of things that we need to do better in our teaching as missionaries and how we can become better missionaries. He talked a lot about a lot of different things. He talked about procreation and married life a lot (surprisingly), he talked about having charity, love and forgiveness for our companions, he talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how it helps our investigators, and just a whole bunch of cool stuff I can’t write down. One thing that he said that really got me thinking was that he said “Para Dios, todos son amados, pero pocos son dignos de confianza.” Or to say, for god, everyone is loved, but few are trustworthy. It’s like that saying where many are called, but few are chosen. That got me thinking a lot, God loves everyone of us, but only a few amount of people are worthy of his trust, trustworthy with the restored gospel, trustworthy of his priesthood, and trustworthy of the job to preach the gospel to all the world. I had to asks myself, yes I am loved by God, but do I have his trust? In all my time here in the office I have gone through many struggles, and at times I have wondered why I was put in the office. It just got me thinking about that and how much responsibility the lord has given me with the finances of the mission and everything and how god trusted me with that. It something I can’t really explain well through email, but it really helped open my eyes a bit more to my purpose here in the mission. It was just an awesome conference, as well as a bit stressful because I was in charge of making sure the building was clean and ready as well as getting all the food ready without actually leaving the conference because President Amado had clearly said he didn’t want anyone leaving in the middle of the conference. So that was quite fun planning and going a little crazy over getting everything ready, but in the end President Ruiz said we did do a good job.

The other thing that happened as well was that the CIO of the church came down to the office to talk to us. It just so happens that the CIO of the church is also the stake president of Elder Pulsipher here in the office. So he was here this past week to talk about the IMOS system we use and to talk with Elder Pulsipher because he was here in Guatemala haha. It was pretty awesome because I talked with him for a little bit about the system we use and gave suggestions of how they could improve it a little bit, and he totally offered me an internship for when I get back from the mission. He said that when I get back to BYU, and if I would be interested in working for him as an intern I just need to give him a call and he will hook me up! So that was pretty awesome, and he was the one who sent you the text message mom just so you know.

Oh and to wrap up the crazy week, yesterday, the sister missionary who I knew from back at BYU got super sick and we had to drive up to Xela to take her to the hospital yesterday at 5:30 in the morning, and so while all that was happening, president gave us permission to go to the Temple, and they had the new video in Spanish! All I have to say is that it was totally awesome, and I can’t wait to go back again! So that was really cool as well as the fact that Xela is actually pretty chilly and it was nice to escape the heat for a day, and the sister missionary didn’t die so we were all good with that as well. But overall it was just a crazy week of driving all over the place and being stressed out making sure that the conference with President Amado went well.

As far as thanksgiving goes, I hope you all have a good one, and that you eat a ton of Pumpkin pie for me because we probably will not be doing a whole lot for it here. Changes are this week, and I'm pretty sure my replacement is coming in the office so I’ll let you know how that all goes. I love you all so much, and let me know how all the Dia de Gracias festivities go!

Love,

Elder Henderson