Elder Henderson in Guatemala: ¡FELIZ NAVIDAD!

Familyyyyyyyyyyy,

Whoooooo, I feel really good right now. I really enjoy Christmas time, and although it’s not quite the same being a missionary in Guatemala compared to being home, it’s really an awesome time. We have been doing a lot of Christmas type activities as missionaries as well as humming and singing some Christmas hymns and songs in Spanish and English that have me pretty pumped up.

Dad, I hope you had an awesome birthday and I’m glad that you enjoyed that phone call haha. I just told Elder Pulsipher that it was your birthday and that he should call you, so he did. He is actually pretty excited to meet you on Christmas haha.

Mom, thanks for the emails and updates, I had no idea that the sister missionaries were meeting with Collin and everything, that’s really cool. I hope he has been taking advantage of that to leave with them and go teach lessons and stuff.

Curt and Holly, first off I have to say that you are pretty pilas. The Christmas card looks pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Curt the whole studio idea sounds ridiculously sweet, and if you have that up and running when I’m back in college, I will totally take you up on doing the sound and mixing that would be pretty sweet. Elder Pulsipher and I do videos for the mission; in fact you all can go see them on youtube if you look up the Guatemala Retalhuleu Mision. That’s awesome that everyone is going to be together for Christmas, and it will be awesome to talk to you all!

Well as for me this week has been busy but good like always. The big news is that we had an investigator in church on Sunday! Now it may not sound like much, but after being in this area and working with this ward that has tons of problems, it was really awesome for us. Her name is Gaby and is 24 years old and is a friend of a couple members in the ward. It was just kind of crazy because it was Saturday night and we had spent the whole day trying to find people and contacting and trying to go with members and not having anything when we passed this house and we felt like we should just contact it. So Gaby came out and talked to us, and she said that she didn’t have time to talk with us so we just invited her to church, and surprisingly she said yes just like that! So Sunday morning we went by and she had gotten ready early and we took her to church to come to find out that she was an old friend of a couple members of the ward and so she sat with them and it was perfect because the members talked to her and did everything for us. Afterwards, she said she enjoyed it and we set up to do a family night in the house of one of her member friends. Monday we had the family night with her in the house of her member friend which kind of started off rough because apparently the sister missionaries found out about the family night and showed up with a bunch of random members and neighbors when we had just planned to teach only Gaby, but it all worked out and we ended up getting a couple more references which was yet another miracle. But the best part of everything is that Gaby got up and said the closing prayer for the family night, which never happens in the first lesson with an investigator especially in front of a big group of people, so she is really positive and is continuing to meet with us and I think we could possible baptize her before I leave the office. So that’s our success story of the week.

The rest of the week was pretty good as well, I had the second half of the district meeting capacitacion where we learned out to do better divisions with the missionaries in our district, and how we can be a happy, positive influence on the missionaries in our district. President Ruiz focused a lot on the importance of Preach My Gospel and how we need to implement it in our work and behavior. So this week I have been studying a lot of chapter 6 about the attributes of Christ, and a couple that I focused on this week were patience and diligence. I learned that patience doesn’t mean just waiting or not getting mad at someone or something when its not going your way, and being proactive and trying to help people and solve problems and trusting in the lord that It will all work out. Sometimes here in the office and in the mission with north Americans and Latinos working together there can be some racial drama which we have had to deal with a little here this past week, and I really had to put in practice some patience in regards to the behavior of a fellow missionary and the problems that he was creating that were really just stupid and could be easily avoided, but I had to control myself and not get mad but rather think how I could help him, and how I could understand the problem from his point of view instead of just blowing up in his face like I wanted to, buuuuut poco a poco I am learning how to be a better person haha.

This week I also had a lesson in diligence, because like I have said before, it has been difficult working in my area. In the district leadership training with President Ruiz, he told us that there are not hard areas, but areas of faith. We talked a lot about that and the diligence we need to have in order to develop the faith necessary to work in areas of faith. I feel like I am learning that right now. There have been days this past week where Elder Amundsen and I have been working in our area and all of our appointments have fallen through, all of our backup plans have fallen through and we have contacted for hours on end with no one letting us in their houses and it’s been really tempting to just through in the towel early and go home, but as Elder Pulsipher and I were talking about this week; we can work and work and work and maybe we don’t see any results, but at least we worked. We can feel satisfied that we did our part that the lord has asked us to do to go and preach the gospel to all people, and as long as we have born testimony, it doesn’t matter if the people reject us. We cant control other people, but we can control ourselves and our own actions. So that is what I have been learning recently about diligence.

Oh, and i almost forgot to tell you about an activity that the zone of missionaries here in retalhuleu did and we helped out in. On wednesday they went to the central park here in reu, and set up a whole christmas chior where they sung christmas songs and everything in front of all the people in the central park. it was really cool and there were aton of people there listening and we helped out by contacting people and handing out pamphlets and everything.

As for talking on Christmas, we will be able to use skype, and I think I will be able to skype you all at like 11 in the morning or around midday, but I will be able to confirm later.

Oh and I also got the Christmas package! Thanks so much! I still have not opened it because I am going to wait till Christmas day, but I’m pretty stoked about it!

I love you all so much, and I´ll talk to you all Wednesday!

Feliz Navidad!

Elder Henderson

Oh and here are some pictures we took when we were at the temple in Xela last week!... and the christmas tree we have in the office haha