Another pretty crazy, busy week has come and gone. I can’t believe we are in March now!
Thanks for the updates everyone on how things are going. Sounds like life is pretty crazy for you guys Holly and Curt. Bronco looks so small and cute compared with the boys! I’m glad he is doing better health wise and that everything is going according to plan (Mas o menos). Mom, I’m glad you could go out and help for the week, and im glad everything is still going pretty normally. I just noticed from the picture with the boys that you still have a boot. Are you still having problems with that?
Well this week has been quite… interesting I would assume is the word. So this month of march is our Missionary Month here in the mission, so on Tuesday we had to make the 4 hour trip down from the mountains to Retalhuleu to have our leadership council with president. It was really good and we learned a lot on what we can specifically do for the missionaries in our zone and everything. We planned some activities that we are going to be doing this month. The coolest thing is that our zone of San Marcos was the second highest baptizing zone in our mission during the month of February! Normally the zones in the mountains don’t baptize nearly as much as the zones on the coast because the people tend to be more receptive, but this month we were able to baptize a good amount! I shouldn’t be prideful, but it was pretty awesome to see that our zone did better than zones on the coast that normally baptize more.
Also this week, I went and did divisions in a new part of our zone called Serchil. So what had happened is that Presidente Ruiz closed one of the zones in the mountains, so here in our zone of san Marcos we got 3 new areas with 6 more missionaries. So I went up there for a couple days to get to know the area and everything and oh boy was it a crazy time. So serchil is even more in the mountains than San Marcos, and supposedly it’s at like 8 or 9000 feet above sea level which is part of the highest point in all of Central America. But there isn’t a whole lot out there, just mountains and farms of illegal drugs. Yup, up in the serchil area is where they grow a ton of illegal drugs that get shipped to Mexico and the U.S. like cocaine and stuff, so you will be walking on the road and see a giant field of the plant they use to make cocaine haha oh Guatemala. But so I went up there and worked with the district leader named Elder Alvarez with who we have a lot of problems because he isn’t the most obedient elder and has quite the mouth on him when it comes to bad words in Spanish. So mainly I was trying to gain some confidence with him so that we can work with him better, and it was interesting… but good. Everyone lives super far away up there, we had to walk for an hour and a half just to go visit one of their investigators they have. We also went and visited a less active member that lives on the top of a mountain not even kidding. This less active had a sweet house though on top of this mountain with horses and cows, and we actually gave service and I got to cut up corn husks to feed the cows they had, and I got a picture that I’ll try to send. I’ve also learned how to chop wood here on the mission a lot, and we also got to give service chopping wood for people and also since right now everyone is getting their fields ready to plant corn, we went and helped a member family prepare the earth for planting. I don’t know if there is a verb or that in English but in Spanish its barbachar. Entonces barbachamos una finca! So I felt like I was working on a farm the whole time I was there because we got to do some fun stuff like that and go looking for potatoes in the ground as well. I learned a lot about that kind of stuff, and I never realized how hard it is to look for potatoes in the ground by hand haha.
The elders up there are counselors in the branch presidencies which is a pretty big responsibility, and it was good to help them out a little bit because they have a lot on their plate in addition to missionary work because they have to help run a branch. Overall, everybody is super spread out up there and it takes the elders forever to walk everywhere, and they don’t have a whole lot of investigators, but it is super pretty, and COLD like see your breath cold when you are walking outside.
So divisions where good until, and I came back to my area with Elder Bejar and found out that he had done almost nothing the whole time I was gone. I was not happy about that and how he just wanted to waste time a lot, so that kind of brought us to head and we had an argument/discussion where a lot of things got brought to the surface. I’m glad to say that I was able to hold my temper even though what he was saying was ridiculous like working diligently even though we are tired, and opening our mouths at all times to talk with and contact people is inefficient working and stuff like that. Overall I think it was good because we are on the same page now and we were able to resolve a few of our differences, but sometimes I wish I could just have a companion that really wants to work and be obedient sometimes, but I remember what you’ve all told me during my mission; that only through the tough trials and difficulties can we learn and grow to become better people to deal with the problems of the future. I am just passing through a trial that is going to help me be a better communicator and a person that can work with people better because I realize that is one of my weaknesses that I am improving.
Overall we are good now, but because of what happened, the parents of Romelia weren’t able to come to church even though romelia and victor did. We are going to have to see how we can help them get baptized this month.
Oh and on sort of a side note, the office sent me my plan de relevo and I’m not sure how you say that in English, but my release plan. So in order to fill it out, I have to know if someone is going to come down to get me or not from the mission because that determines if they buy me a plane ticket home or not. So If you guys could just let me know definitively if there are any plans for that because the office wants to know.
Well as always, I love you all, and thanks for your continued support. Hope everything is going well back home!
Con Amor,
Elder Henderson
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