Divisions with Elder Champagne and balloon assassin.

With a duck

Date:  September 1, 2014

Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Jara

Week 37 in the mish

The highlight of this week was my divisions, or exchanges as other missionaries call it outside of our mission, with Elder Champagne in Teleman. Elder Champagne is my Zone leader and an awesome missionary and knows a lot of Kekchi, he`s confident with the language and talking to people in it, where as I`m still in the habit of second guessing myself, but my two days with Elder Champagne helped me with that and I saw an improvement in myself as I taught the next day in Kanlun.

We had a great busy time, more lessons than we have on a normal day in Kanlun, my shirt got dirty the first day and a member gave me a clean one, a CTR clothing shirt that was exactly my size, it was incredible, and another highlight of the week, I learned that my Zone leaders accidentally held a package from me, they didn`t realize it was for me and I found it with other packages for others in our Zone.

The package was from my Mom, with lots of pictures from summer vacation back home, (including one of Mikel that is now one of my favorites, gotta get those fresh baked buns) a journal, and balloons for some reason. I`ve mostly been using those to pop and scare people.
As a missionary mom you want to send something to your missionary for fun or extra but you don't want it to take up a lot of room and to Guatemala it can't weigh a lot because it is already expensive to ship there so I went with balloons.

Coins for eyes

I now have two new journals, one sent from Grandma Pam, and one from Mom, the one from Grandma Pam had the picture of Jesus I expected to be on it, but it was shinier. The one from Mom had a picture of Jesus overlooking Jerusalem I believe. Which one is better? Not sure, they`re both better than I actually first imagined, and now I don`t have to bother someone to ship me a new journal until I fill up these two, I expect that to happen in a year, six months for each journal. What wonderful family I have.

So thankful for Grandma Pam sending him a package.  Mine took longer and he would have run out of space so I am very happy he now has two and should be set for awhile.

So, a little more about my divisions, Teleman is a great place, it sits on the mountains so to get to places is a bit of a hike sometimes, but there are lots of stairs, concrete stairs that go everywhere, something I havn`t seen anywhere else here.

I learned some new words in Kekchi, one of which is Moqx, which means popcorn. We asked some people because we like verifying new words we find in our dictionary with actual people, I don`t trust dictionaries like that.

Some ties I have picked up

We went to an area where missionaries had not gone for about a year, or more, so it was a completely new experience to kind of `open up` a new area, the people said they hadn`t seen missionaries before, that was certainly new, we found some potential investigators, one guy we found that`s not a potential was devout Catholic, he even did the cross thingy, the first time I`ve ever seen anyone do that here.

Now I`ve walked across the valley about 2 times, now the valley isn`t as large as the Salt Lake Valley, but it`s still pretty big, and I`ve gone from the North mountains to the South by foot, we do some walking sometimes. Good times to just talk to your companion, unless you`re hiking, then there`s not talking, just focusing on hiking.

Returning back to Kanlun was good, for one I got to shower and shave again after two days, the Teleman house didn`t have water while I was there and I left my razor back home, I don`t like carrying a lot of stuff when I go on divisions. So coming back home and cleaning up was really nice.

After two days of no shaving.

While I was gone Elder Jara and Elder Pearson contacted some people and we visited them, we could have some potential baptismal dates. We talked to a man named Carlos about eternal families, it seemed to catch his attention.

Church though was a little disappointing, 25 in attendance, we usually get around 45 or 50, and none of our investigators came, everyone was drawn away by a local soccer match I believe, it made us sad, but I got to build up my recent convert Mach and talk to him, he`s doing just great!

That was pretty much my week, no other mail besides the package I found in Teleman, but I expect to be getting mail this next week as it`s the start of a new month.

Keep up the support, stay caught up with school and GO GETCHA SOME!

Elder Jered North

A map to kinda of show the Polochic Valley

Elder North LOVES mail so write him today!

Please do not use nick names on letters or packages. They have to go to the mission home and then be forwarded on. If you have a nick name on the letter it may never make it to him. THANKS

Send mail to:

Elder Jered North
Guatemala Cobán Mission
Apartado Postal #34
3ra Calle 2-02, Zona 3
Cobán AV 16001
Guatemala, Central America

It costs $1.15 to mail a letter to him. You can use regular envelops and stamps just make sure they equal $1.15. If it weights more than a regular letter you should take it to the post office to have it weighed.

OR

Use Dear Elder (www.dearelder.com)

its Free to my mission. Just got to

dearelder.com, create an account

and it will track the letters you send

so you can go back and view them.

On the drop down menu just put in

Guatemala Cobán Mission and then

address it to Elder Jered North.

They get mailed out once a week.

This will be the best way to contact

me since I don't have that much

time on e-mail each week.