I understand why my area has rock in it´s name. (pek = rock)

Date:   November 24, 2014
Area:  Korral Pek
Companion:  Elder Vargus

About the title of this weeks email, I fell down on Monday while going back home, taking the hour hike from Chulac after the hour and a half bus ride from El Estor. Anyway, I fell down and I scratched my arm, we were halfway home so I walked some 25 minutes before I could really get my first aid kit onto the scratch, but some alcohol and cleaning it up and it was all good, but falling down isn´t fun.

We had what I would say is a pretty standard week, although something did happen that was different, we come home from P-day and then Tuesday we go to District meeting in Chulac, walking there one hour and then after walking back and then we stay in our area until the next P-day.

So we´re really working with our fantastic investigator Emilio, he is progressing well, although his drinking problem may be a bit closer to the surface than I first thought, but he´s a fighter and he believes that this church is true, we havn´t taught him all the lessons yet, we only are missing one of the lessons, which is called lesson 5, and in other missions you wouldn´t teach that lesson before baptism, but here we do teach it before and then after of course. He came to church and also came to our special activity on Saturday.

So on Saturday, my previously mentioned special activity, was a baptism! Now we were going to have four children of the ward be baptized, but as it turns out two of them were older than nine years old which means they need to be interviewed by our district leader and they count as our converts. The baptism was a little bit unorganized, but it all went well, and as I said Emilio was there!

We havn´t found many other people to teach, but we are looking, it´s really fun to find someone that is really ready to receive us and the message we bring, although they get taught and then they get baptized so quickly that we need to find another, but we´re working hard to get there.

That´s about it for this week.

How do the people treat you?  Generally the people call me angry because I´m not that talkative, it is not in a mean way and with the people here it doesn´t really matter what you say, but you have to say something, unless you don´t know the language, then you can´t really do anything, and then you probably don´t know if they´re calling you an angry person.

With no power do you still use your ipod and speaker?

I use my Ipod and speaker and my rain coat, sometimes I take it with me and it doesn´t rain.

Our house uses solar panels so we have power at night and enough to charge our items a couple times a week and have light during the dark hours.

Where do you do your shopping?  We have a few stores, they sell the usual, beans, rice, noodles, sardines, all good.

Where do the kids go to school?  There´s a school, they´re in summer break right now and won´t be going to school until January I believe.

No  mail this week, but looking forward to when I do get mail.

Love you all,

Elder Jered North

He loves to get mail so take a minute and write him.  It costs $1.15 to send a letter to Guatemala.

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

Badger head.

Date:  November 17, 2014
Area:  Korral Pek, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Vargus

I´m just going to go right into the second best part of our week, which is what the title is all about, a badger head, really more than just the head, but I had the wonderful opportunity to eat a badger head this week, was a good? Yes, what did it taste like? Badger. Who found it and fed it to us? Some member that hunted it with his dog. I got some pretty good pictures of it as well, they actually caught two. I hear there are also armadillos up here and they eat those as well, I need to try that.  Now there´s also another question that you all might or might not be asking. If you at the head, does that include the brain? Yes, the brain was kind of a paste, interesting to eat, but not bad.

This week actually went by really quickly, things just move along some times, we were able to eat a few times with members, they feed us caldo, a soup with chicken in it. We were invited to eat because the people here are sowing and planting their fields, so when they do that they celebrate when they finish, and they celebrate with food. Good plan that.

The best thing that happened this week was that we found a man named Emilio, he is what we would call a golden investigator, he is ready and willing to accept the gospel freely and all we have to do is guide him along the right path and just tell him what he needs to do. He actually used to drink about a year ago, but right now no, he´s realized that it wasn´t that good to drink, and not only that, it costs to drink. The best thing about it, was that we found him on Wednesday, I fasted that day, coincidence? No, those don´t exist. We put a baptismal date for the 6th of December, and we are very excited for it.

No mail this week, but that´s because we´re in the middle of the month.

I love you all, thanks for the prayers.

Elder North

He would love to hear from you.  If you want him to get something by Christmas you should probably mail it this week.  Thanks for your love and support.

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.

I AM PIG CHASER!

Date:  November 10, 2014

Area:  Korral Pek, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Vargus

Week 47

I AM PIG CHASER! I CHASE, PIG RUN, I CATCH, I WIN! (Spoken like a true cave man!.

So, yes, I chased a pig this week, I actually chase pigs on a general basis because your church yard has a short fence around it, but the pigs like to crawl in through holes or come in when one of the little kids leaves the gate open, so I chase them out. Yesterday I chased and the pig slipped in the mud and missed his exit and I caught him and him up to the sky as he squealled and such, and then I put him down and he bolted out of the church yard. He wasn´t too happy. Pigs are silly creatures.

I got some mail this week, yesterday in fact, we had district conference, it´s like stake confereance except when you´re in branches instead of wards, Presidente Curtiss went and we heard him speak while someone translated for him in Kekchi, his talk was great! He´s been really focusing on concecration for the members and especialy for his missionaries. I got handed mail after the meeting when we had to walk back to our area. 3 letters from Mom, 3 from Grandma Mary, 1 from Tayrn, 1 from Sister Barnson and 1 from Sister Regen and 1 more from Grandma Maxine. Thank you all for the mail! Now if only I was better at replying to all of you.

The investigators we are working on recently are people who have member in thier family, so, part member families, it´s fun to focus on them because we and they can have the support to church, although we had no investigators in church this week because it wasn´t in our area rather, it was a hour hike away or more for others, but we put higher goals for this week and are going to work hard to meet them. The goals seem to high for me, but my district leader, Elder Wilson convinced me to set them higher and have faith. Faith like that is a little difficult for me sometimes because I like thinking more logically, but we´re doing it and putting faith that we´ll be helped to meet these higher goals.

Things are going well here, nice and cool, I´m learning quickly more things in Kekchi with my companion Elder Vargas and it´s just a fun experience, chasing pigs and all that. No one has told me I couldn´t chase the pigs, but I think that if they´re in my yard I can chase them out to my hearts content.

No dates yet for baptisms, but we have a few that we´re preparing for a marriage and a baptism, we hope to be able to put dates this week, and find new people and just work.

The picture from last week of the church was taken from standing in my doorway.  Our house is straight across.  

We go to El Estor for P-days.

Elder Vargas only needed to have a blood test done, but he did some tests previously, something with his vision, I don´t really know the specifics.

We still go to Chulac to sleep in the chapel there on the pews, I need to bring a jacket or something because it gets pretty cold without a blanket.  We go to Chulac to give our numbers because our area has no service, and then it's already night and we sleep there.  We have a solar panel at both our house and the church.  We get some electricity at night if we use it but there is no signal for the phone that we do have.  It will be interesting how Christmas goes down.

I don´t know how you´ll be able to find it on a map, you could look it up in the church website where to the branch of Korral Pek is, that´ll probably be the biggest help, but the area is probably huge.

The people are about the same, just there´s a little less Spanish.

The best thing about the new area is probably the views all the time.

Thank you all for the support and especially the letters.

Remember,

¨Give em´ heaven!¨ - Sister Regen

Love,
Elder Norte

PLEASE write him.  It is getting to that time that if you want him to have anything for Christmas, even just a card that it is time to send it.  If you do send a package that you don't want him to open until Christmas if it happens to get there sooner then I would just wrap the gifts and inside write a note that says wait and open these on Christmas.  Don't put anything on the package saying it is a Christmas gift as theft is a problem.

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.

First week up in the mountains.

Date:  November 3, 2014
Area:  Correl Pek
Companion:  Elder Vargus from Nicaragua
Week 46

I'm now finally in what is called the mountain area of my mission.  I've been waiting for this time for quite some time, and boy is it what I expected!  Nice and cold!  Early spring weather back home, sure beats the blistering heat of the valley, although we're right in the middle of winter right now so it is actually a little bit colder than usual.  We we live in Korral Pek which means corral of rocks.  We have to go to another area on Sunday to sleep so that we can e-mail on Monday's, because the e-mail spot is so far away, but they are saying they don't want us to do that anymore so we might have to find a different way to do things.

Chalac is our district, it is the main area and our area is an hour hike away from it.  Our house is actually a bit nicer than in Canlun, although we have no fridge here.  We have plenty of COLD running water which means cold showers in a cold place.

My companion has 5 months in his mission and he is awesome.  He had his birthday recently and I used the stuff you sent me for my birthday to decorate our room while he was showering.

We do have a laundry lady again, she uses this cool iron to iron our clothes.  She puts hot coals in it to heat it up!

The views are amazing and hiking is not nearly as terrible as it is when you are sweating buckets all the time.  Even when you are not hiking, but now, an hour hike?  NO PROBLEMS!  Another hour to return after a half hour visit?  I'll deal with it.

We've been visiting a lot of members this week and not a lot of the investigators.  Getting to know the area and such.  Saturday was the day of the dead or Saints as they were calling it here.  Every member and their neighbor invited us to eat with them so we were up and out of the hosue form 7 to 6, 11 hours on Saturday visiting people and eating some food hourly.  It was a good day.  We were able to set some pretty great plans for the next week so that we can raise the numbers that were pretty low today.  We are going to work to improve and meet our goals.

One of the best things about my new area, there are pine trees!  I'm living with pine trees again!  Although they are a little different than back home and there's a lot more other plant life to go with it.

Pine trees!!!

Our big adventure this week was going to Coban because Elder Vargas needed to get a test done.  We only had four hours in Coban to do P-day things, in fact I'm there as I right this and we'll be going really soon to get something really good to eat and then go back home.  About 9 hours of travel in total in one day.  It's really not that fun though, hopefully if we can get here with more time then I can do more things, like looking for a certain Kekchi Dictionary that's out there.  O well, we're doing good, we're happy and we're pumped to work.

One final note.  I did get mail this week!  One package from Grandma Pam, THANK YOU, I loved the Pez...sadly they are all gone.  I did share though!

Many other letters saying happy birthday, from the Barnsons, Mom, Steve and Jennifer, Amy and a few others I can't quite remember.  I got them!

I love you all, keep up on being awesome!
Elder Jered Lamont North

Please take the time to write, he would love to hear from you.  It is time to mail Christmas Packages as mail can take a long time.  I would wrap the gifts inside and then write a note telling him not to open until Christmas.  :)  If you can send a card or a gift to his companion that is very nice also.  A lot of the native companions don't get much mail.

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