Slow Week!

Date:  June 29, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Medina
Week 79

This week was a really slow week, we don´t have a phone so it was really hard to get members to come help us, but that problem is being resolved to today. In addition to the phone dilemma we had two days where things were happening in Carcha, one was a fair, another was the government giving something away so no one was home, but we were able to pass a good time with Presidente Tzi. Still doesn't say what happened to the phone but I think last week he said it was his fault)

We have been able to contact some people and have found Maximo, he´s about ready to be baptized, he´s had missionaries come visit him for quite some while, he is just going to be going to Peten to work for a month and so I think we can get him baptized after that, besides that everyone else is doing pretty fantastic it seemed liked people forgot we had church on Sunday because we had a sudden drop in attendence, but I don´t think it´s anything to worry over.  Our recent converts came and they are doing great!

In other news my younger brother (Mikel) is now Elder North (Went to South Africa, visit his blog at eldermikelnorth.blogspot.com) and my older brother (Bryen) is now back to not being Elder North (as of tomorrow evening the 30th of June), fun and exciting things happening over with the North family.

As for mail, I don´t know how or why, but I havn´t been able to pick up the letters I know are in the office for me, but at the moment I can´t say who they are from.

I love you all,

Give em Heaven,

Elder Norte

Beautiful Guatemala

A house

The miracle of baptism.

Date:  June 22, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Medina
Week 78

The main event of this week was obviously a baptism, but not just any baptism. I got the opportunity this week to see a family get baptized, that means a Mom and a Dad and some children. Not all of the children but some of them, the others will come around in due time.

The fact is that a baptism of a family here is pretty rare, at least, all at once, usually you will find a member married with a non member and you baptize the non member or the Dad isn´t ready yet and you baptize his children, or the most common, the parents are not married yet and they need to do that before they can get baptized but you go ahead and baptize the little ones first.

 

Either way it was a fantastic experience and there is nothing like the feeling of being all dressed in white and doing a sacred ordinance. Nothing like it. That´s a big reason why I miss going to the temple.

So the baptism of Ernesto and his family was indeed planned for the fourth of July but Wednesday we passed by and Ernesto told us that he will be leaving to Peten Monday the next week and was wondering if we could move foreward the baptism so that he could be baptized with his family. He has only gone to church once and we usually want them to go to church three times before getting baptized so we had to ask our leaders and President Curtiss said if he´s ready that he could be baptized, so we got Elder Pineda over and did the interviews and had to plan everything really quickly without a phone because I ruined the chip but we got it done! It was awesome!

 The rest of the week was kind of slow and hectic because we didn´t have as much time as usual because we had to plan the baptism and do the baptism, but it´s all good. I got to meet Mr. Moore. He was a missionary about eighteen years ago and he sent me a letter around Christmas time asking about the mission. It was a good visit.

In other news, my younger brother Mikel will be going on his own mission very soon and that is very exciting. I really look forward
to see pictures from South Africa, all you guys should check it out as well once he gets out to the field and stuff.

No letters this week, probably are some in the office but I visit that after writing so don´t worry.

Love,

Elder Norte

The start of what may be a really long change.

Date: June 15, 2015
Area: Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Medina

This change is going to feel a little longer because I´m in the situation where I have to do completely all the talking in the companionship because my companion doesn´t yet know Qeqchi. It´s still good though because he wants to learn it and he´s doing a really good job with it so far. At the start of the mission I wouldn´t have thought I would be teaching someone Qeqchi from Spanish. I feel like I´m doing a pretty good job at it though.

This week I showed Elder Medina around Tanchi and he got to meat most of the members and they all asked if he knew Qeqchi and I have to say he does not yet and all that fun stuff.
We tried to find some new people but we havn´t found much luck lately, we found some potentials but we´ve only been able to do that one visit so it hasn´t been much.

I did have some very powerful lessons. I shared a very powerful testimony in Qeqchi with Jose because I found out that he has a little problem of not being married yet, so I just told him straight up of what he needs to do and shared Nephi´s story and how Nephi declares that when the Lord gives us a commandment that he will provide a way for us to do it.

 

 

This week in church we had a lot of people. We had to make a new row and I was standing at the entrance of the chapel. We had about ninety people. That probably doesn´t seem like that many people back in the states, but here it was the most I had ever seen in this chapel. Ernesto also finally came and that made me really happy, I was even happier to see him talking to several of the members and getting along with all of them. They´re doing a father´s day activity and he´s invited.

 

This week we have planned to all go and meet José together as a branch, hopefully that makes them less scared of the members and gets them motivated to go to church. Although José´s son Henry is a boss and has gone for three weeks now. They say that they need to arrange something in thier other church and then they´ll go. I´m excited for them.

That´s about it for the week. I did get a letter from Mom and Grandma.

Elder North

Love the world!

The end of another six weeks.

 Date:  June 8, 2015

Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Kortsen

Week 76

This was the last week of changes, we had a pretty normal week, although I guess normal for me is a little less normal for you guys. So this week we had a  Zone meeting and we all go together as a zone and did fun things and learned. I got to do a 24 piece puzzle. They were doing an example and we were the third group. The first two had some sort of problem, like missing a piece or not having the box. So we had the box to help us but I have to say that one does not need the box to help on a puzzle when the pieces are so big, We got that done in less than two minutes.

The next big thing we did this week was go that far away village called Ichab. We armed ourselves with lots of copies of the Book of Mormon and went to the market place. we expected to give away all the books but something we weren´t expecting happened. We had about twenty books and fifty little pamphlets. They were all gone in about ten minutes. We were mobbed and it was rather unorganized but we were able to get a list of names and some phone numbers and a few people stopped to listen to us about what´s actually inside of the Book of Mormon and who Joseph Smith is. It was a really eventful hour.

At church we didn´t have as many investigators as we  thought we would, Ernesto didn´t come again and we´re concerned because if he misses one more time we have to push back his baptismal date and he might not get baptized with the rest of his family, we´ll get him there.

José and his family didn´t go except for little Henry because he is just awesome and more ready to come, it surprises us a little because they live really close to the church and we have many members that walk half an hour. There´s also a member that walks three hours. So no complaining about not having time to go. Try walking one way for three hours plus three hour church plus walking back for three hours on your Sunday. Make plans on Saturday to prepare for Sunday and don´t make excuses! You ALWAYS have time for the Lord.

I´ve been having funny experiences with memory lately, I´ve had to go back and look at my journal to remember something we needed to write down or we had a question if  we actually did something this week. This week went by like lightning and it was incredible.

Now about  changes. I´m staying in Tanchi and I will be companions with Elder Medina from Honduras. Elder Kortsen got a change and he´s actually going to be Zone Leader in Senahu. He´s fairly stressed out because he still has less than a year in his mission, his Spanish is decent but he has pretty much only been speaking Q´eqchi and English for the past twelve weeks and he´s never been a District Leader. He´s just skipping the district leader part and going to Zone Leader. He´s willing to do it but it´s obvious he´s a little stressed about it, who wouldn´t be!

Well, That´s it for now. I love you all.

Elder North

Week of Walk

My old back pack on the left and the new one my parents sent on the right

Date:  June 1, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Kortsen
Week 75

We walked a lot this week, Elder Kortsen even has a pedometer so we actually know how much we walked on Friday, the other days he didn´t have it with him, but Friday was the day that we walked the most.

So the week started off pretty normally, the big highlights of the week are that we have a really cool family that are progressing really well. So those kids that we found last week while exploring, we got to meet thier parents and they are really receptive. The mother, Matilde went to church yesterday although her husband, Ernesto, did not because he had some sort of other arrangement, but he´s going next week. We also put a baptismal date with the kids for July 4th. Good date right?

Besides that we´ve been continueing to work with Jose and his family although they are being a little more stubborn about going to church but we were able to get thier kids to go to church as well yesterday so we had quite a bit of investigators yesterday and they seemed to really love it and the kids look like they´re making friends just fine.

We have a guard spider

Friday we walked a whole lot. 14 miles to be exact, and that´s up and down mountains. We were very tired but we found a great place to revisit. We walked that much because we found out that a road in our area makes a large loop and so we walked the whole loop.

We found the village of Ichab where they had no idea what missionaries were and had barely seen white people before. So we blew some minds as they got to experience white people speaking in pretty fluent Q´eqchi´. We got some pretty incredible expressions from passerbys and it was actually quite hilarious. We plan to go back on a market day and pass out cards and copies of the Book of M

A pretty house we saw

ormon to people and it´s just going to be a good contacting day.

Besides those two events nothing much happened besides normal work, walking a little ways and talking to our investigators and visiting some memebers and such, still a really good week and we are excited to move into the next one.

I did get a letter from Mom and Grandma Mary. Thank you both greatly!

some yummy food we made.

Tanchi sign

I love you all,

Elder North