Missionary week

Date:August 31, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Torres  
Week 88

This week ended up being the week of visiting a whole lot of members! Which is just as much a part of missionary work as finding new people to teach and bring to the church, we are here to invite ALL to come to Christ, not just those that don´t know about the gospel but those that do know and are having a bit of trouble staying on, we´re here to help all those stay fast to the iron rod.

As for the title this past week we had the missionaries come to Tanchi. Not us, we´ve been here, but the Catholic missionaries. The Catholic missionaries come for a week and there are a lot of them, we actually didn´t see much and apparently they passed out little invitations the week before and we didn´t get one.  From what the members said they just visited for a little bit and did a prayer and then left, yet we passed some houses which we knew were being visited and they had visits for over an hour. I guess they were here as well to strengthen their members.  We found it a little funny that they were coming only for a week and from distances of about 10 miles from other areas where we come from so far away and we´re here for two years, but hey, everyone has their idea of what missionary work is. So I can´t really say anything about it.  Although I did get kind of annoyed because they had a little local band and during the whole week they would play very loudly late at night and launch rockets and play really loudly at 5 in the morning. I don´t like being woken up before my designated time to get up and I don´t like being forced to stay up late. We don´t even live that close to the Catholic church and it sounded like they were right next to us.  They have their beliefs of what they should do and so I can´t judge them. We believe that it isn't necessary to make a lot of noise in order to communicate with our God and having loud bands playing does not allow the spirit to be present because the fruits of the spirits are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. ´Galations 5:22-23

I know that the spirit is felt the strongest in quite moments of meditation and study and I encourage all to study the scriptures and to meditate about them and to pray about them so you can learn to fell the Holy Spirit in your life because he will help guide you on the path that your heavenly father wants to be on.

Other news, I did not get a change and neither did my companion Elder Torres, so we will both be staying together in Tanchi another six weeks. It´s going to be a good six weeks.

I love you all,

Elder North

P.S. no mail this week

Noche de hermanamiento drinking some corn drink

Rotting mice and words of an Apostle

Date:  August 24, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Torres
Week 87

This week has had some fun events. So, about a couple of weeks ago we were getting really annoyed with the present of some mice, they were making noises and eating our food, you know. Mice stuff. So we decided to get back at the little critters by putting poison out. It worked! They fell for the trap and ate the poison. About a week later an odd smell started arising, I know that smell, I thought to myself, and started looking around. Sure enough we found some rotting mice. Three to be exact. We won the fight yet they were trying to get back at us in a last ditch effort. We won though.

Our other most exciting event of the week was that we got to hear from Elder Russel M Ballard as he visited Honduras and we watched through satellite as he addressed all of the missionaries in Central America. He had some advice on what we can do to help the people as might be expected. He pushed the importance of declaring and sharing the truth of the Restoration and Joseph Smith as the prophet of the Restoration. He also had some advice on marriage, although that was something interesting to hear in a missionary setting. He said something like. ¨I know your not supposed to be thinking about marriage while on your mission, but think about it for a minute.¨ Some good humor from a wonderful servant of God.

For the work this week we got to find some new people and get them going on the wonderful journey of learning the truth, one in mention is Angelina, her husband is working far away which makes it hard to teach him, but we´re able to teach her and her children. They´re doing great, we have only had one lesson with them but I feel like they´re going to progress. We´ll see tomorrow when we really start teaching them. I´m optomistic though. A good attitude is one the keys to conquering the world.... Or your fears. Whichever one you want.

Other things..... Hmmmmm..... Letters, I did get three letters this week. One from Sister Barnson, although she has now returned home and two from Grandma Mary.

I love you all, send me some questions to answer I feel like my weekly report this week was actually really bland.... Sorry about that.

Elder North

jered.north@myldsmail.net

Or write me a real letter

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.

Getting it all together

Date:  August 17, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Torres
Week 86

This week was kind of off kilter, we weren´t having as effective teachings and things seemed to just be off for some reason, but hey, the turning point of the week was when I had divisions with Elder Reyes and my District leader went to Tanchi with Elder Torres.

Working in Chicojl seemed to actually take the stress away from me, we had some really powerful lessons and they were in Spanish! I don´t think I´ve had a Spanish lesson for about 3 months, so that was an interesting experience. I got along really well with Elder Reyes and it was just a fun day inviting people to repent and come unto Christ and when I got back to Tanchi I was ready to go. The end of the week still didn´t go too well because we had one of the various political parties visit the village and when that happens everyone goes and sees them and thus no one is in their houses and Sundays are usually very slow around here anyway, but we were able to make awesome plans for the coming week and we´ve been visiting members a bit more and they seem very happy with us which is good because we all want to be on the some side.

Besides that we found some new people to teach and we hope they will be able to progress. One by the name of Juan, I actually havn´t even met him. Elder Pineda and Elder Torres contacted him. Not I. So, We´ll see what happens when I do meet him. From what Elder Pineda told me when they showed him a picture of Joseph Smith he said, Oh, your god. Obviously not, we do not worship the Prophet Joseph Smith, we worship God and Jesus Christ. So after explaining that and a bit about prophets they left and he invited us back to teach more. I´m excited to meet him.

So, that´s about it, I love you all and I hope your all doing well. Mail I got are from Grandma Mary and Julie.

Love,

Elder North

Mice on the shelves.

Our Zone

Date:  August 10, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Torres
Week 85

So with regards to the email this week we have been having quite the mice problem, during the day you don´t see any of them but at night you can hear them getting into things and running on the roof. We try and slay them whenever we can but we´ve been forced to take some extra measures to protect our foodstuffs from the invading forces. Anything within plastic like bread needs to be placed in more secure areas or they fall prey to the fiends, especially the injured bread, they´re the first to go. Not even the harder spaghetti is safe at times.

So yeah.... That´s happening.

In other news this week we had our branch conference, which is like a ward conference but for branches. We had a great turnout on Sunday with an amazing attendence of 145. Our average is about 80 to 90 people. It was really good.

Throughout the weeks we had some activities, like a afternoon for movies and some games and some other stuff, not all of the activities had really good turnouts and for a few we didn´t go, but the efforts of our visits and the visits of the members seems to have paid off and we had a lot of people for Sunday.

Elder Torres playing with Tanchi children

We also got word of some really good news, it has been approved for the church to build a bigger sacrament room for the church in Tanchi, because it is really small and can really only hold about 70 people. and even that is squezing some people in, the construction should begin next month, but this is really awesome and means that the church is indeed growing quite a bit in Tanchi and I can´t help but feel a little pride as I fell like I have truly helped the branch grow here.

As for the work, same old, lots of walking, we had some days where we didn´t plan that well and had to walk distances a lot longer than usual and we returned home with tired feet, but we had a fun week, and we were able to visit plenty of less actives and members to get them excited about the branch conference where they truly heard some great talks about various simple doctrines.

IN terms of investigators this week. We found a bunch of little kids and they were really excited to sing with us, but it didn´t seem like they were very excited about anything else because I didn´t see any of them at any of the activities or on Sunday... Oh well, we´re going to revisit them this week and hopefully be able to teach their parents more.

Beautiful Mountains

I got a lot of letters this week, two from Mom, one from Julie Barnson, one from Rowan and four from Grandma Mary. I love letters.

That´s about it for this week.

Love you all,

Elder Norte

Elder North loves mail so if you can, write him!

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.

If you´re praying and you know it clap your hands!

Elder North and a big dog named Kaybil

Date:  August 3, 2015

Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Torres

Week:  84

Not much to report this week, we´ve been trying to find some new people and without much success, but we have made plans with the branch and the coming week has a lot of activities and stuff and it´s going to be awesome! Some weeks just have to not be that good. If there isn´t bad how can there be good?

We also had many people not be in their houses when we visited them, Rigoberto was an investigator that we were really excited to meet with again because the first visit with him went by really, really well and now we can´t find him and he won´t answer his phone... This makes for sad Elders.

Carcha

Elder Torres was not in a Kekchi speaking area before, he´s doing great though!

Staying within the funds... It requires eating more simply. Rice, beans, cheap cereal or oatmeal and then buying just for a couple meals. Spaghetti is something I like buying because it´s cheap and 

it´s good and really easy to cook, you just have to find some good sauce.

So, an interesting experience we had this week was while we were contacting, we found a lady, Graciela, and after a short introduction I taught her a bit about what the Book of Mormon is and she invited us to the birthday party of her little three year old Elna.  The ´party´ though felt more like a praying service, it´s part of the custom here to have prayers and stuff like that, but they invited the pastor of another church and he led the evening.

We sat and watched as they sang and prayed, I like watching others do their thing but I also find it sad. Their faith and want to adore God is very remarkable and admirable but the way they do it seems really odd to me and those in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Prayers are louder and with more people and it was the first time I saw someone clap while they prayed. I don´t want to put down the way they believe but I feel sad because I know that it isn´t the correct way.

 

I love these people though and they are filled with love and are very interesting, their faith is great!  They just believe differently than I do.

Spread the love out there.

Elder North