My birthday week with the mice!

Bug home

Date:   October 13, 2014

Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Santisteban

Week 43

 

Yes, I am finally 19 years old, so with my birthday this week, it happened I really didn`t do anything special, but hey, I`m on a mission, we worked and it was great!

We had great attendance this week! Although sacrament meeting is always depressing at the start because almost all the people here are in the terrible habit of being late. `The meeting is at 9:00? Alright, that means I get ready at 9:00 and then go.´ I wouldn´t mind as much if they weren`t missing one of the most important things of all time, the sacrament, important enough that there was a whole entire talk in general conference about it`s importance.

Bugs inside the smiling bug house.

We had several investigators in church, one that has been an investigator for a while and his daughter is on a mission and some of his other children have been baptized, he drinks a lot and it`s absolutely terrible, but hey, we`re doing what we can, and he came to church, I take it as a sign that he`s improving, and I have faith that he can stop drinking and make the right decisions, not for him, but for his family.

Oh how much I`ve seen how a drinking problem can be such a huge problem, you think of drinking back home and it`s like ´that`s an activity that`s done behind closed doors and no one really sees it.´ That`s true, but here there are people passed out on the streets some times at noon and one time I saw a drunk just yelling in the street as cars honked at him for him to get off of said street.

Another bug house

I`ve never been tempted to drink or do any sort of drugs because it just doesn`t make sense, and it`s just not something I`ve even had the desire to try. I read an example once. A father was reading the paper on the couch and his son asks him about alcohol and such and argues that it wouldn`t be that bad to just try it once so he knows, the family works a farm and the father looked at his son and said. `how about you go outside and take some cow manure from the barn and try some of that for dinner.` Obviously the son was disgusted and openly voiced his opinion of it. The father then replies, `But you havn`t tried it have you? It can`t be that bad just to try it once, just to make sure that it`s bad.´

Point of it, we already know that alcohol and drugs are bad for us.

Elder Santisteban with some ward members in the rain.

Anyway, about the mice, we`ve been having mouse problems in our house, one day we return home and I see a mouse run from our room and into the kitchen under a wooden pallette type thing we had in there, so I closed our room door, blocked the bottom so it couldn`t escape that way and started to search for said mouse, and instead of finding just one we found three, I ended the life of one as it hid behind a broken microwave on the floor, I kicked it and dealt fatal damage, the other two were swept outside.

The next day there was a foul smell, upon investigation I found that a mouse had crawled into my fan and since the fan was on and functioning the mouse got hit by a fan blade and died, I took apart the fan and cleaned it thoroughly. This same day we found out that in the bed spring of Elder Santisteban four more mice were living there, we got another bed spring for him that same day and took care of the other.

Beautiful Guatemala

Another adventure, we got a reference from the other mission of a lady, named Ofelia, that has recently moved to our area from the other mission to live with her in laws because her husband died in a motorcycle accident. So we attend a sort of funeral party... I guess. Anyway, a catholic church was doing the music, which was pretty much songs from thier church and praying.... If you could call it praying, it`s more of yelling and screaming to some sort of diety they believe is `God`, but as we read in Mosiah, `How can a man know the master he isn`t serving?´

These people believe they are following God with all their hearts, but they don`t know him and are really just being fooled into following something else. While attending and listening to the music I became doubly grateful for our religion and revelation.
We`ll be working with this family more this week.

Adventures abound here in the Guatemalan mountains.

I love you all, no mail this week.

Elder Jered North

Elder North loves mail so drop him a line or two.

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.