Little Miracles Everywhere

Date:  May 25, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Kortsen
Week 74

This week was all about walking everywhere, preparing for a baptism and little miracles that were just awesome.

So, we walked everywhere because we´re exploring all of our area and finding new people and we even saw a taxi once and that was a really weird sight, as a consequence to walking we have found wonderful views, taken some pretty good pictures and are tired.

We had a baptism Saturday, Wilson, he is 12 years old and he was just really awesome with everything and passed the interview really quickly and he asked me to do the baptism. I had a wonderful experience while the services were going on. We´re not really allowed to go to the temple as Elders because we´re so very far away from one, if one was closer we could probably go. Anyway, I was sitting all in white and I felt like I was in the temple, a very cool feeling. Now how that feels is just calm, warmth and love and cleanliness. imagine those things all together and you get a temple feel.

A couple of the miracles that happened this week, we were out walking and we found two kids that were carrying jugs to go get water from a water hole and we followed them and we told them about the baptism the next day and a little bit about the church without even thinking about it and they ended up coming! They were even earlier than probably everyone else for both the baptism and church! We havn´t had the opportunity to see their family, but we will be going to do that tomorrow.

The next miracle, we have a guy named Manuel, he needs to get a divorce and then get married to the woman that he is currently living with and so we were pushing him and reminding him that he needed to get it done. It turns out that one time we must have said something wrong and offended him and he told us not to come back.

We didn´t quite know what to do, so we decide that we would just apologize and see where it goes from there, so we go to his house and he´s talking with someone and they invite us into thier home while Manuel finishes his business with the lady outside. Once he comes in he apologizes to us first and then we´re all apologizing and we´re all happy again. We all felt pretty horrible about what happened and now we know that Manuel and his family have a very strong testimony.

Now, the people here are a little different and are prone to holding grudges for a very, VERY long time. So it was a miracle and help from God that we all felt bad and all apologized and got it all worked out.

I love you guys and keep the letters coming as well, I got a letter from Mom (technically from the family about the olive tree) , grandma and the Holden family. I did get my new backpack today and that was really exciting.

Thank you all for supporting me,

Elder Jered North

Laj Saqi Noq´

How people carry things

Around the town

Another week, and we´re already halfway through, and a Catholic meeting.

Date:  May 18, 2015
Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Kortsen
Week 73

It´s actually quite surprising that I´m already halfway through this change, it´s already been three weeks since I entered into Tanchi, time has been flying by and it has been a fun time with Elder Kortsen. We speak Spanish outside of the house when we´re not speaking Q´eqchi´ and we speak English in the house and we only study Q´eqchi´ during study time. It´s all working out.

So this week we had a great Zone meeting where we learned more from the teaching of Elder Alonso, the focus of the time was that we need to have a larger focus on finding those that are ready and thus we need to find as many new investigators as possible in order to do such a thing. So we´ve been trying to do that and we have found a couple of new people.

Bacon and Nutella sandwich

We found José and his family recently, I don´t quite remember if we actually found them last week, but I´m sure that this is the first time we tried to get them to church, they didn´t go to church though, and that was because José had to go to his sister´s house because she called him up due to being sick and so he wasn´t able to go and his wife didn´t want to go without him which was a little sad.

I had a talk in church yesterday, I talked about how we need to serve others and one of the best ways we can do that is by sharing the gospel with the people around us and moving foreward the work of God, because when we are working with God in His work we get to feel his love not only for us but for every single one of his children. Missionaries should know this quite well.

Sunday we also had an interesting experience with Catholics. So we were visiting the hous of  Elias and they have a statue of Christ in a case and other statues of the virgin Mary. We went over and found benches up and I asked what the benches were for but no one would answer me, a few moments later we found out why as a lot of kids came in. It was a Catholic Sunday school class and we decided it might be good to leave but Elias´ wife told us to sit and she gave us a drink and some bread probably to make us stay.

It was an interesting experience to be sure, it made me question why we don´t use incense, I remember seeing it appear in the Bible but why don´t we use it. Simply because that was part of the law of Moses that was done away with and so it´s not a necessary thing for prayers or worship services and then if you look in Isaiah 1:13 it says that incense is an abomination, but he was speaking to Apostate Israel at the time so it was an abomination because

they were unworthy.

So, we had a fun week, we also did some hiking to farther areas of are area to see what we could find there, good views and some awesome people, it was a little hot and we did get caught in the rain, but we bought some Kawachin capes and that was good.

No mail this week as I know, I havn´t visited the offices yet today. hehe.

May the spirit be with you,

Elder North

Mother's Day

Getting to talk to our boy.

Date:  May 11, 2015
Area: Tanchi, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Kortsen
Week 72

We had a very great week plan but it ended up not being as awesome as we thought it would be because a lot of things seemed to just suck up our time and the week was suddenly gone.

So a bit about my area, I love it, it´s not exactly the huge mountains like in Polochic, but there are mountains and the area is huge, there are a lot of paths that go around and over each little mountain, it´s not too hard to get around and the weather is really good here, I got used to sweating and now i don´t have to do that.

I have been getting nasty bug bites, I at first thought it was from mosquitos and then later figured out that it was probably from fleas in my bed because mosquito bites are different, so I changed my sheets and washed my blankets and that seems to have made a difference.

We did have a fun adventure with a spider, it was above my bed on the wall, a large one, so Elder Kortsen and I armed ourselves with brooms and did a countdown and attacked the beast....... We missed..... I skimmed it´s legs and so it fell from the wall down towards my bed and then it disappeared.... I slept a little less comfortably that night as thoughts of a vengeful spider crawled in my thoughts. The spider has not been seen since.

We had a wonderful conference with Elder Alonso from the first quorum of the seventy on Friday, he is a very powerful speaker and very intelligent and thanks to his counsel we have made some changes over the past week and feel like it is making an impact. One of the changes is being more confident, why shouldn´t we be? We are servants and represetitives of the living God!

I got to  talk to my family and the soon to be added sister Arley yesterday, those calls never seem to be long enough yet I know I´ll have hours to talk to them after the mission, this was also my last call home while in the mission field.

Things are picking up and slowing down in one way or another in Tanchi, but we have investigators coming to church that we didn´t think would come and that made us really happy. Now to find more people to come as well.

I love you all, thanks for the smiles, even if I can´t see them.

Elder Norte

Tanchi adventures

Date:  May 4, 2015

Area:  Tanchi, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Kortsen from Arizona 

Week 71

Week one in Tanchi has been an awesome experience, my language skills are just way better than they were before and I feel like I am talking to the people really well in Qeqchi and the occasional Spanish.

Elder Kortsen is a great companion, a lot easier to make connections when you come from pretty much the same life style and speak in English, it´s actually kind of weird to be speaking in English but it´s been a lot fun working with Elder Kortsen.

The work in Tanchi is progressing really well, we have a couple people getting ready to get baptized.

I also had the fun opportunity to go on divisions with the assistants, it turned out to be rather fun, Elder Orosco is a great guy and we have similar interests, unfortunately we didn´t get to do a lesson that day and we pretty much contacted the whole day and getting me out of my comfort zone and I even did get better at it within the day.

The week went by really quickly because of the changes and because of the division with the assistants. I had about two days in the area and they both went really well, we found some new investigators that look like they are going to really progress. I huge family, the Dad seems kind of set in his ways but the children are very receptive, so maybe we baptise them first and then the parents.

All the members seem to love me hear and they seem rather impressed with my ability with their language and that´s a good thing.

I got a whole bunch of letters today, one from Mom, Jessy and Sister Barnson, two from Grandma Mary and another from Grandma North. I think I´m forgetting one or two but it was awesome to get today. Keep them coming and for the time they actually get to me faster because I´m not far away from Coban, I´ll be trying to return letters as well.

I love you all,

Elder Norte