Come over and pray for our fridge!

Date:  September 15, 2014
Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Jara

No sickness this week, although I have some sort of rash on my arm that has been annoyingly itch.  I've been applying a cream to it and covering it with a band-aid so I have less of an urge to itch it, it does help.

Our week pretty much started with interviews with President Curtiss and his wife, they were of course concerned about my health.  There is a sickness that you can get from mosquitoes that is not that good to get, but I didn't have it so I am good!

Sister Curtiss gave me a talk that I have just loved.  It is about submitting your own will to the will of the Father.  I've read it several times and have several annotations on it as well.

Moving onto Thursday we visited San Vicente, which is an hour ride in a truck up the mountain.  In San Vicente you can see a lot.  We visited with the family up there that were investigators at one point, but the father decided that his family won't get baptized.  We just visited to see how they are doing and only found one member of the family.  After that we went on an adventure to find a couple new people and also to find a waterfall.  We found the waterfall and it was an amazing time, the hike back up the trail wasn't as fun, but that is what we do here, we hike.

I then went on divisions with Elder Jesus, (Yes, his name) they didn't last very long.  I had to teach a lesson all by myself in Kekchi, because Elder Jesus is still new and doesn't know that much of the language, but he is progressing and learning it quickly.

The title of today's e-mail comes from a kid named Mapo who is our neighbor.  They bought a refrigerator for their house, so they invited us over to pray for it.  I told him we don't do that, he said to come over anyway.  We did and their was a pastor from another church there also.  The family aren't all members, just Mach, there were also several other people who I didn't really recognize.  They prayed quite loudly to God to give thanks and to bless the house and fridge and such.  I always leave these experiences feeling indifferent, they have the right spirit and devotion, it's just put in the wrong way, in the wrong direction.  All of us can learn a thing or two about giving thanks more for the things we have and acquire, but it just doesn't sit right to me to do it in a way that is so loud and nonspiritual.  When you give thanks to God don't you want it to be respectful and peaceful?

No mail this week.  For those who mail me physical letters often and get discouraged that I don't get mail every week, don't be.  It is only that way because of the mission.  We only get mail once or twice a month.  Typically the mail sits and waits in the office until someone comes out our way.  I love every letter that I receive, so keep writing.

Despite today being the independence day of our lovely country of Guatemala, I've only seen a little bit of festivities.  Luckily it didn't impede my ability to e-mail or other things.  I would think we would be encouraged to stay aloof of rowdiness.

Thank you all for reading!  Your support!  Love!  ETC!

Elder Jered Lamont North

Sick....Rest....and rice.

Date:  September 8, 2014
Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Jara
Week 38

So this week started with me and Elder Jara doing some service in the rice fields for the Pop Yaxcal family.  That means I figured out the secret of the rice, how it goes from the green plants to the grains of white rice that appear on the table and such.  So the green plants grow and then have seperate stalks that grow that hold the rice.  They look much like a wheat plant then.  You cut the whole thing down and then you seperate the rice from the stalk by pounding them against a wooden board into a make shift holder thingy...(look at pictures)  This work was really hard, I didn't bring enough water...so I ended up stopping earlier than the others because I was starting to get a little dizzy.

Then the rest of the week happened.  Wednesday we had zone meeting, which means mail!  I got a big one from Karoline and the kids, on from mom, one from Julie, another from Grandparents North (Happy Grandparents day by the way), and two from Grandma Mary.  AWESOME!

For the meeting we talked about Chapter 2 of Preach My Gospel, which is about styding more effectively.  Something I studied when I was back in La Tinta and I realzied that my study time was too disorginzed, now it is bwetter.  I'll study a topic for an hour, (or more if I had time) and shared my experiences in La Tinta in focusing my studies on themes more to be able to orginize my study.

Thursday was a normal day, we got visits in and such, we taught some new people actually.  Hopefully we can get them to start progressing well.  They are promising though, I love them already.

Friday through Sunday...Sick, it started Friday morning, or even Thursday night...Headache, fever, aches in the wrists and elbows and not being able to eat.  Not wanting to eat.  Saturday night I called the missionary nurse to say that I've been sick for a couple of days, I don't' call on the first day, because usually I only get sick for one day and then I'm back up on my feet.  Amazingly I got a call from Sister Curtiss and Presidente Curtiss to see how I was doing.  That was quite unexpected and I thought it was awesome.  My fever broke Saturday night returning me from a hot 101.5 to normal in about thirty minutes form when I actually called the nurse.  Sunday I did feel better, except for the headache, that went away as the day wore on and we were able to visit some member and do some things.  I'm good now and ready to go for another week.

Thank you all, I love you!
Elder North

Elder North's birthday is October 11th so if you would like to send him a card or anything I would do it soon as mail takes awhile to get there.  He would love to hear from you.  If you want to include something stamps are always needed and easy to put in the envelope without costing too much extra.
Elder Jered North
Guatemala Cobán Mission
Apartado Postal #34
3ra Calle 2-02, Zona 3
Cobán AV 16001
Guatemala, Central America

Divisions with Elder Champagne and balloon assassin.

With a duck

Date:  September 1, 2014

Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Jara

Week 37 in the mish

The highlight of this week was my divisions, or exchanges as other missionaries call it outside of our mission, with Elder Champagne in Teleman. Elder Champagne is my Zone leader and an awesome missionary and knows a lot of Kekchi, he`s confident with the language and talking to people in it, where as I`m still in the habit of second guessing myself, but my two days with Elder Champagne helped me with that and I saw an improvement in myself as I taught the next day in Kanlun.

We had a great busy time, more lessons than we have on a normal day in Kanlun, my shirt got dirty the first day and a member gave me a clean one, a CTR clothing shirt that was exactly my size, it was incredible, and another highlight of the week, I learned that my Zone leaders accidentally held a package from me, they didn`t realize it was for me and I found it with other packages for others in our Zone.

The package was from my Mom, with lots of pictures from summer vacation back home, (including one of Mikel that is now one of my favorites, gotta get those fresh baked buns) a journal, and balloons for some reason. I`ve mostly been using those to pop and scare people.
As a missionary mom you want to send something to your missionary for fun or extra but you don't want it to take up a lot of room and to Guatemala it can't weigh a lot because it is already expensive to ship there so I went with balloons.

Coins for eyes

I now have two new journals, one sent from Grandma Pam, and one from Mom, the one from Grandma Pam had the picture of Jesus I expected to be on it, but it was shinier. The one from Mom had a picture of Jesus overlooking Jerusalem I believe. Which one is better? Not sure, they`re both better than I actually first imagined, and now I don`t have to bother someone to ship me a new journal until I fill up these two, I expect that to happen in a year, six months for each journal. What wonderful family I have.

So thankful for Grandma Pam sending him a package.  Mine took longer and he would have run out of space so I am very happy he now has two and should be set for awhile.

So, a little more about my divisions, Teleman is a great place, it sits on the mountains so to get to places is a bit of a hike sometimes, but there are lots of stairs, concrete stairs that go everywhere, something I havn`t seen anywhere else here.

I learned some new words in Kekchi, one of which is Moqx, which means popcorn. We asked some people because we like verifying new words we find in our dictionary with actual people, I don`t trust dictionaries like that.

Some ties I have picked up

We went to an area where missionaries had not gone for about a year, or more, so it was a completely new experience to kind of `open up` a new area, the people said they hadn`t seen missionaries before, that was certainly new, we found some potential investigators, one guy we found that`s not a potential was devout Catholic, he even did the cross thingy, the first time I`ve ever seen anyone do that here.

Now I`ve walked across the valley about 2 times, now the valley isn`t as large as the Salt Lake Valley, but it`s still pretty big, and I`ve gone from the North mountains to the South by foot, we do some walking sometimes. Good times to just talk to your companion, unless you`re hiking, then there`s not talking, just focusing on hiking.

Returning back to Kanlun was good, for one I got to shower and shave again after two days, the Teleman house didn`t have water while I was there and I left my razor back home, I don`t like carrying a lot of stuff when I go on divisions. So coming back home and cleaning up was really nice.

After two days of no shaving.

While I was gone Elder Jara and Elder Pearson contacted some people and we visited them, we could have some potential baptismal dates. We talked to a man named Carlos about eternal families, it seemed to catch his attention.

Church though was a little disappointing, 25 in attendance, we usually get around 45 or 50, and none of our investigators came, everyone was drawn away by a local soccer match I believe, it made us sad, but I got to build up my recent convert Mach and talk to him, he`s doing just great!

That was pretty much my week, no other mail besides the package I found in Teleman, but I expect to be getting mail this next week as it`s the start of a new month.

Keep up the support, stay caught up with school and GO GETCHA SOME!

Elder Jered North

A map to kinda of show the Polochic Valley

Elder North LOVES mail so write him today!

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.

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.

Children yelling through the window. Ice cream they say.

Date:  August 25, 2014
Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Jara

About the title, so Elder Jara took it upon himself to do something kindly for our neighbors, after last week where he chisled all of the ice out of our little freezer he took some Helados: translated to Ice cream from Spanish, although they`re just flavored ice, more like ice than ice cream, but anything frozen and sweet is ice cream.  So he helped our neighbors freeze some, they sell them and often they come to the fence and start yelling for Elder Jara, not for me like I said last week I believe... Or I just wrote it in my journal, either way, they don`t bother me as much as they do Elder Jara, but they feed us some food sometimes so it`s actually not a bad deal.

I got letters this week, ten in total, Elder Champagne, my Zone leader handed them all to me with a rubber band holding them all together, so I havn`t looked to see exactly who all of them are from, I know most of them though. I got.

Two from Grandma Mary,

One from Mom,

One from Amy

One from the Holden's, funny, they sent me an email today saying they sent it, well I got it!

Three from Sister Barnson, always exciting

and two dear Elders with the name of Laura North as the sender, but some times Dear Elder does weird things and puts multiple letters in one.

Elder Jara teaching the children at church.

My main story of the week is about the children of Kanlun, I feel like they`re actually starting to look up to me more and actually listening more to what I say, I try to help them pay attention in classes at church, but they get distracted really, really easily, for us, the Kekchi people are not known for their attention span. Elder Jara likes saying that they have less attention span than normal people, not that that`s bad, it`s just them, so you`re forced as a missionary to find ways to keep them engaged at all time.

We had a new investigator and he came to church this week! Sacrament meeting this week was also only 40 minutes long, I`m not really sure why, so Elder Jara`s class was longer than usual, he still did awesome as he always does, that comes with 23 three months of missionary work I guess. I`m barely cresting up to 9 months.  He teaches the youth, which means, all the youth that are older than 2 years old and are younger than 18. I don`t teach because I`m not really assigned to, yet.

Today I started out feeling a little depressed, I pushed through it saying to myself that it`s nothing, and then a little later found out that I was hungry not depressed. So if you feel sad, go eat something, maybe ice cream or something, I find it to make me feel a little extra happy. That is if I can find a good ice cream.

I thought of some foods I miss, and I found one that I really, really miss, Some good Sharp Cheddar cheese, I think it`s known that I like cheeses, and there`s not many here. So one thing I miss a lot is cheddar.

Scripture of the week: 2 Nephi 1:12  Why? Lehi advises us to be men.

I love you all, thank you for all the letters! I was really surprised to get them today. Always a good surprise.

Sincerely,

Elder Jered North

Adventures continues

Date:  August 18, 2014 

Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Jara

Not too much luck this week in the finding people to teach department, but we did find other things, like a small waterfall while we went on an adventure. This adventure started because we didn`t have anything to do, and if you don`t have anything to do you get bored, and if you get bored you go exploring mountains. We didn`t have anything to do because people weren`t home or they were busy. Off exploring we go for about an hour, and who knows, we might come across a house with people inside to talk to, you never know, the people kind of set up houses where ever they please.

As I said before we didn`t really have much luck finding new people this week, but we do still have possibilities, we did then have the chance to help the members a little bit more, teaching them more lessons and stuff, and getting to eat some tortillas in exchange.

No letters this week, but changes were this week, I`m staying where I am now with my companion Elder Jara. This means that I will be killing him, which means a couple things, I`ll definitely be getting a new companion next change and I`ll get ties past down to me, we love our ties here in the Polochic, I bought a couple today and they are quite good.

That`s it for me this week, a little boring maybe, but sometimes weeks are not too exciting here.

I love you all,

Elder Jered Lamont North

Ain`t nothin` like a Kekchi party

Date:  August 11, 2014

Area:  Canlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Jara

Week 34

I`ll start this weeks letter with why the title of this week is what it is. So our neighbors, the family Pop Yaxcal had their little girl and another family member having a birthday close together, so we thought it would be awesome to share in helping with the party, our part was to buy a cake, it didn`t really cost that much. So, in a Kekchi party, it`s not really that extravagant, you go and you eat food and then say congratulations and go home and that`s pretty much it. What you eat is a dish called Caldo, it`s a more or less a chicken soup of sorts and it`s pretty good.

We enjoyed our time with food, cake and such, but then after it turned out that something or other was wrong with either the Caldo, or the amount of Caldo that I ate and I ended up being sick the next day, (Sunday) in which I had my second sick day of my mission, so we went to church and I slept the day away, but today I feel good.

In other news, I did get mail this week, many letters, one from Mom, Karoline, Jessy, Uncle Dan, and Uncle Jim. Three From Grandma Mary, and a little package from Grandma Pam that contained a beautiful journal to continue my daily writings. So.... If my Mom sent me one as well I will be quite grateful because I will need it in the future. With all these letters I realized that my audience is a little bit bigger than I actually thought. That`s pretty awesome though. Thanks for all your support guys.

A bit of news about the work right now, it`s a bit slow going, we asked a few people for baptism this week, but they didn`t accept and that was kind of a bummer, but we have some new people and some potential new people that may be able to progress, so our focus this week is adding new investigators to our teachings.

A new thing that we`ve been doing is Elder Jara and I are doing a class for the youth every Tuesday and Saturday, they get to play soccer afterward so they really enjoy it, we`re also shifting some more of our focus onto the members.

Peanut butter is something you can get in Teleman actually, so we get some great peanut butter, and to answer a question from Uncle Dan, I think something that I miss the most foodwise is beef actually, there`s some we can eat here, but the majority of the meat we have is chicken, lots of chicken.

We did a lot of walking this week and my legs got tired and I got a little sunburned again, which actually does not happen a lot, but it was good and we hope for a better week. We`re going to go on divisions this next week, I`m going to go with Elder Aguero, my father in the mission, it`s also his last week in the mission, so it`ll pretty much be my last time seeing him.

I love you all.

Elder Jered Lamont North,

Laj Saqi Noq`

Mud Boots

Date:  August 4, 2014

Area:  Canlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Jara

Week 33

This week had some interesting happenings and a few just normal happenings.

This upcoming week we are planning to do some new things, we talked about what things we can change and start doing to try to have more success here in Kanlun, so we`re going to see if they work, because we are ending up into a kind of routine, not only does that get boring, but it may also contribute to less success.

We had a member who saw .... Things in his rice fields, so we helped him through it, he`s a great guy though and he understands that God is on his side, I hear we was a branch president at one point, but we also got to bless one of his trees.  Can you bless a tree? Sure, offer a prayer for it. So we did.

We had a fairly normal week as other things go, I feel I`m getting a little bit more monotonous in my weekly reports so with the start of this next week I`ll also be looking more intently for things I can write, about people, the area and things, so next week should be a lot more interesting.

No mail this week, Zone meeting is this next week though, so that means mail.

Now about the title, after a meeting in a grove of sorts, we went a different way home that went near the river, the river at this point wasn`t in a time of flooding so it was safe, but I wanted to get closer to the water and that meant going through some mud, I went a little too far and almost got completely stuck, or to say I did get stuck and almost had to leave my boots behind, which would also have made for and uncomfortable walk back home, but with the help of my companion we got out, with boots covered in mud, and that was our greatest adventure this week.

Now to answer a few questions.

The most challenging thing we faced this week was all of the people that we had a date for baptism for decided that they weren`t interested any more, so how we got through that, was to move forward and find others, still no others yet, hence we have prayer and fasting.

Testimony meeting was great, it wasn`t too hard to understand people and we do testimony meeting the same here as in other places

I don't use the water bottle grandma and grandpa sent me too much yet, but I hear that Elder Barker is and I`m sure to use it a lot when I go up to the mountains.

To get our haircut we just go to any hair shop you find on the street.

Parasites are caused by drinking bad water, sometimes you`re given something to drink from investigators and stuff that isn`t actually good... So parasites happen, we do all we can to prevent it. I havn`t had any.

I love you all and I look forward to Thursday when I get letters.

Elder, Jered North

Jered loves to get mail.  It helps him feel not quite so far away from home and he enjoys reading English once and awhile too.  So drop him a line.

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.