Badger head.

Date:  November 17, 2014
Area:  Korral Pek, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Vargus

I´m just going to go right into the second best part of our week, which is what the title is all about, a badger head, really more than just the head, but I had the wonderful opportunity to eat a badger head this week, was a good? Yes, what did it taste like? Badger. Who found it and fed it to us? Some member that hunted it with his dog. I got some pretty good pictures of it as well, they actually caught two. I hear there are also armadillos up here and they eat those as well, I need to try that.  Now there´s also another question that you all might or might not be asking. If you at the head, does that include the brain? Yes, the brain was kind of a paste, interesting to eat, but not bad.

This week actually went by really quickly, things just move along some times, we were able to eat a few times with members, they feed us caldo, a soup with chicken in it. We were invited to eat because the people here are sowing and planting their fields, so when they do that they celebrate when they finish, and they celebrate with food. Good plan that.

The best thing that happened this week was that we found a man named Emilio, he is what we would call a golden investigator, he is ready and willing to accept the gospel freely and all we have to do is guide him along the right path and just tell him what he needs to do. He actually used to drink about a year ago, but right now no, he´s realized that it wasn´t that good to drink, and not only that, it costs to drink. The best thing about it, was that we found him on Wednesday, I fasted that day, coincidence? No, those don´t exist. We put a baptismal date for the 6th of December, and we are very excited for it.

No mail this week, but that´s because we´re in the middle of the month.

I love you all, thanks for the prayers.

Elder North

He would love to hear from you.  If you want him to get something by Christmas you should probably mail it this week.  Thanks for your love and support.

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.

I AM PIG CHASER!

Date:  November 10, 2014

Area:  Korral Pek, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Vargus

Week 47

I AM PIG CHASER! I CHASE, PIG RUN, I CATCH, I WIN! (Spoken like a true cave man!.

So, yes, I chased a pig this week, I actually chase pigs on a general basis because your church yard has a short fence around it, but the pigs like to crawl in through holes or come in when one of the little kids leaves the gate open, so I chase them out. Yesterday I chased and the pig slipped in the mud and missed his exit and I caught him and him up to the sky as he squealled and such, and then I put him down and he bolted out of the church yard. He wasn´t too happy. Pigs are silly creatures.

I got some mail this week, yesterday in fact, we had district conference, it´s like stake confereance except when you´re in branches instead of wards, Presidente Curtiss went and we heard him speak while someone translated for him in Kekchi, his talk was great! He´s been really focusing on concecration for the members and especialy for his missionaries. I got handed mail after the meeting when we had to walk back to our area. 3 letters from Mom, 3 from Grandma Mary, 1 from Tayrn, 1 from Sister Barnson and 1 from Sister Regen and 1 more from Grandma Maxine. Thank you all for the mail! Now if only I was better at replying to all of you.

The investigators we are working on recently are people who have member in thier family, so, part member families, it´s fun to focus on them because we and they can have the support to church, although we had no investigators in church this week because it wasn´t in our area rather, it was a hour hike away or more for others, but we put higher goals for this week and are going to work hard to meet them. The goals seem to high for me, but my district leader, Elder Wilson convinced me to set them higher and have faith. Faith like that is a little difficult for me sometimes because I like thinking more logically, but we´re doing it and putting faith that we´ll be helped to meet these higher goals.

Things are going well here, nice and cool, I´m learning quickly more things in Kekchi with my companion Elder Vargas and it´s just a fun experience, chasing pigs and all that. No one has told me I couldn´t chase the pigs, but I think that if they´re in my yard I can chase them out to my hearts content.

No dates yet for baptisms, but we have a few that we´re preparing for a marriage and a baptism, we hope to be able to put dates this week, and find new people and just work.

The picture from last week of the church was taken from standing in my doorway.  Our house is straight across.  

We go to El Estor for P-days.

Elder Vargas only needed to have a blood test done, but he did some tests previously, something with his vision, I don´t really know the specifics.

We still go to Chulac to sleep in the chapel there on the pews, I need to bring a jacket or something because it gets pretty cold without a blanket.  We go to Chulac to give our numbers because our area has no service, and then it's already night and we sleep there.  We have a solar panel at both our house and the church.  We get some electricity at night if we use it but there is no signal for the phone that we do have.  It will be interesting how Christmas goes down.

I don´t know how you´ll be able to find it on a map, you could look it up in the church website where to the branch of Korral Pek is, that´ll probably be the biggest help, but the area is probably huge.

The people are about the same, just there´s a little less Spanish.

The best thing about the new area is probably the views all the time.

Thank you all for the support and especially the letters.

Remember,

¨Give em´ heaven!¨ - Sister Regen

Love,
Elder Norte

PLEASE write him.  It is getting to that time that if you want him to have anything for Christmas, even just a card that it is time to send it.  If you do send a package that you don't want him to open until Christmas if it happens to get there sooner then I would just wrap the gifts and inside write a note that says wait and open these on Christmas.  Don't put anything on the package saying it is a Christmas gift as theft is a problem.

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.

First week up in the mountains.

Date:  November 3, 2014
Area:  Correl Pek
Companion:  Elder Vargus from Nicaragua
Week 46

I'm now finally in what is called the mountain area of my mission.  I've been waiting for this time for quite some time, and boy is it what I expected!  Nice and cold!  Early spring weather back home, sure beats the blistering heat of the valley, although we're right in the middle of winter right now so it is actually a little bit colder than usual.  We we live in Korral Pek which means corral of rocks.  We have to go to another area on Sunday to sleep so that we can e-mail on Monday's, because the e-mail spot is so far away, but they are saying they don't want us to do that anymore so we might have to find a different way to do things.

Chalac is our district, it is the main area and our area is an hour hike away from it.  Our house is actually a bit nicer than in Canlun, although we have no fridge here.  We have plenty of COLD running water which means cold showers in a cold place.

My companion has 5 months in his mission and he is awesome.  He had his birthday recently and I used the stuff you sent me for my birthday to decorate our room while he was showering.

We do have a laundry lady again, she uses this cool iron to iron our clothes.  She puts hot coals in it to heat it up!

The views are amazing and hiking is not nearly as terrible as it is when you are sweating buckets all the time.  Even when you are not hiking, but now, an hour hike?  NO PROBLEMS!  Another hour to return after a half hour visit?  I'll deal with it.

We've been visiting a lot of members this week and not a lot of the investigators.  Getting to know the area and such.  Saturday was the day of the dead or Saints as they were calling it here.  Every member and their neighbor invited us to eat with them so we were up and out of the hosue form 7 to 6, 11 hours on Saturday visiting people and eating some food hourly.  It was a good day.  We were able to set some pretty great plans for the next week so that we can raise the numbers that were pretty low today.  We are going to work to improve and meet our goals.

One of the best things about my new area, there are pine trees!  I'm living with pine trees again!  Although they are a little different than back home and there's a lot more other plant life to go with it.

Pine trees!!!

Our big adventure this week was going to Coban because Elder Vargas needed to get a test done.  We only had four hours in Coban to do P-day things, in fact I'm there as I right this and we'll be going really soon to get something really good to eat and then go back home.  About 9 hours of travel in total in one day.  It's really not that fun though, hopefully if we can get here with more time then I can do more things, like looking for a certain Kekchi Dictionary that's out there.  O well, we're doing good, we're happy and we're pumped to work.

One final note.  I did get mail this week!  One package from Grandma Pam, THANK YOU, I loved the Pez...sadly they are all gone.  I did share though!

Many other letters saying happy birthday, from the Barnsons, Mom, Steve and Jennifer, Amy and a few others I can't quite remember.  I got them!

I love you all, keep up on being awesome!
Elder Jered Lamont North

Please take the time to write, he would love to hear from you.  It is time to mail Christmas Packages as mail can take a long time.  I would wrap the gifts inside and then write a note telling him not to open until Christmas.  :)  If you can send a card or a gift to his companion that is very nice also.  A lot of the native companions don't get much mail.

Elder Jered North
Guatemala Cobán Mission
Apartado Postal #34
3ra Calle 2-02, Zona 3
Cobán AV 16001
Guatemala, Central America

I`m ready for anything.

Date:  October 27, 2014

Area:  Canlun, Guatemala

Companion:  Elder Santisteban

Week:  45

Alright, I`ll just start with the biggest event of this week, the most terrible event of all my mission that left me very sad that night and tired as I didn`t get to bed until midnight, I`m talking about `The Flood`.

We were having a normal day really and at about six in the evening we were having a lesson in the house of the family Cuc-ac, a combination of two families really living in the same house, the rain started to pour a lot, lightning and such and the family was telling us of a time when water entered their house, they live next to the river, a few minutes later a puddle started forming at the door as water began to enter as the river was rising a little, but the rain kept coming down and now the water began to rise higher so that it covered the whole floor, this isn`t normal, a little is fine considering the pounding rain, but more? No.

We started to save things that were on the ground, panic mode had not started yet as there did not seem to be much danger at the moment, but the water kept rising, a minute later the mentioned panic started set it. The water got high enough to enter my boots (very large boots) when we evacuated the house, the water kept rising steadily and we battled our way up the street right outside as it had converted into a river up to my thighs almost. The water was running hard and we got off of that street and heading away from the river where we saw that the water was still rising a little bit and found ourselves in the middle of Canlun in a shop, at this shop the water was only enough to enter the house and cover the floor, higher than any time that the residence knows.

People were already there as a sort of refuge, we stopped there to gather our wits and to pray, I was asking our God why this was happening and why we were not warned of it before hand, we had no warning, spiritual or not. I then made a decision, the decision to stop questioning God and to trust his judgement and help others and to learn and have faith. I shall never forget this night nor will I forget the crying of the family Cuc-ac and thier little child of 3 years old as I carried him crying in my arms as we walked the two more blocks to the church. Water still present, but not lowering instead of rising.

The church and our house were two of the few houses that were not affected by water entering in. After doing what we could to help that night we slept unsoundly and got up in the morning to provide service, After a nights rest and some good reflection on the events I realized that sometimes the Spirit will not warn us of danger, not that he likes to see us suffer, but that we are already in the place that we need to be. If we were not with the Cuc-ac family that night some of them may have lost their lives.

The damage was great, but many things were saved and only a few houses were affected majorly, but everyone had a whole lot of mud that we helped clear out, water damage isn`t as severe of a thing here and the houses are made of sticks and most of the things people use are made of wood or something actually easily rebuilt so right now Canlun is almost back to normal, but the effects and lessons we learned will not go away so easily.

So, a trial of faith, but my faith has increased from events this week and I have grown in ways that I probabl would not have if not going through something like that. Going through the `refiner`s fire` as we call it.

So... That`s the big news this week, in other news I am leaving Canlun, I have recieved a transfer and I am going to the mountains to an area called Coral Pek with Elder Vargus from Nicaragua. I`m very excited for this new chapter and adventure in my mission, and I will always keep in my heart Canlun.

No mail this week, I know, disappointing for those who want to hear that their letters have made it safely, but that`s how things are here, we don`t get mail often.

I love you all,

Elder North

Please write him, he loves mail.

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.

Last week mice, this week a spider.

Date:  October 20, 2014
Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Santisteban
Week 44

Last week I told of my tales about my little mice friends (thought my mom would REALLY enjoy that), although they are not really my friends as I want them out of the house dead or alive.  This other guy is a different thing.  Alright, so this is how it goes...We were preparing to go out to work after church yesterday and Elder Santisteban needed to get something from his suitcase.  It was under the kitchen counter, upon movig it a tarantula of about medium size scurried out.  Surprisingly it didn't scare Elder Santisteban like the mice did.  So instead of doing a dance on it's head we used a broom and had it in the middle of the room and started taking pictures of it.  Then I caught it.  I plan to let him loose as missionaries are not supposed to have pets, and plus I dont' know how to feed him.

This week went really well, it went by quickly but at the same time very slow.  We have an investigator that is found in the little village called Kanlun 2, it is like Kanlun but it is a littler farther away.  Fancy naming it that!  So this investigators name is Ofelia.  I told a little about her last week I believe.  We have a baptismal date with her set for the 15th of November.  I am not sure I will be here for that, but I will work as if I will be.

We have been working with more less active members.  Some of which really annoy me because their children love getting on my nerves and making fun of me kind of, not nice, but trial of patience.

We have been able to find some new people as well through giving random service throughout the week.  Carrying some things or helping with some of their daily chores and all that.  Service to others
is service to God, remember that.

No mail, I thought I might have gotten some but I didn't.  The next time I will get mail is the first week of November I believe.  Which is kind of a bummer, but mail is always wonderful whenever I get it.  You all just need to keep writing and hope that I can find time to write back. (hehhe)

I love you all, until next week!
Elder North

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.

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.

 

Conference weekend #2

Date:  October 6, 2014
Area:  Kanlun, Guatemala
Companion:  Elder Santisteban

You sent cheese!  That's a little bit of a risk considering it's not a thing you only have to refrigerate after opening, but it's still good!  Unexpectedly I got mail at General Conference, two letters from Grandma Mary and a package from Mom and Grandpa North.  So I got to watch conference with some awesome scooby snacks, felt like home, except more Spnaishy and a little less comfortable chairs.

What he doesn't know is we did research and sent him Hickory Farms Cheese and so its all good.

A boy that was doing a model walk, I took video

My new companion is interesting I must say, he's very obedient and has been helping me with Spanish and all sorts of things.  He speaks about the same amount of Kekchi that I do, but he's a bit faster with it.  We're going to be learning that together through teaching, because that's the best way to learn a language, SPEAK IT.  My new companion is Peruvian so that makes my line up of companions come up to 2 North Americans and 3 Peruvians, and if we count the CCM, 1 Brazilian. Elder Santisteban has a really powerful testimony because he used to be part of the Evangelical church in his country and was preparing to be a pastor in it.  He knows the Bible really well and has been a great help in my studies.  Very neat and clean as well, something that's not too common here.  Not to say the others were not neat and clean, they were about as neat and clean as I am, but our house now is pretty much in perfect cleanliness condition, except for the mouse we can't seem to find.  He's there, the signs are everywhere, by way of mouse droppings.  Elusive little fellow.

I watched conference completely in Spanish, didn't have a choice in the matter.  Obviously every missionary is buzzing about general conference right now.  I just want to touch on some of the highlights which for me was that they had some of the speakers do their talks in their own language.  I was watching it in Spanish the whole time because the first day we didn't have power in the chapel in Sacsuha so we had to watch it in Teleman by internet in Spanish.  The second day we watched in Sacsuha but they didn't set up English for us...Oh well, I got Spanish skills.  I didn't get subtitles when they spoke in Spanish.  I was really cool to have them speak different languages.  Can you imagine how those people must have felt hearing the actual voice of a general authority instead of a translater?  I can imagine, I saw it, they were quite ecstatic about it.  Especially since TWO people spoke in Spanish, we win.

Bug

I'll try to take more pictures of my....well, it's not a city, it's a village.

The muck boots do not go over my shoes.  I use the insoles of my ecco's when I need to wear them to make them more comfortable, but other than that I had to get use to them.  If you want to send me anything in for Christmas send me a pair of Ecco insoles, size 42.

No blisters, and only sometimes I get sunburns.  The sun burns a little less when it's humid actually.  I did get a skin infection and my arm wasn't pretty.  I got medicine for it and such, but that's a long story actually and it wasn't fatal or anything.  I will have a scar on my arm for quite some time.

I have not learned how to make tortillas, I'll ask someone to teach me this week.

This week was terrible for the work in the sense that all our numbers were really low, except we did have quite a bit of people attending the conference on Sunday.  Why were our numbers really low?  Well, I have a new companion and I'm getting him to know the area and people.  We only really got to work for three days and during those three days we met more with the members and we couldn't get a member to leave with us.  The power went out one of those days, when the power is out and it's dark outside we need to return home.  Not to worry thought we found a new person and a few potential people.  We have a plan for next week that looks solid and all that stuff.

My companion with lots of kids.

Hope you all had a fantastic conference weekend!  Remember, follow the prophet.

Love,
Elder North

Elder North's birthday is on Saturday.  Guess he opened his presents early!  HEHEHHE

If you would like to know more about conference or listen to a session or talk you can go to the link below.

https://www.lds.org/church/events/181st-general-conference-of-the-church?lang=eng

Elder Jered North
Guatemala Cobán Mission
Apartado Postal #34
3ra Calle 2-02, Zona 3
Cobán AV 16001
Guatemala, Central America