Week 13 - Zecapa

Has it actually been 13 weeks since I left home? Inserio...

Happy Halloween, everybody! And, to answer the question, they DO celebrate Dia de los Muertos here! 

It's actually not that exciting...

During the day, everyone would go to the cemetery to go dress their ancestor's graves and show respect for those who have passed away, and then go to church. After church, the kids dress up as monsters and go trick-or-treating. I thought there would be more tradition here for this day, but that's basically it. No trick-or-treaters came to our door, so that was kind of disappointing. 

This week, I had to go on divisions with our brand-new zone leader, Elder Calamara. He's a quieter fellow, but he's a hard worker. What made this division different was that he came to my area, and I was basically in charge all day. That was scary because I've never done that before, and I felt like I was being evaluated with every step I took. 

Divisions start at the chapel. Every Friday, all the missionaries of the zone come to the stake center, or main church, to plan for the upcoming week. Then the missionaries who are going on divisions trade partners for the day. In the division companionships, one elder knows the area and knows the people; the other doesn't. The elder who DOES know the area (me, in this case) leads the other elder around all day, and after the day's work is done, reports his labors to the District leader. If you're not leading the area, this is really fun, because you don't know the plan or the area, and you meet new people and teach with a new person. If you ARE leading the area, this is really hard to pull off (especially if you don’t know how to speak Spanish fluently.)

So how did divisions turn out? Elder Malacara, the following morning, went over the mission rules with me again, and basically told me nothing new. 

This upcoming week I have divisions with Elder Vasquez, a new elder who has even LESS experience than I do. We'll see how that turns out, though. 

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT EPISODE...

I love you all!!! Keep writing, and I'll see you all soon!!

Elder Jeffrey Reed

Week 12 - Zacapa

Hey Guys!

First thing: We didn’t run out of money this month! We finally got around to paying for electricity this month AND managed to save enough to break even for all of our needs. Unfortunately, that also means I have 50 quetzales left for the week (which is about 7.50 in American dollars) and we're living off of rice, bananas and eggs. Yesterday we had to starve, though, because we don’t buy things on Sunday (to keep it sacred.) I learned yesterday that I can't not eat and work. It was pretty awful, but now we have food again!

This week we had cambios, which is basically where the missionaries get relocated to different areas. This apparently happens every six weeks. My zone was going crazy this morning. Ten minutes after we finished studying scriptures this morning, two of the other elders came over and went OFF over the changes. Here's what happened:

 -Elder Mortensen, our zone leader and the only gringo who could fluently speak Spanish in our district, finished his mission and went home

-Elder Lott, another gringo who just finished being trained, is training another missionary 

-The districts were re-organized: The three gringos (me, Elder Lott, and Hermana Stoddard) were all put in one district, and my companion, Elder Franco, is the zone leader.

Elder Franco did NOT want to be zone leader. After we received the news, he freaked out a little bit, but now, he's more or less cool with it. It’s a stressful time for us in Zacapa, and we have no idea how our new district is going to turn out. We'll do our best, though. The only worry I have is that the other gringos speak about as much Spanish as I do, which isn't a lot.

I'm starting to become more comfortable with Spanish: it’s actually starting to sound like intelligent conversation rather than babbling. The Latinos tell me that I've picked it up a lot faster than the other gringos, but I still can’t understand half the things people say. Si lo fue mi decisión, yo seria fluente en Español ahorita, pero no puedo controlar la velocidad de mi crecimiento en la idioma. Paciencia...

I love you guys!! Thank you for all the support!! See you soon!!

Elder Reed 

Week 11 - Zacapa

The works slowed down a bit since the baptism. We've been all over the area, searching left and right, but no one has really shown any interest. One of our investigators is suffering from some kind of chronic migraine attack, and another might have cancer. The rain came again this week, and we had a nice downpour, not quite as strong as last time, but still pretty good.

This past week, we had Zone Conference, and I ran into Hermana Bertha there! That was pretty cool. We took a picture together, so if you’re getting e-mails from her, you'll get that picture. I didn’t have my camera at the time, unfortunately. Missionaries from all over the country were there, so I got to see a lot of my friends from the CCM, including my old companion, Elder Nawahine. 

This morning was probably one of the strangest I’ve had during my mission. After companionship study, I went to wash off some dishes at the pila, and noticed that in our backyard, one of our coconut trees was gone. Not any of our possessions, not even the motorcycle that’s in our backyard, with the keys sitting in the ignition; just our tree. That was really strange. Whoever took it did a good job, too: it looks like it never existed. Of everything that you could steal, a coconut tree. 

As I’ve been working and learning the language, I’ve had the words to verse 2 of the hymn "Come, Come, Ye Saints" in my head.

"Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?

'Tis not so, all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward
if we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins, fresh courage take,
our God will never us forsake!
And soon we'll have this tale to tell:
All is well! All is well!"

I know that we all have our challenges, but no matter how alone you feel, no matter how dark the night may seem, no matter how long the road appears, or how much further you have to climb, I can promise you this: you are NEVER alone. There is always someone you can turn to, even when no one around you understands what you're saying or the way you feel. I’ve spent hours on my knees, calling out to my Heavenly Father, and I know he is with me, supporting me.

I love you all! Keep writing! Thank you for all of your support!! 

Week 10

Hola Familia y Amigos!!!

This week was pretty difficult on us. The good news is that Mario and Eva were baptized on Saturday! That was really cool. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I don’t have any pictures. That might have been a good thing that I forgot my camera, though, because while we were taking pictures, someone stole our recent convert's phone (not Mario or Eva's phone, a different convert). That was kind of annoying, especially because this convert is living with his wife and kid in their cousin's house. We're doing all we can to help them find a house and more stable work, but being missionaries, there’s really not much we can do.

We have a resident cat that keeps trying to eat our garbage and makes a mess of things everywhere, so that’s also kind of weird. 

A funny little bit about Elder Franco- I don’t know if I told you this already, but with his other companion, they were accustomed to eating pizza and food from a Chinese restaurant (of all places, a Chinese restaurant in Guatemala?) and then they would run out of money and starve for three days. This almost happened to us this last month, so today I am forcing him to come with me to a dispensa (store) and buy real food.

This week, also, we had an odd experience teaching one of our investigators. He had been acting different than he usually does during the lesson, and eventually, he said he didn’t want to learn anymore, and he felt like we were wasting our time. That was pretty disheartening, but we had the baptism the next day, so it’s OK.

I love you guys! Thank you for all the support!!! See you soon!

--
Elder Jeffrey Reed

Week 9

So this week we had divisiones, which means that we swapped companions with the zone leaders for a day. It was really awesome because the zone leader I was with is a gringo like me (Elder Mortensen) and he was able to give me a few helpful hints with Spanish. HEs actually gonna head home after this change, so his Spanish is beyond incredible. I’m still working on being able to understand people.

I miss all you guys! Did I write about the animal problem we´ve had in the last letter? We have a cat that likes to eat our garbage, and one day, a chicken wandered in to our house. Were still not exactly sure how it got in, maybe someone is messing with us.

 General Conference was phenomenal!! I loved all of the talks. It was literally like Christmas. Also, this Saturday Mario and Eva are going to be baptized! At least, that’s the plan. We´re working hard down here, and although its frustrating sometimes not being able to understand, Im learning to find joy in the work and I hope I can continue to serve with all my heart to the people.

 Just gonna share a quick piece of my testimony: I know that this church is true. I know that God, our Father, through the prophet Joseph Smith, restored his Gospel and because he did so, we know what his plan is for us in this life. We can receive glory and blessings beyond our wildest dreams, not only in the next life, but in this one as well!

Week 8

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

This week was pretty weird. Yesterday the power went out, so when we got home, it was pitch black inside our house. Elder Franco somehow had a candle, but no fosforos, or matches (I think that’s how it’s spelled.) Luckily, we were able to get a match from a church member and light the candle. 

This week I had to sign a couple things to finish legalizing my passport, so we had to travel three hours back to the capital to get it signed, which was kind of annoying, because it threw off our plans for two days. When we got to the capital, it was FREEZING. I didn’t realize how much I’ve acclimated to the warm weather here. We stayed with the secretaries that night, and I could not sleep because of how cold it was. The next morning, a group of people went by the apartment with a bunch of drums and brass instruments, and bombas (anything explosive, like a firecracker) at 5AM. At 7AM, we went to the mission office, where I met up with 3 other people from my group at the CCM. Apparently they all have sinks (remember that I have a pila instead of a sink in my apartment in Zacapa), so I don’t know how we managed to miss out on that. The passport affirmation, which should have taken maybe an hour at most, took 4 hours because Elder Busker and his companion came super late from Puerto Barrio, which is on the east coast of Guatemala. 

It rained really hard for 2 days, and then stopped. It made the river impossible to cross and we had to go 20 minutes around to visit Mario and Eva instead of 2 minutes across.

Also, we have 2 more investigators who want to get baptized! Guillermo Ramos is about 50 years old and spends his time either out with his cows by the river, or in one of his two houses. We haven’t found his second house yet. He gave us directions, but the directions here are more like descriptions. An example of detailed directions would be: "I live in that part (point) of the city, in the grey house, seven houses down."

Rafael's wife also accepted the baptismal invitation. She lives out in Frutillo in one big house. Kevin, Danilo, and Rafael's family all live together, so it’s really noisy all the time. While we were teaching them yesterday, two dogs started fighting outside, so Maria grabs a bucket of water and chucks it on them. It worked, but it was kind of strange to witness.

Elder Franco is a fairly quiet fellow. He’s learning English pretty slowly, and I’m teaching him as much as I can.  From my group in the CCM, I’m alone here in Zacapa. The language is slowly coming, too. I’m learning to pick individual words and the general concept out of a sentence, but I still don’t understand specific meanings. I’m able to get across what I’m trying to say, though.  A good set of scriptures describes the way it is right now: Jeremiah 1:6-8. This has given me a bit of comfort as I’ve been working.

I love you guys! Thank you for all the support you give me! I promise I’ll have pictures for you next time!

-- 

Elder Jeffrey Reed

Week 7

Hey guys!

I’m in my first area right now- ZACAPA! It’s a small city a couple hours east of the capital. It’s SO HOT here- literally like Arizona every day. 

My new companion is named Elder Franco. He’s a small little guy from Panama who doesn’t speak a word of English, and I can only communicate with him through my broken Spanish. Also, people here don’t talk very fast, but they have a pretty strong accent. They drop their S's left and right, and combine their words all day long.

I live in a small cement building with no air conditioning (no one has air conditioning here; it’s too expensive) and barely enough for electricity. On the first day I was here, the bus lost my luggage, so I had to go without supplies for a day. That was fun...

It’s beautiful here! We get basically no rain during the day, but at night, there are storm clouds covering every part of the horizon, and the lightning will light up random spots of the horizon everywhere you look. It’s really cool.

There are about as many dogs here as people, or 'chuchos' as the natives call them. They're all wild. I haven’t been bitten yet, but I figure the reason that Zacapa doesn’t have crime is because everyone’s too scared of upsetting a dog to do anything stupid. They roam the cobblestone streets everywhere, and all have personalities. Some are quiet, and some are loud, some are nice, and some are mean. I’m more scared of being mugged by a dog than a human here.

OK, so my area I’m serving in isn’t only the city; it goes to the outskirts of town by a river, where it’s basically like a sparse forest. It also extends past the outskirts to a little village called Frutillo, in the middle of the desert. People here live in cement houses or worse, usually a room is outdoors, like our house. They done have sinks; they have three-basin tubs with a hose spouting water in called pilas. Typically, a pila lets the dirty water run directly out of the basin onto the ground. 

OK- let me introduce you to the crew. There’s Elder Franco, my trainer. He can’t really communicate with me that well, but we make it work. He’s being very patient with me as I learn how to speak to people, and he works hard. He’s been out here for 8 months now, and I’m the first person he has trained. I’m currently teaching him how to pray in English. We have 6 investigators who want to get baptized- Flor De Dalia, Danilo, Rafael, Mario, Eva, and Kevin. Mario and Eva are progressing pretty slowly, as is Flor, but the other three are learning rapidly. They haven’t been to church yet, so were gonna invite them to church next. The work is great here, and there's almost no danger from people. 

I miss you guys! Keep working hard and learning to see the hand of the Lord in your life!