Poptun!

Well my new area is poptun... and it is a pretty great area!  It doesnt come even close to Cubulco... but it is still a great area..  so it is pretty exciting... the only problem is that here was one of the 6 branches that we have here in peten to become wards... and so that Peten will become a stake and not just a district... but the only problem is that the attendance here was about 120... and then it just dropped like 8 months ago.. so it was ready to become a ward.. .but now it isnt.. so that is our goal here... to get the attendance back up to 120 because now it is at like 48 last week.. so we have got a lot of work to do.. Because this is now the last branch that we need to get ready for Peten to become a stake.. or in other words if we get the attendance back up and everything else stays good... we are going to have our second stake in the mission... so we are super excited for that!  

So we have got a lot to do.. and the biggest problem that we have is that all six of the missionaries here (me and my companion and 4 sisters)  are all new to the area... or in other words nobody knows anything about Poptun here other than the fact that it is in a hole... so we have a lot to do... and my companion is Elder Morillo.. he is from the Dominican Republic.. so he is now my second companion from there and he is super funny so we are going to see how this all goes with him..

So this week was just a lot of walking around and trying to get to know the people here and looking for people who want to hear the gospel... but next week is going to be much better!

Love Elder Stuart

Photos!

First picture is a food that my companion made that is native to the Dominican Republic... called mangoo...  It is green bananas boiled then smashed to look like mashed potatoes... very similar and also pretty good...

Second is during our weekly planning... i still had the gingerbread house that you sent me... so we decided to build it... well we kind of gave up after like 2 seconds.. and just decided to eat everything... so yeah that is us eating the house... 

And the last photo is that my companion put ketchup on the wall of the house (gingerbread house) and ate it.. and liked it... so I had to take a picture because that is just weird... 

Just some kids that wanted their picture taken.. so here you go... these are the kids of guatemala... 

HEYO!!!!!

Well this week has been a pretty good one!!!!!!  I just love this area of cubulco!!!!  The members are awesome... the investigators are awesome... the climate is awesome...  IT IS JUST GREAT!!!!!!!

But anyways... this week was full of stuff so I am going to go by day by day...

Monday:  We went to coban to get rid of Elder Tello... he was a good companion, so I am going to miss him... but that was kind of a boring day...

Tuesday:  I got my new companion... His name is Elder Gomez!!  He is from the Domincan Republic, and well lets just say that he is still getting used to the mission... he is new.. .this is his first week, and he is a little bit weird, but he remind me of me... He doesnt talk AT ALL!!!  I have had like 4 or 5 people ask me this week if he knows spanish... and well of course he does, but he just doesnt talk... so we are just getting used to that!

Wednesday:  We got to cubulco and had the first day of work with elder Gomez and it was a pretty great day!  We were able to meet with luki and prepare her for her baptism on friday... and all was well and we put the plan to have the interview on thursday!

Thursday:  Luki had her interview and she passed with flying colors!!!  She knos a ton about the gospel, and now she hardly has friends, because she accepted the church, but she loves life now better than before, because she recognized what is the correct thing to do!  So she is great!

Friday:  In the morning we had the baptism of Luki and I baptized her!  And well all is well with her she is doing good... and we did it in a waterfall!!  It was pretty cool!  Then after we baptized her we went to the District Christmas party for all of Baja Verapaz... which is like the stake here where I am at but its not a stake it is a District, and we were able to take 11 investigators to that... and it was in Salama which is 2 hours away!!!!!  So that was just fantastic!!!!  All the people loved it!!!

Saturday:  Saturday was just a day to prepare for sunday.. .so we just visited some people and we taught them a little bit to get them to go to church on sunday...

Sunday:  This was probably the biggest week!  We were able to have church in the morning and we confirmed Luki and I did it again because my companion didnt want to.. because he was scared to do it in front of the people... so yeah got to work on that, but yeah church was good...  Although sunday was a very long day... I have to direct and preside the church meetings... then I had to talk because the people that were going to talk didnt show up... and then I had to give the sunday school class, because we still dont have a teacher for that... then after church from we went to go visit one of our investigators named Edwin and he decided that he is going to get baptized the 17th of January which is good... then after him we had to go to our house to do tithing settlement from like 2:30 until 9:00... so that was kind of a bummer because we couldnt work but it was kind of fun to do interviews with the members!  So today I am super tired... because last week was just full of stuff, and this week we are going to have even more things!!!!

Cant wait until next week!

Love you All

Elder Stuart

My Comps

Well things are going great here in the mission field.  But being in a trio is kind of tough, but it has been helping us a lot with working the two areas because we can do divisions with the members.  So usually 1 or 2 times a week Elder Call and Aybar go to Cubulco to work, and I stay in Rabinal and work with a member.  Its really tough because we only have two people that we can do divisions with, and one of them has to work in the Capital for 15 days then he gets three days off, then goes back...  And the other one is about 100 and sleeps through everything.  So Im basically working on my own, which is kind of weird not having another Elder sometimes, but somehow the work is still progressing in both areas, so that is pretty great.

But our companionship is pretty fantastic.  We all get along well, and we have a lot of fun experiences together.  So all Is going great with that.  Elder Aybar is from the Domincan Republic and he loves baseball, but who doesnt from the Republic...  and yeah he has quite the arm.  Funny story...  So Ive said before how there are always dogs in the streets right... well me and Elder Call are always tossing rocks at the dogs, like just to scare them and stuff because its really funny.  But Aybar didnt like doing this, but one time me and Call were chasing a dog, and all of a sudden a rock passed by us, going about 100 mph, and barely missed the dog.  We turned around, and there was Aybar.  He basically almost killed the dog, but it was hilarious.  So we had to explain that we dont really want to kill the dogs, just scare them.  So thats Elder Aybar for ya.  And Elder Call is hilarious.  There he is from the bay area, and yeah he is hilarious.  So here in guatemala they are constantly making tortillas.  either in their houses or in Tortillarias, i dont know if i spelled that right, but they are constantly working on their tortillas.  So he always asks them if they need help, but they always say know because well were gringos and we dont know how to do these things.  But one time a member said yes she would like some help.  Lets just say that me and Elder Call cant make tortillas.  We sucked at it, but she wanted to help us get better so she bought us all the supplies and crap so that we could tortillar in our house.  So we tried that later in our house and it was an epic failure.  So we are going to give up on our career of tortillando.  So yeah that is a little info about my comps.

Other than that Im not exactly sure what happend this week, because for some reason I have a brain fart every time I go to write on the computer.  So yeah..  Things are going pretty great we are working hard and just having a great time.  Thanks for all the support!!

Elder Jeffrey Stuart