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

Another week gone

Well this week was another adventurous week!  But I am super tired because we just got done playing tennis... and it was my first time playing a sport other than soccer in like 16 months and so I am super tired, but I will try my best to share with you guys what has happened this week!

So now we have two investigators that are sisters name Erika and Luki... they are wife and sister in law of a member in Cubulco and we are teaching them and they finally decided that they want to get baptized!  So we are just going to prepare them a little and then they will get baptized within a few weeks!  So we are pretty excited for that!

But this week we had a district conference on sunday (for those that live in utah and dont know what that is, but it is like stake conference but for the branches..)  and so we had to take the whole group of cubulco to salama, which is about 2 hours away... and well this week we only ended up with an attendance of 10 but that is ok... we are still super excited for this next week!

As for me and Elder tello we are doing good.. he is making his final preparations to go home in like 2 weeks so we are kind of sad to see him go...

And well I guess that that is all...

Good Luck! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Elder Stuart

Another week in paradise!!

Well this week was halloween!  I hope that you enjoyed it!  So I dont know if you guys remember, but Rabinal is a pretty crazy place... and well the go hard with traditions... So here for Halloween, they go to the graveyard and they clean it up and they put food on the graves... Dont ask me why, because not only do I not know why, but they also dont know why they just say ¨well it is tradition so we do it¨ and well the funny thing also is that in Rabinal there are a bunch of drunks, and we saw them in the graveyard along with the dogs eating all the food!  So I ust thought that I would share that with you guys...

As for the work... IT IS GOING GREAT!  So here in Cubulco... we have to travel 39 minutes to Rabinal to go to church, and well I guess that like 2 months ago... President Curtiss sent in a request that it could become a little group.... Which means that it isnt quite a branch but we are going to be able to have our meetings in Cubulco... and there are only going to be like 10 people there including us! But we now have like 3 families that say that they will now finally get baptized now that there is a group there in Cubulco...  So we are going to see how that goes next week, because it will start the first time next week!  The only sad thing is that I wont be able to see the people from Rabinal very much anymore... but every monday and wednesday we have to pass through there to go to salama... and so maybe Ill see some people!

So the work in Cubulco is fantastic! There are many good things that are going to be happening here... First off we do have a lot of people here to teach... the only problem is that before everyone said that they just couldnt pay the fare to get to Rabinal, but now that there will be a little group here... they would like to get to know the church!  So over about this past year there have been about 5 or 6 families that were prepared by the elders to get baptized but they all said that if there were a church in Cubulco they would get baptized... so now me and elder tello are going to see how sincere those sayings were... that if they really are going to continue going to church and maybe get baptized... so I am kind of excited to see if I can do the other half of the work now.. My whole mission I have prepared people to be baptized but never seen it, so lets see if now I can be the person that finishes the work!  But we will see how that goes...

So yeah I am super excited!

Love Elder Stuart

My New Area!

I now got my new area and my new comp!  We are in Los Campos, the city name, and im one of the two companionships in the city....  It is fantastic!  We have members in our area and they help us out a ton.  But first of all my comp is Elder Valdes and he is a little bit weird...  But I have only known him for about 5 days so yeah Im sure we will get used to each other...  And he is from Chile so I dont have to teach him spanish, luckily...  But back to the Area, we have about three teenagers that love to leave with us.  The are 18 19 and 16, and they are all preparing to go on missions.  The one that is 18, Melvin, put in his papers yesterday, the one that is 19, Kevin, is starting his papers, and the one that is 16, sony,  is preparing for his mission.  So that is great because they ususally leave with us!  And the funny thing is that Melvin used to live in Salama, which was the area of my zone leaders back in Rabinal, and I knew him because he was always with the zone leaders and stuff, and I knew his family too.  But in December they moved to this area that I am in now... So I am kind of just following him around!  But he is fantastic!  He knows a lot of the lessons that we teach, and since me and my comp dont know the area really well, because we are both new to the area, he has been helping us out a ton!  

And Church was pretty great this week!  We had about 170 people in church which is about 130 more people than Rabinal...  So yeah it was a little bit different for me...  But is was fantastic!  It is going pretty great in my area though, we have a few people that are interested in our message, and we have been working super hard to know the area a little bit better!    But other than that things are going super great here!

My Scripture for this week, I forgot the past couple weeks... oops, is John 10:17-18.  It is absolutely fantastic!

Love Elder Stuart

CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!!!!!!!

IT IS CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!!  I honestly cant believe it!  Time has literally flown by!  And it doesnt really feel like christmas with out snow, but It is great here to see all the traditions of the Guatemalans!  So it is great here, we are going to have little activities tomorrow and wednesday with members and some of our investigators, so that will be fantastic!

This past week has been a little crazy.  My comp got a little sick on wednesday and he had such a high fever so we stayed in the house for that day... but it was great because we practiced our spanish, and studied a ton so that was great, and kind of bad for him at the same time...  But we had some good lessons this week with a girl that we are going to baptize this saturday! So we are super excited for that, because we thought that her mom wasnt going to give her permission, because her mom had said for like the past month, that her daughter cant get baptized, but after a lot of fasting and praying she finally has permission so that is fantastic!  It really does show the power of Fasting and prayer!  It is so AWESOME!

Also In church yesterday we had the primary program, but the only problem is that we only have two kids in primary in our branch... so we had to bring kids from the Branch in Salama.  But it was still fantastic to see all the kids there.  I felt the spirit so strong to here the testimonies of little kids.  Because they may not know everything about the church but the had faith to get baptized.  I just wish that our Investigators could see this, because there are a ton of people who say that they need to know everything about the gospel before they get baptized, even though they know it is the right thing to do. Children are such good examples!!!

Not much else happened last week, but Im so excited for this week, It will be fantastic!  There is so much love going on around here, so I think that it will be a good time to teach new people!  Also Im super excited to talk to you guys!  CANT WAIT!

My scripture this week is 3rd nephi, 9 22.  This talks about becoming as a little child and being baptized!  How great right!!!!!

Love Elder Stuart!

Photos!

This is me being a nerd with my tie... and my comp on the left taking pictures of himself...

Also a picture of guatemala, the trip from Salama to Rabinal. 

This is our zone of Baja Verapaz.  It is a pretty great zone, and yeah my district is basically all in a pink tie and it wasnt really planned.  So that was pretty great.

First Week!

I love it here!!!!!  But Im going to start where i left off two weeks ago.  I didnt have a computer last week so i couldnt send any last week.  But here I am.  So It is a tradition in the CCM when the elders are leaving we sing called to serve in spanish as loud as we can the night before. IT WAS AWESOME.  I love the power of all the elders in one area and that is what i miss about the CCM. But other than that im glad to be out of there.  Then the next morning we woke up at five and all the elders that were going to Coban left at seven.  I t was hard to say goodbye to all the others.  I didnt think it would be but we had gotten so close in those couple weeks and it was sad to see them go.  But we were off on our four and a half hour bus ride to Coban.  It wasnt too bad, but it was pretty long.  When we got to Coban we went to the Presidents house and had lunch.  It was awesome to meet President Curtiss.  He was awesome and I cant wait to get to know him more.  But then we had to get on our way.  So we went to a chapel to learn about all the rules of the mission. This is where I learned that I was going to the Vera Paz zone and my area would be Rabinal.  That was awesome.  So we hopped on another bus to a place called salama.  We could only make it to there that day because by the time we left the church it was four and it was a three and a half hour bus ride.  So it was a lot of buses that day.  We got to Salama and that is where I met my trainer.  Elder Brito.  He is an awesome guy but he knows absolutely no english.  So it can be hard to talk to him, but I have learned so much spanish in 5 days with him.  I can say that im about 75 percent fluent.  Its awesome!!!!  So we stayed over night at the zone leaders house, and we slept on five mattresses.  But there were six missionaries, so it was a rough night.  But then the next morning we woke up at 6 and me and elder Brito were going to catch a taxi to rabinal.  That was my area.  So it took us until about 6 30 to find a taxi and we were off.  Almost...  The taxi drove for about three minutes then dropped us off.  He said that he couldnt take us to rabinal and that we would need a bus.  So we basically said thanks for nothing and walked to the bus station with all my luggage.  We made it to the bus station and we caught a bus to Rabinal at about 7 30.  So an hour and a half later we were on our way.  It was probably the coolest bus ride Ive ever been on.  It was about an hour and a half up over a mountain.  It was so cool to look over the city of coban as we left.  We arrived in Rabinal at about 9.  And then we were off to work.  We had comp study until about ten and then we went to the store so I could get some food.  Then we went to work.  We visited a lot of members houses and a few investigators houses.  It was a pretty long day so when we got back at about 9 00 I was going to take a shower.  But that was when I figured out that we dont have one...  I had to shower with a bucket.  So I said screw it and i went to study.  But then the next day I had to take my first bucket shower.  It wasnt to bad.  And now I actually quite like it after 6 days of a bucket shower.  But I love the Area here and the people are so giving.  I dont have a lot of time today so I will explain more next week when I also know a little bit more about what is going on.  But I absolutely love the work.  And a line from one of my favorite songs now, the song is by the band Jonny likes, and it says,  this is the hardest thing I have ever loved to do and it is so true.  Thanks for all of the support.  And I dont have time for a scripture this week so it will have to wait until next week.

Love Elder Jeffrey Stuart