Week 86...3/31/16...Temple, and a week of Christ

Hey Everyone sorry for another late letter but man this week was busy and this is going to be another busy week! We have changes this week and they're done, but we've got a lot to do! 

So let's start with last Tuesday, 3/22/16.  (Good thing that I wrote that down in my journal because honestly, it's hard to remember what happened last week.) We headed to work with the Zone in San Felipe! I went with Elder Wilcox and Elder Taylor from the office and my companion went to work in Coatepeque. We went to San Felipe and we stayed in their meeting.  There were a lot of heavy hearts from the news of Elder Fifita and we read the letter that went out the whole mission. We then made plans on what we were going to do for the day. We made a great plan and we were ready to have an amazing day full of interviews. But just like with all great plans there are always great obstacles. In today's case, it was like 3 hours of traffic that separated us and the areas that we needed to go and visit. So we had to cancel that appointment and I went with Elder Myers to do some interviews in Brillantes! Elder Myers is a super cool kid! And is going to be an amazing missionary, better said, he's already a dope missionary and he's going to be a fantastic leader.

We had two interviews and then we decided to try and go to Mazate to escape the traffic and help that Zone out. Honestly, it was ridiculous. The traffic was all the way to and back from Mazate. We just got to Mazate, ate dinner, and made the long drive home. It was kinda frustrating because we actually had made some really good plans for the day.

Wednesday was a blessing. It was the day where everyone that goes home goes to the temple. With a lot of luck, I got invited to go! So that was awesome! I learned that God always answers our prayers, not always in the way we want them or in the time we want it but He always answers. I was looking for revelation for my life trying to figure out what I should study, but as I was reading and praying I kept coming across the word patience. Patience, patience, patience. I realized I need to just keep working and the answer will come. That's what I learned from the last General conference too from Elder Larry R. Lawrence which talks about how we can learn from the spirit through our prayers asking ''what lack I yet?'' It's a really good talk. Then we had to run Elder Heyrend and Elder Petersen back to Malacatan to also drop off the videos we used for Friday's conference. We stayed the night in Malacatan. 

Me and Elder Peterson heading up to the temple.

Elder Morataya and I

The temple for the last time with Elder Morataya.

Elder Morataya, Elder Quispe,  Elder Peterson, and me

Thursday, we went up to San Marcos and we stayed there for their Zone Meetings. We have meetings here a bit different than many other missions. We have a district meeting every Tuesday and a Zone Meeting every Thursday to train, practice, and better our skills. Then we came home to work in our area where we met a pretty cool guy! His name is Marco Antonio. And this is how we found him...

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So we were casually strolling down the road when like every other day we felt like we should knock on a door. We got to the doorstep and looking into the open door (that's definitely something different here, all the people if they're home will leave the main door open and the little gate stays shut.) Anyways we could clearly see a man working on his computer in the second room. So we casually shouted ''Buenas!'' and we waited, and waited. But there was literally no reaction in the guy! We thought oh no, he saw us when we walked passed and we're not going to even be able to talk with him. So we tried again, and again for like 5 minutes. We had the thought that maybe he couldn't hear us because he looked as if he had like 60 years. So we went and talked to the neighbors and they were like, "ya, Profe Maco is deaf." What else could we do? We decided to try again.  We were outside jumping around and waving our arms like crazy but still, there was no reaction. Maybe he really doesn't want to talk to us we thought... But we both had the feeling that we needed to talk to him. We were talking to each other thinking if we could throw something or walk-in uninvited when all of a sudden he looked up and directly at us. To our surprise, he spoke perfectly! But he really did not hear a thing! So we semi-communicated to him that we were going to pass by on Sunday to bring him to church. But that didn't happen, on Sunday, there was a misunderstanding, when we got there at 9 he invited us in and we ended up teaching the Book of Mormon to him. He's very Catholic but he said that the Book of Mormon really had his attention. He had actually always gone to the Church when it first got started here in Retaluhleu! In the very first house! He had a copy of the Book of Mormon but never had read it but we left him with a bunch of chapters because now that he understood what it was he was really excited to read it. He's a professor and very, very smart. But we're excited to go back and teach him again.

LOOK WHAT SHIRT I FOUND!!!! EASTVIEW!!!!!

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were very Christ-centered. We had a conference in the Zone Reu and every other zone also had a conference we re-watched the World Wide Conference that was shown a little bit ago and had a bunch of workshops. I taught the last message about "Teaching Repentance and Baptizing Converts." But the focus was on "Teaching Repentance." The main focus was on Alma 34: 32-36 talking about how important it was to teach the investigators repentance more than any other thing because this is the only time we have to repent.  I think it really helped the missionaries understand why we teach repentance. Later that night we had an activity where we invited and talked a lot about the atonement of Christ. We showed a lot of videos and the spirit was so strong. we took pictures with a dressed-up ''Mary and Joseph'' (Elder Keck and Hermana Moore).  I and my companion were in charge of the presentation.  It affected a lot of people many people were very touched by the spirit.

Elder Keck and Hermana Moore as Mary and Joseph

Elder Keck, Elder Ormsby, Elder Elggren y Hna Moore, Me and Elder Adams!

Someone left this in the church oven…

We had thought something smelled funny... UHHH!

Saturday, we had a lot of crazy things happen.  We were going to have a baptism in Peru and I spent 45 minutes on the phone with the investigator but he had a lot of doubts so we went and visited him instead. Then we had our meeting with Presidente and started the changes. We had a baptism in our ward! Elder Keck and Elder Ormsby are sooooo pilas!!!!! The guy's name is Leonardo.  He is super cool! I got to interview him last Sunday and he was really a prepared person! He's going to be a great leader in the church. He speaks perfect English and always visits the states right by Elder Keck's house!!!!!

Sunday was Amazing. In every ward and branch in the mission, the missionaries shared The Living Christ. It was such a powerful testimony of Christ the congregations were all crying. All of the missionaries in the mission have learned it by memory. It's helped me be able to testify powerfully of Christ. Then we finished most of the changes and I'll write about those next week!

One of The last photos of me and Elder Morataya!

Dress up day before we cleaned the house!

I hope all goes well! Love you all!

Elder Pugmire 

Alright, so this week was Semana Santa! One of the traditions is called Judas. All of the kids dress up crazy and just go around and ask for money. They make a mannequin all dressed up and you have to dance with it or pay them money! Luckily we escaped the craziness for the most part.

Here's a video! It's so short because my camera died when I most needed it!