Week 13...11/3/14 ...Holy Cow! Sunset and lumberjack

Holy cow. This week was insane! So many things happened it could have been just a month! First of all, on Tuesday we had our changes meeting to find out that a ton of people in our zone were leaving. Including our district leader Elder Vences and one of the other companions in our house, Elder Gavarrette. However, we also got news that we were going to get new elders to train. We got two new Latinos and one norte from the CCM. Elder Toala is the new elder living with us and he's from Ecuador and only has 4 days in the mission now. He's super cool though just a little quiet.

Elder Gavarrette, Vences, Fickes, Lagos, Me, Kanahele, Keck, and Gonzales

Kind of a crazy thing that happened the other day. We were contacting in the streets and had just turned down this street when this drunk guy ran up to us and said. ''Elderes! I want you to come and teach me and my kids about your church because I want to learn about Jesus and get baptized into your church.'' It was such a perfect thing that we went with him even though he was drunk hoping that we could meet his family. We had a lesson with him and his wife but his two kids were not there. Apparently, he had already had some lessons with the missionaries because he had a Book of Mormon and he remembered this scene from the testaments video. The part where Jesus is on the cross and says ''Father forgive them for they know not what they do.'' It was so funny because he quoted that part to us almost 10 times. It was all we could do to keep from laughing. He had the head bob down and everything. 

On Wednesday Elder Gonzalez went to get his new companion in Reu and so we went to Tocache in their area to go to a tarde de hermanamiento. Here the times a little different. It was supposed to start at 4 but people didn't start to show up until 5. So we got out super late and ended up missing some appointments. On the way home one of the members went to find us a pickup truck to drive all of the members back. Unfortunately, I think the driver was drunk. We ran into a van right as we were starting to leave the town. Luckily we were both going really slow and just the front of the truck hit the van going the opposite direction. Both of the drivers got out looked at the damage and just continued on their way completely different than how it would have been if we were in America. We got home safely thankfully, even with all of his swerving. We got off at the very first stop we could and then walked the rest of the way home. That was pretty exciting.

Right now I'm known as a magician, missionary, and professional lumberjack. We were with some less active members helping them cut wood. But here they cut it with the wood laying parallel to the ground. It's sooooo hard to cut even a little bit. But somehow even the old guys just go to town. But when it was my turn I just set up the wood how we would cut it in the states and just blazed through the pile of wood. So now everyone asks us to help cut wood.

Elder Meyer is our new leader de districto and he is super cool! I got to spend a day on divisions with him. This was during the day of the dead. We don't have Halloween here but everyone goes crazy for the day of the dead. Everyone goes to the cemetery to decorate every little square inch of gravestone and ground with flowers, food, and plastic decorations. There is also a substantial increase in the drunks passed out on the ground. We have started a new thing in San Pablo. We say HOYYYYYYYY really loud to greet people, and all of our neighbors answer back and the drunks too. They are usually just laying in the middle of the sidewalk or side of the street they actually look really comfortable... Not really... So flashback to the MTC we asked Hermano Mendez (MTC teacher) how he'd recommend teaching the law of chastity to someone who was homosexual. He said, don't worry we don't have that in Guatemala, which I no know is not true. San Pablo, it's known for its several gay men. It isn't a problem, but they are very open about it and we receive catcalls from them almost every day, especially if you're white (that's me). It's usually the only time I'm happy I don't really understand what the people are saying. It also is interesting because when we tell people we live on the "Callejon de Manfred" we get a lot of raised eyebrows. Manfred is a gay bar owner, so we have to make the clarification we live UP the street from him.

Some more crazy things that happened this week we were in lessons and there was this little green chile sitting on the table. It's smaller than a pea and I was just playing with it rolling it around in my fingers. But suddenly my eyebrow started to burn like crazy. It felt like I was all of sudden bleeding and I thought I had been bitten by some crazy spider. I felt it with my finger and it got worse. Then I licked it to see if it was blood because I couldn't tell in the dark. Then I realized what had happened because the tip of my tongue got burnt off. Holy cow that thing was sooooo hot! My tongue and eyebrow and then even the back of my neck was on fire for like 20 minutes but I didn't want to disrupt the lesson. Holy cow it was bad.....

Speaking of cow, we had this cow stew the other day. But it was like a soup of the rawhide of the cow. And most of the pieces of meat still had hair on them. Nasty. But it actually tasted pretty good.

photos of my first district huge toad bigger than my shoe...

Amazing sunset ...

Oh funny story about the sunset. We hiked to go see this sunset in the middle of the cornfield but then we were greeted by these two ladies with machetes. They thought we were trying to steal some corn and then told us that there were people that were really bad and would hurt us for being in their field.... so we left really fast.

But ya what a week!