Week 29...2/23/15...Well its me again! Temple Trip

Hey guys! Just your friendly Elder Pugmire in with another update. I hope that all is well with everyone and if not I hope that you all are relying on our Father in Heaven to help you get through the trials. Every trial we have has a reason and something we can learn from it. 

This week was basically like two days or at least that's what it feels like! It went by sooo fast! The highlight of the week was our temple trip. That happened on Wednesday!  Basically what happened was I was really trying to receive some revelation in the temple so I was up late studying, praying, and pondering. Then I woke up at 3 so that everyone had the time to get through the shower and then I continued to study. Around 5:30 am we got picked up with almost all of our zone to go to Xela or Quetzaltenango. It was a super long ride! We got there and went right into the temple. It was soooooo incredible! It was filled with huge pictures of Jesus and other pictures of the gospel! It was so amazing! I love it. Definitely my favorite temple so far. The best part was all of the answers I received while reading my scriptures in the temple. Every single question I had got answered.  It was incredible!

Elder Lagos "My Dad" in the mission

Elder Garboza my 2nd Companion

Temple Grounds Pano

 After that we had a great lunch but also had the opportunity to go to Wendy's for the first time so we took it. We all ordered a bunch of food and headed out. Unfortunately, one of the unwanted Frosty's spilled all over my recently shined shoes and backpack. It was fine. They both needed a wash as they smelled kinda funny in the first place...haha.

The other big thing we had this week was a church activity. We organized a movie night at the church to watch The Testaments because not a lot of people really know that Jesus visited this Continent of the Americas. It was pretty good but right before it started raining so not very many people came.

We are teaching a bunch of people and a few of them are progressing really quickly. Unfortunately, I won't be here to see them get baptized but I'm still really happy for them. One of the coolest things that have happened in the past two weeks was we had this family reactivate! This family has been married in the temple and was super active before. But something happened and they have been inactive for like 2 years. Two weeks ago they just showed up at church all dressed up and everything. They said they wanted us to start visiting them again and they are just awesome! I totally know what the scriptures mean when they talk about the Prodigal Son who left, got lost in the world but then came back.  The joy of The Father is just huge. It really is so true! We are all just so happy for the people that enter or reenter the fold.  So that's about life here. 

Just some fun culture stuff. . .  Every telephone pole, as well as the trees along the road, are usually painted for a political campaign.  People just make their own speed bumps outside of their house if they feel like the cars pass by too fast, just a mix of cement they pour on the concrete road. The people are just fascinated, as always, over my ojos del gato (eyes of a cat or blue eyes) and my brown hair on my arm. It's not uncommon for me to find a new hand from a grandma or kid, sneaking up to softly brush the hairs on my arm. Usually, people call me gringo, canche, or mecho (mesh-o) which basically translates to white, brown hair, and mixed hair. But that's just the culture here. A lot of people don't know the real names of people.  They just know the nicknames and a lot are generated from physical attributes like chino, gordito, mechito or stuff like that.  Almost every store is named either Tienda Nueva Jerusalen, Tienda Bendicion de Dios, or Tienda de 2 Hermanos 3 Hermanos or some variation of those.

A fun thing that I realized. . . I really haven't left my house. I'm living in a town called San Pablo which is translated to mean Saint Paul. Like how cool is that?!?!?

Life is great here and I'm so grateful for the chance that I have to serve The Lord.

Love and prayers always,

Elder Pugmire

Week 28...2/16/15..."Hey Guys!" Presidente, Quijas, Wedding, Baptism and Valentine's Performance

Hey everybody I'm super pumped right now because we had a great week with some crazy stories!

First of all, we all had our interviews with Presidente Ruiz. He came and shared a great message with all of us about changing how we look at some things. Then we all got like 15 minutes to talk with him personally. He basically told me that I'm going to be leaving this area of San Pablo soon which is sad because I love everything about it and all of the people and members of the church are so amazing. . .but changes are always good so that's one way to look at it.

So in our house, we have these things called Quijas or something like that. They're basically geckos but they're everywhere, slightly transparent most of the time but harmless. So what we decided to do was capture them. I used my handy dandy slingshot and some 10 centavos coins shotguns style to knock them off the walls and we got 2 of them put in a plastic water bottle so that's pretty cool. 

The funny story of the week. . . So we went to go teach this lady who is super devoted to her church and definitely not interested in our message. We shared a message with her and then asked her if she would give the closing prayer. After a bit of protesting, she agreed but told us we had to come into the house to pray. By then we knew we were going to experience something different. The types of prayers here in Guatemala vary from an almost inaudible whisper to shouting and shrieking. This one was about in the middle but the lady threw herself on the floor and covered up her head with her prayer towel. We were respectful and after got up to leave, but she insisted that we stayed to drink something. As we were drinking this 5-year kid got a hold of the prayer towel and trying to be funny attempted to replicate the prayer. It was so perfect my companion and I almost lost it.  Luckily the lady thought it was funny as well so we knew it was OK to laugh.

We also had a baptism this week! Oralia finally got baptized! She's been ready to be baptized for like 2 months but we've just been waiting for them to get married.

But we got that all taken care of on Thursday. When Saturday came we got everything all set up for the wedding ceremony that my comp directed since the branch president was stuck in Xela and sick.

She was so happy and excited to get baptized and The Spirit was so strong! She asked me if I would baptize her which was just an honor and I happily agreed. We had a great baptismal ceremony with all of her family present we didn't even fit in the room! Then they provided lunch for everyone. Elder Garboza ran the wedding ceremony which I thought was a good idea since he's definitely a native Spanish speaker, and I haven't been to many weddings. Unfortunately, I don't think he had either. Basically, the ceremony was "thanks for coming, they're married, no onto the more important ceremony, the baptism." I insisted we take some pictures though to give to Oralia later.

We barely got everything cleaned up in time for our ward activity which was composed of different types of dances from every group in the church: Relief Society, Young Men and Women's, and Primary.  There was also a special act from the Missionaries presenting magic... (that's me!;)) The crazy part of the day was we rented these huge stage pieces that weighed a ton. We spent a few hours just transporting them across town in a sketchy pickup truck. While we were loading the stages back up the breaks in the truck gave out and it started rolling down the ramp at the bottom of the picture on to the street. We barely were able to pull some kids out of the way while another member jumped in to drive it out of traffic while 3 people in the back of the truck tried to keep the heavy tables from tipping over or tipping the truck over. The Lord was definitely with us that they didn't break the truck in half.

But that's about the week! I'm doing great here! Just an update on the generals... it started raining again and all of the kids went back to school last week so it's harder to find people in their houses. Did I mention the earthquake from the volcano last week?  That happened... Luckily nothing big..but hey kinda cool. I was talking in my sleep in Spanish but not just anything. . . I actually made sense. I was teaching and testifying to someone in my dream about how they can receive their answer to prayer. So that's pretty cool!

Hope all is well.  Miss you all!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 27...2/9/15...1/4 Mark!

Wow, this week was honestly so fast! I've been so tired all week because we have actually been working like crazy! We've met so many amazing people in the week that there's just not time to get to visit them all every day. I'm gonna let you all know about the people we've been teaching and just a few different highlights of the week. 

My comp has been telling me all about this food called ceviche that is from Peru.

They have it here in Guatemala but he says it's completely different. But one of the members who had learned from a Peruvian how to make it invited us over to eat. My comp was sooo happy! It tasted way good too! Also, we got back to playing soccer with our investigatores again. We invited a bunch and during the game, I scored 3 pretty impressive goals if I do say so myself. So I was pretty pumped about that.

Alright so here are some of the people we've been teaching...

Maria: she's someone we contacted into a while ago who has talked to the missionaries before. She's pretty cool and likes to learn and she's super excited because she and her boyfriends are getting married soon! So that's super awesome! She has a deformity on her right arm and has met with the Testigos a few times before.

Thank you Patty Maltez Riley for the photo of
  Volcan de Fuego

Oralia: Ok Oralia is amazing. She's the Girlfriend of a member who we've been teaching and she knows basically everything because her boyfriend has been teaching her too. They've decided to get married so we're going to hold their wedding on the 14th! She's gonna be baptized the same day! So that's incredible and we're super pumped about that!

Judith:  She's a girl that's 16 years old. We've taught here only like 4 times but she's already accepted to be baptized too! She's super smart and loves learning about the gospel. We are also teaching her sister and mom! 

Santos: We met this guy in the park one day when he walks up to us and asked us when we were gonna start teaching him. He was drunk then but we told him we'd stop by some time. Then he started talking to us about the Book of Mormon. He's read the whole thing and says he knows that it's true and loves studying it. We stopped by his house and he's been super positive only we've had a hard time finding him at home. But we're also teaching his family and his wife says he hasn't been drinking since the time we visited him last! So that's awesome!

So there are a few of the people we see during the week!

Thank you, Patty Maltez Riley
for the photo from Antigua.

I'm learning a ton as well here through reading the scriptures every day! This week was kinda crazy weather-wise. One of the volcanoes here in Guatemala exploded and we had a small earthquake which is normal. But in Malacatan ashes were raining everywhere.  Also, it started raining again and yesterday the streets were just complete rivers. That's basically it for this week!

Hope all is well with all of you that are reading.  Thanks for all of your love and support! OH, also I got a few letters from people this week! Thanks For those! They always are a very welcome surprise! Love you guys!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

1/4 MARK

(I was curious which tie he burnt.)  Which tie? Just one that I bought for 2 quets that the world is better off not having in full form.  Man, it was ugly!

Week 26...2/2/15..."Alright here's another friendly weekly update!"

My comp at the restaurant where we ate! It was super good! We had this amazing pasta. . . probably worth at least 30$ in the states. . . with a soup and drink. But how much did it cost here? 

38Q That's right 5 Bucks. I LOVE THIS PLACE!

My new Companion Elder Garboza

WOW, THIS WEEK WAS AMAZING! So right now I'm in a super good mood because we are allowed to download Disney music!!!!! WHAAAZZZ UPPPP!!!  I'm super pumped that in a few days when I buy my new speaker to be blasting out "Let it Go" in English and Spanish! Yup that's right the whole frozen video has a Spanish Song Track! WHAZZZS UPPPP WITH THAT!?! Anyway needless to say I'm super pumped!

This week was way good though! Unfortunately, I'm having trouble sending a lot of pictures. So I'm probably only gonna send a few due to time. This week the biggest thing that happened was we got to go to Multi-Zone Conference where one of the 70 of the Church President Ochoa came to visit us!

Elder Garboza

District Mateo...Elder Pugmire, Elder Ellgren, Elder Evans, Elder Willden, Elder Fickes with 6 months of stories

We learned so much from him and I took like four pages of notes! We've been trying to implement some of his teachings by looking for the people that are ready to accept the message we have for them and extending commitments more to be baptized and go to church. So that's been super amazing! We have had some miracle happen this week because of that. Also, I got to see Elder Evans Willden who I haven't seen in forever, and Elggren. They are all doing good and had some crazy stories except for Elder Evans who is still sick but still has a good attitude.

My new comp is absolutely amazing though! He is such a fantastic teacher and we get along super well! This last day we had some crazy experiences. we went to eat with an Hermana who was gonna feed us. We ate a delicious dinner and at the end Elder Solorio was leaning on their house when it broke. Ya, their house broke! The houses here aren't that sturdy and the wall caved in. Luckily he caught it before the tin roof came down. We quickly hurried and with my vast knowledge of knot tying (please use extreme sarcasm in reading this.... I have no idea how to tie knots!) tied their wall to some post that looked semi sturdy. So that was cool.

Today was super cool too! We went to the falls again so I got to go get all of my pictures from there again! So that was nice considering I've lost the others twice.

Zone Malacatan

Elder Garboza and I.  We went to the falls today which was good since my last pictures here got lost.

Elder Walton from Cody WY!

So this waterfall also has some hot springs by it that's what the orange is! HOT WATER! I wish that I could have showered in hot water there.

Notice the bandage on my elbow, evidence of the stitches that were taken out, then reopened because there was an infection that had formed. The zone leaders hadn't purchased the medication I needed to keep it clean, but after I had to go get it restitched up I got them.

This last Sunday was a complete miracle. We have really had a hard time getting people to come to visit the church. So we've been praying really hard that at least one person could come on Sunday. We called everyone we had been teaching and then went by their houses in the morning but every person we visited told us they couldn't go. So we went to go stop by some people that we met on the street that told us they would like to go sometime. When we got there we asked if they were gonna go and they told us they weren't ready. Which here in Guatemala means no. But the Joven about 15 years old jumped up and ran into the other house. We started talking to another guy who recently got like 76 stitches in his head from an accident he was in. Then all of a sudden two guys came out and said they were ready to go to church! So we went and had a great meeting. The Joven named Milton said he wanted to see a Book of Mormon because during the Testimony meeting everyone was saying that they knew it to be true.  I gave him a copy and he started reading it and at the end of the meeting said it was a ''bonito libro'' so I told him he could keep it and he stayed the rest of the meetings! We also had 3 other people investigating the Church at the meeting! It was truly a miracle!

I'm so happy that we have the chance here to change the lives of people! I hope everyone is well! These next couple of days I complete 6 months in the mission! Man time flies!

I love you all I'll talk to you next week!

Love,
Elder Pugmire