Elder Scotty Pugmire's Guatemala Postings: Week 47...6/29/15...Birthday in the mission, Hot, Hot, Hot

So this week has been pretty great but also kinda average! The only crazy thing that happened Wednesday. We announced Sunday that we were going to be showing Meet the Mormons on Saturday. We had clearance and everything and everyone was super pumped to go! But then on Wednesday, we got a notice from a member that they had gotten an invitation to a birthday party and they were going to use the court outside the church for it but they had never said anything to us. We ended up getting a ton of people worried about if the movie was gonna get canceled. So we went to go talk to the people and long story short.... we had to cancel. The birthday parties here are huge.

Here they don't have lawnmowers just machetes and a stick with a little stick on the end to pull the weeds to a good position to cut them.

My wrist tan photo that you asked for.

Speaking of birthday parties I had probably the best birthday any missionary could ever ask for. We happened to have our Zone Meeting changed from the 25 to the 26th! So that was awesome! We ended up waking up at 3 and walking an hour to go wake up some Jovenes so that they could get on the 5 o'clock bus for the youth activity.

Early morning walk. Notice the times.

We left around 3:45 am and got there at 4:45 am and notice that even though it's 4:45 am and we're only walking I'm already dripping from sweat.

From our branch 12 of the Jovenes went and seems like they had a blast!

The meeting ended up being combined with Zona Las Palmas! When we got there Presidente Ruiz and Hermana Ruiz wished me a Happy Birthday and after the meeting, they brought out a cake!!!! Presidente Ruiz had his birthday on the 17th but we just celebrated together! So that was awesome!

Part of the cake!

Me, Presidente Y Hermana Ruiz for my birthday.
They also said that their youngest son was turning 22 that same day!

Then we got back to our area and we went to visit Hna Gloria's. She surprised us by telling us she made us dinner and we helped make the tortillas! They killed and prepared 2 of their chickens which was super special for me because their family really doesn't have much. It was awesome!

Me and Hna Gloria tortillando! That tortilla right there is my 1120 tortilla eaten in the mission as of 26-6-2015

Birthday dinner ''mole'' she gave me two plates of this I was so full I almost died.

Saturday we helped out with the birthday party and ended up having to stay extra long to clean it up. Supposedly my comp, who worked as a clown, was supposed to help with all of the games during the party but didn't prepare anything. So with some quick thinking and some of my Birthday Party Hero-ing experience whipped up some quick games and the kids loved it! So that was great! This Sunday we had a super great Sunday meeting where I and my comp gave talks and we had 5 investigators come to church! Today for p'day we played kickball and frisbee which was awesome!

Some tough parts of the week have been the heat and bikes. The heat is almost unbearable! My bike quit working on Tuesday from all the mud and my comp's bike hasn't been working since last week but we've been borrowing the bike of a member. I had to carry my bike about half a mile to get home, but with some engineering and part swapping from my companion's bike it was back on the roads on Wednesday. But soon is going to be ruled unusable because of the crack in the mainframe.

But it's been great! Life is good and I'm living the dream! Please tell everyone thanks for the Birthday Wishes though I'm sure I wasn't able to see all of them.

Love you all!

Elder Pugmire