Elder Scotty Pugmire's Guatemala Postings: Week 55...8/24/15...Weekly Run, Changes, Rain, and that's about it, (editor's note: zip lining)

This week was pretty low key. Not gonna lie.

Tuesday we went contacting and we met this super awesome guy! We were looking for his wife but only ended up talking to him. He doesn't go to any church but was super pumped to hear about the true Church of Jesus Christ. And he's been reading the Book of Mormon even though we haven't been able to talk to him again. Today was changes and there's gonna be a whole lot of new people in the Zone because they're opening up two new areas!!!!

Wednesday. . . Alright I don't know what I've told you all about The Benson but it is a school built by members that have a ton of students in it all the time, named after Ezra Taft Benson. Because we live in Guatemala there are no restrictions on freedom of speech when it comes to talking about God within the schools. Basically, the owners of private schools have the ultimate say on anything that goes on within the school. We can show up anytime we want and the teachers, most of whom are returned missionaries, will give us a whole class to teach or we can go and teach individuals who are interested in learning. Wednesday we went with the Sisters Trinidad y Martinez to show the Movie "Meet the Mormons" which went pretty good! Then we went to have a lesson with a super big family. When we got there with the member family we brought with us they were all busy and had a visitor. They told us to wait and when they finished they came to talk to us and were super negative about the Church and said they had had some visits from their Pastors. But thank goodness we had this member family with us. They were sooooo awesome! They taught the whole lesson and because of what they said two of the daughters came with us to church this Sunday!

After that, it was late like 8:45 and it's like a 10-minute drive to get to our area. The members offered us a ride but we turned it down. I told my comp we needed to visit one more person. We went to look for him (Obed) but he wasn't home. His son came out and we introduced ourselves then he went inside to bring out chairs. The Spirit by then was already sooooo unbelievably strong! I turned to my comp and told him that Brian is who we need to visit and that he's gonna be super positive. . . AND HE IS! Holy Moly! He works with his dad and he's only 16. He doesn't study and it's super tough for him to read. But he's such a good kid. We went Sunday and he promised to read, pray and go to church next week! I'm sure in the next couple of weeks he will be baptized with his family.

Thursday was good we met this one guy shoveling some dirt and we joined in and set up an appointment to go Friday and finish the job. He told us his name was Samuel. He was super positive! We also met another super cool guy named Guadalupe!

Friday. . .We did some exhausting service. We dug and hauled like 20 loads of dirt for Samuel and then we had a lesson with him. He wasn't as positive as Thursday and even less so when another investigator told us he had lied to us and that his name wasn't really Samuel.... but we felt good about our service. I was so tired of getting home that I fell asleep taking dats and didn't wake up till the next day. I'm sure that my district thought I had died or something.

Saturday. . . MAN TODAY WAS AWESOME!!! We got to watch a special conference with President Nelson as a zone today! It was broadcast to a bunch of different missions and it was amazing! I took a ton of notes. But what we really learned was we need to do more family history work as missionaries. So my comp and I right after that headed out to start telling the world about how they could look up and find their ancestors whenever they wanted! People were just blown away! We are really gonna have some success with that.

The saddest part of this week was one of our investigators died. We were teaching this guy named Hector and his daughter. The first lesson I had with him I felt like he really needed the gospel. I think what it really was though was his family needed the gospel. Because later we went with Hector's brother, who's a member, to talk to his family about The Plan of Salvation. I think it brought them a lot more peace and we're going to go back to visit them. We invited all of them to pray about the plan to find out if it is true. The Daughter, Maria, told us she did and now knew that her dad was fine. It was incredible!

To start this week we only had 2 possibilities for baptism but we fasted and ended with 4!!!! Almost 5! It was such a miracle! P'day today was awesome. we went zip lining on a little ropes course with Zona Tecun Uman! IT was awesome!

HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYONE