Elder Scotty Pugmire's Guatemala Postings: Week 82...3/2/16...Zone Running

(editor's note: his English is rough but I love hearing how he thinks in Spanish.)

Alrighty, so this week was pretty great. We've been working really hard with our mini missionaries. Me and the mini missionary, Julio Stuardo Gonzalez, took a 3-day trip this week to go and motivate zones of Malacatan, San Marcos, and San Pedro.

But before all that, Tuesday we had an awesome experience. We had Elder Lopez and his wife, from the 70, come to our mission. I and my companion talked about the Sacrament. We based our message around what do the real disciples of Jesus Christ do. In Hechos 20:7 it says that the disciples of Jesus Christ gathered the first day of the week to partake of the bread. We talked about how to teach our investigators to get them to come to church. We know that someone that really follows Christ as his disciple will be in church Sunday to participate in the Sacrament. We also made the relationship to how Jesus asked his disciples to watch with him for one hour. We then asked how can we teach our investigators to watch with The Lord for one hour. And we tied it into coming to church.

It seemed to work really well. We had over 300 people in a church in the mission. That was awesome!

But I learned a ton! Sister Lopez was super dope! She shared the story of her conversion. When she was young she and her sister helped the missionaries find her parents that would hide from the missionaries until they actually got baptized! So that was awesome! She was super fun and we learned a lot about how we need to be missionaries that have our spirits present not just bodies present.

Then Elder Lopez was awesome as well! He taught about teaching the chosen people and only the chosen people. As I was listening I had the thought of how just great of people are Elder Lopez and President Ruiz. I started thinking what do I need to do to become so great a man? Then I just had the thought ''I've been living under my own potential'' That's what I feel is the problem for a lot of people. They have such great potential and live underneath it. They settle for so little and lose so much. One of the things that Elder Elggren reminded me of that President Hinckley said was that '' The reason for men´s unhappiness is giving up what they want in the future for what they want now.'' If we fix our view on what we can see how we'll miss a lot of what the future has. So that was what we started to teach to all of the Zones we visited.

Wednesday, we started going out to Malacatan early in the morning. My mini missionary companion shared a really good message about challenging people to be baptized out of love for the people. Then I talked about teaching the people that are prepared and chosen. Basically, we used the scriptures of D&C 29:7 then DyC 41:5. Then we talked about Judges 7 how Gideon had chosen 300 warriors from 32,000 by putting them to the test of challenging them with a baptismal date. I thought that it was one of the better lessons that I'd shared in the mission with the missionaries. Then after the meeting, I went with Elder Peterson to San Pablo and interviewed an awesome family that should be getting baptized this Saturday! So we're pumped about that! Then we went to Rodeo to do some other interviews.

Three girls from San Pablo are going to get baptized this week. I did their interviews and they’re super pilas!

We spent the night in Malacatan and early the next morning we went to San Marcos. We talked about the same message and changing the culture of the mountains. I went with Elder Villegas and we went to contact and work a ton. I was surprised. Here everyone says that it's super hard to baptize in the mountains. But I felt like the people were just as normal as the low lands. So that was awesome!

A cool little Grasshopper made from grass. It was 2 quets…

I told my dad I'd send him pictures of a pickup truck that really was loaded… Here it is.

Me and Elder Villegas in Palo Gordo.

Some kids that we helped pick peas! They let us eat a few and they were super good!

Then we went to San Pedro the next day and we did the same thing! It was awesome! I love the mountains Sleeping in the cold felt soooooo good! Then we made the long drive home to be home for Stake Conference! It was awesome! President Ruiz gave a really good talk about baptism! We had a lot of investigatores tell us afterward that they felt like they need to be baptized! We brought 2 investigators and we hope that they will progress to get baptized this month!

In San Marcos with Hermano Gonzalez, Elder Garboza and Elder Guitierez.

Your standard parking in Guatemala…. I'm not sure how the car quite got there….

We went paintballing on Monday…. I got wrecked but we had a blast. The entrance has a ton of sports equipment that they use to decorate the trees.

But that's what this week was all about! We don´t have many people to teach right now but we are working really hard in the areas all over the mission so that's good! Hope all is well at home! This email was probably kinda choppy because writing it in the office gets really distracting with tons of stuff to do! Love you all!

Love,

Elder Pugmire