Week 12...10/27/14...Another week down and camera problems

Well, first things first I've got some great pictures... Well, I had some great pictures. But then as I was organizing them on a Spanish computer I decided it was best to just delete them all. Great right? So ya, all of my pictures are gone. So that is super disappointing. Also, I've learned that these public computers are full of viruses so that's good.

Other than that though this week was awesome!

We had some crazy experiences! For example, we were meeting with the Elders Quorum president when we saw a huge rat run under the couch he was sitting on. We all jumped up and shut off all of the windows and doors so there was nowhere for him to escape. Then we chased him around the room from under couches and chairs till he ran to the corner of the room and ran up the wall. Hiding in the top corner of the room until Elder Gonzalez nailed it with his backpack and then Elder Gavarrette stomped on it. We took some awesome pictures but they are well... ya.

We also got caught in this huge rainstorm.

As we were taking selfies in the rain some people who were working at a coffee separating place invited us over to get us out of the rain. We had a pretty good talk with the three of them and then set up some more appointments. 

We made the Journey to El Provenir which is like a 30-minute ride to the edge of our area. But the place is HUGE! A lot bigger than I thought it was! It's probably double the size of San Pablo. We met with our only member there who's about 18 years old and owns a Great Dane which is massive! (Also in the now nonexistent pictures.) Then we met a super cool family of 8 who was are going to go back to teach this week. This week we also found another less active family who is super cool! they are super nice and were super excited when we ran into them. They said they hadn't been visited for almost 4 years! So we got to talk with them and are working to reactivate them.

I've been wanting to make some smoothies but our blender was nasty. So I cleaned it like 4 times and on the last time I left it in bleach and it looked like this.

So I decided if I wanted to keep living I'd probably have to survive on just pancakes for now. Which reminds me, the syrup here is sub-par, to say the least, so if you could send some mapleine that would be fantastic! 

P-day today was awesome! We went to this member's house as a zone and made these tortillas that are traditional in Honduras. You serve them will beans and eggs and cheese and they are super good! The tortillas kinda look like flat scones. (Also mom could you send me the recipe for the scones we make?) It's tough to cook here because almost everything I know how to cook it in the oven. And our house only has a little plugin stove. But I'm learning...lots of eggs and pancakes and buying bread from the bakeries. That's just a summary of the week! Our zone broke the zone record and we are the zone of the month in our mission so that's exciting!

Life is good and always getting better! I hope everyone else is doing just as well!

Love, 

Elder Pugmire

Answers to questions:

My companion and housemates are great! Spanish is coming a lot better! I'm able to understand almost everything that's said but still working on my ability to speak. I have yet to receive any of the mail or packages. The van is sweet! Tell dad good job on the ramp! It looks great!  Man! I think another name for the van could be the Swagin' Waggin' Because it's sweet!

The windows look awesome!

Week 11...10/20/14...Weddings, Baptisms, and Exchange Miracles

Wow. Time is flying by it feels like! On the 29th I will have already had my first change in the mission! How Crazy is that!? This week was really good! This Wednesday we went down to Reu for a training meeting with all of the new missionaries. It was super awesome because I got to see Elder Elggren and Elder Mattson who I haven't got to see since I've gotten here! So that was awesome! The bus ride to Reu was actually a lot better this time so no complaints there!

Much Better Bus Ride to REU

The days really are starting to fly by and they seem to blend together even more! Its tough to keep what happened yesterday and what happened two weeks ago separate!

On Tuesday I went on divisions with Elder Fickes, an Elder who is just as new as I am. We went to his area and just started receiving blessings left and right. We went to teach this family he had in mind and we both taught with no problems at all with the Spanish! Truly a gift from God as the gift of tongues. The family we taught have obviously been prepared by the Spirit. After our message they told us just how happy they felt and said that they couldn't wait to hear more. We testified of the Holy Ghost that was present and then set up our next appointment. Later that day we ran into 4 more people who seemed to be ready for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One guy had read all of the Book of Mormon,  Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price and wanted to learn more about the church. IT was incredible. It was a testament to me of the quote ¨Obedience brings blessings, but exact obedience bring miracles!¨

Trying to be creative with selfies is no talent of mine. But it is always raining here.

This week we had two more baptisms! The parents of Jilda who we baptized last week! They weren't married so we held a wedding for them before their baptism!

Wedding

They seemed to be super happy but its hard to tell because the people here just hate pictures. I don't know what it is! Everyone will be smiling and laughing and then you say that were gonna take a picture and bam! All of the smiles disappear or they put on an expression of who knows what. It is really a mystery to behold. I'm sure you can all see it in the pictures.

When I was baptizing Hilda (the mother) I realized that there was a lizard the size of my hand just sitting on the wall about 6 inches from us. I didn't want her to freak out so I just turned so she wouldn't see it and then went on with the baptism! Kinda crazy but that's just another day of life here in San Pablo!

Noe and Hilda's story. This family is incredible they live pretty far away from the church and its usually 3 quetzales per person for a one way trip from their house to San Pablo. So to make the trip to San Pablo for church is usually around 30Q for their family. What's crazy is that Hermano Noe works as a coffee picker and is really limited on the work he can get. So he said he gets paid about 10 quetzales per costal, or huge bag of coffee. Usually that's about 1-2 a day and he can work maybe 4 days a week. So on the best weeks he's having to use 30 of his 80 quetzales to get his family to church. What their family is all about is knowing that this life is a time to be tried and prepared to meet God. It's in Heaven where we can receive all the blessings not necessarily this life.

We are going to break the record for our zone with the number of people joining the church! Truly this is the time where the hastening of missionary work is going forth. We meet prepared people almost every day! For example yesterday I was on divisions with Elder Black, one of our Zone leaders. We just got done with teaching a lesson and were walking down a path. We saw a guy carrying a bunch of bags and so we asked him if we could help him. He just sat down on a rock and started to cry. he said he had just lost his job that day and that he was looking for someone to help him in his life. We walk him to his house and then set up an appointment to meet with him the next day. It seems like everyone I'm with gets some awesome people looking into the church! I'm sad that I won't be with them to teach them the gospel the rest of the way. But hopefully they continue to progress!

I made a pretty sweet bench press at Elder Black's house today as you can see from the photos. All of the cheap soda and food is starting to take its toll I'm afraid.... But next month were going to start going to the gym Malacatan, so I can keep getting Stacked! ;) 

 Life is good as always and I have no complaints! Except for this chicken we had for lunch the other day. ME and elder Black were eating lunch and the chicken just was like luke warm and we both feared that it was not cooked very well. But we both knew we had to eat it so we just prayed really hard. It seems like our prayers were answered because neither of us got sick from it!

Hope everything is going well, I love and miss you all! Look forward to hearing from you all next week!

Love, Elder Pugmire

Week 10...10/13/14..."Here we go. Time to speed write"...CRAZY is key word of the week

Ok, this email may have a ton of errors and seem rushed because it is. We had a huge rainstorm right as we started writing. It knocked out the power for like two hours so we only had a little bit of time to actually write. Here are some pictures of the rain. If you look you can see the river that some crazy motorcyclist decided to drive on.  Actually, that's a road... The rain is just crazy!

This the week was actually way crazy! We left for Reu on Tuesday to take a bus at 3 am to Guatemala City to get my Visa. On the way there we got the last bus going to Reu and man you would not believe how many people packed onto the bus. I don't have any pictures because there wasn't any room to move! I was sitting with my knees in my mouth for 2 hours because I was one the wheel seat. Holy cow!   There were 3 people in every seat with probably 50 people standing in the aisle.   There were at least a hundred people on the bus with some more riding on the roof. Crazy!

 

When we got to Reu I got to meet up with Elders Willden, Sherwood, and Ellsworth and we got to visit Elder Evans who got malaria as well as a throat fungus that is super nasty. So left to the hospital and in the morning we headed for Guat. When we got there I got to see my two old roommates that are in the Quetzaltenango mission and my companion Elder Stuart! We also saw Elder Wallace! and a bunch of others that were in the CCM with us! It was super awesome!

Apparently that day was something crazy with McDonald's. Outside of every Mcdonald's were a ton of people! They blasted music and it was more of a concert than a restaurant. They had people dancing everywhere with beauty queens cleaning people's trays. We went to eat there later that night to find that it was like big mac day. Where all they do is serve big macs and every big mac bought donates money to a children's foundation so that was really cool.

Then stayed another night in Reu and the next day took the 4-hour bus ride home to San Pablo. One of the buses was even more packed than the other one. And we had the displeasure to be standing right next to this guy's little chickens that just smelled incredible. I really got a taste and smell of the culture I guess you could say! ;)

This Saturday we had a complete miracle in getting three people baptized! Amelia and Meivy who are the mother and sister of the kids we baptized the other week and another little girl named Jilda whose family are investigators. We had a huge activity at the church where we watched a really good movie named Reto valientes. It's a movie about these police officers and the strength of families. At least that's what I got out of it... It was in Spanish so... But after that, we were getting ready for the baptism when Amelia said that her daughter was having to work and wouldn't be able to be baptized. 

We decided to pray and visit the manager of the restaurant to see if he would let her off for a little bit. I ran over there with Elder Black our zone leader and talked with him. He said they were super busy because a Soccer team was going to come at any minute to stay the night and eat at his restaurant and hotel. But miraculously he said that she could have an hour off that day and the next to get baptized and confirmed. So we ran to the church to start the baptism and were all ready when Amelia said she wanted me to Baptize her. So we had to run home to get my clothes and then we had a great baptism.

You better believe that Elder Lagos wasn't going to miss the opportunity to talk to that soccer team though. So after the baptism we went back and met some of the players from Belize. It was nice because the goalie from Belize spoke English!

This Sunday was testimony meeting and it was incredible! Just how every testimony meeting should be! Every sentence that people said started with  "Yo Se Que" or I know. No stories were told just straight testimony. The Spirit was so strong! Anyway, I'm out of time but life is going great here and the Spanish is coming a lot better all of a sudden thanks to all of your prayers!

Love you all and miss you a ton!

Love and Prayers,

Elder Pugmire

Week 9...10/6/14...It's Soooo hot! General Conference and tortas

Man this week went by so fast! I can hardly believe that it's P day again! This week was crazy though! We spent most of our time just running around to invite and get as many people to go to conference as we could. We had a zone conference a couple days ago and it was really good! Really short though! It was focused on inviting people to conference. Conference was really great! We got 11 investigators to attend as a companionship. As a district, we got 136! I think that was the highest in all of the mission so we are supposed to get a reward or some sort of thing. In the first couple of sessions, we had the opportunity to listen to everything in English! But we were so busy getting everyone to conference and welcoming people I didn't get the chance to watch much of it. The bits that I did hear we awesome! However, for the priesthood Session and the Sunday sessions, it was only in Spanish and I had a really hard time understanding anything. But Sunday was super crazy! We filled the chapel the overflow, the stage,  two other rooms to maximum capacity and still, people kept coming. We ran like crazy finding seats for everyone! We hired a bus from San Pablo to take everyone down to Malacatan and it had 3-4 people in every seat!  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2014/10?cid=HPSU100514465&lang=eng  At the last hour of conference we realized we were 3 people away from our goal of 130 investigators so we all hit the streets in the rain until we got 136 people to attend. 

This week was soooo hot! Here's a picture of me doing some super intense studying for an hour down with a fan. Ya just sitting with a fan it's that hot.

Everything here is super cheap you can buy 3 liters of a drink for like a dollar twenty-five! I'm working on my bartering skills because you can usually haggle your way down to 3/4 the price of most things. I feel like sometimes I don't do very well... Some day though... Everything here is good though!

We get a special dinner tonight at a member's home with all of our zone because we all met our goal for conference. I'm sure that it will be tortas again. That's what we have almost every night for dinner when no one offers to feed us. It's basically a huge roll with cut-up hotdogs, a piece of ham, cheese, mayo, ketchup, tomatoes, and onions. They're soooo good but the next morning most of my study is on the porcelain throne.

Life is good, God is great and His work continues to go forth.

Keep up the courage and don't forget to smile!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 8...9/29/14...San Pablo, Baptism, Fish Falls

 Two weeks into the field! Man, this week was the longest and shortest week I've ever had!  It was super good though! It rains super hard here and the streets all turn into rivers! I wish we had a kayak or something to get around because we get soaked.

We usually just walk without umbrellas or raincoats. It seems like people are more willing to talk with us when we're soaking wet.  Right at 2 o'clock. It always rains at the exact same time! almost every single day.  The other day I saw the most intense lighting bolt I've ever seen. It was right outside the house we were eating at and the sound was at the exact same time we saw it! It was probably the loudest thing I've ever heard! I almost fell out of my chair! It was so loud and bright!

We had 3 Baptisms of Yonatan, Heidy and Haidy on Saturday! It was a complete miracle because they were gone all day and we had a baptism scheduled for 4 but they didn't get home till around 6:00. So when we went to visit them their mom was super happy. We asked her why she was so happy and she said it was because her kids were so happy that they were getting baptized! She was the one who was opposed to them getting baptized in the first place. But now that everyone was super excited we headed over to the church and had a great baptism session. I led the music and gave the talk about the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

I've had some pretty good and interesting food here. We had some amazing Honduran style tacos (baleadas) on Saturday and today we had these fish that we went to get. Hermana Gladys cooked them for us,  Head, Tail, Insides, everything, but man they were so good! You can't refuse anything here. You eat everything on your plate and tell the cook that they are your favorite cook in the whole mission. The other day we were teaching a family and they gave us some water to drink. We weren't sure if it was clean or not so we just said a quick prayer and drank it. Then she offered my companion a different type of drink. He said he would like some because he liked the same thing in his home country. I said I'd try just a little. She promptly responded by filling my glass to the brim. Man,  that stuff was awful! Even my companion hated it. It was like a drink of corn with tons of corn in it, served cold. I almost threw up on the final gulp. My companion cleverly hid all of the corn seeds in his pockets. Then we thanked her for the incredible drink and went on our way. My favorite food here is the Pan or bread. They have panderias everywhere and everything is like .50 quetzales each so we usually buy like 5 Q of bread for a meal. It's so good!!!

Teaching wise, I've got the first vision down. I'm really glad I memorized it so well in the MTC because it seems no matter where or who we are teaching whenever it comes to the First Vision story something happens. A kid comes in crying, or lightning strikes, or a dog gets hit by a motorcycle. Just weird stuff. But I've been able to just keep going on what's next. That and bearing my testimony is the main thing I contribute for now but I'm learning and retaining stuff really quickly.

We went to the fishery which was like three ponds. The guy just uses his net to throw it in and catch the size of fish you want. IT'S SO HARD!! We tried and tried to get one by ourselves. Finally, on the last try, I caught a little tiny fish! I felt like a champion though!

Lt to Rt:  Elder Lagos, My Companion,  Elders Gavarette, and Gonzales

Then today we went on a hike with all of our zones to these incredible falls! I'll add some of the pictures.

uno de los calles

But everything is going really good! I can understand most of what everyone is talking about. Just not when they are talking to me. But I'm working on it! I try to keep a positive attitude all the time and try my best to always be on the move looking for new people to teach.

General conference is next week and I'm so pumped! Were trying to get 12 investigators for each companionship to attend so we're renting a bus to take down to Malacatan where the stake center is. I'm so sad that I won't be able to hear the actual voice of the prophet and apostles because everything is translated. But I know that the things they say are going to be amazing and that I´m going to learn a lot through the spirit as well.  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng

I love it out here. Guatemala is such a beautiful country and the land of the Book of Mormon. You'll see it from the pictures.

Ancient Lamanite Carving

I'm learning really fast but always praying super hard for the help of the Lord. I keep you all in my prayers every day and hope all is well!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

EFY 2012 - Give It All To Him

Week 6&7...9/22/2014...From the CCM to San Pablo

Hey guys sorry I didn´t get to email you all last week! So this is what my last couple of weeks look like...

Twenty Six new missionaries for the REU Mission

Elder

So I believe it was Tuesday that we got up at 5am and then got ready to go to the missions. We ate breakfast and said our last goodbyes to everyone. Then we loaded into the vans and headed on our way. Man the Guatemala countryside is amazing! I forgot to bring my camera so I´ll send photos next week! Anyway, we drove past a few volcanoes and then got to the mission center where we met our president. President Ruiz and Hermana Ruiz is awesome! They gave us a bunch of devotionals and fed us, Burger  King! How's that for our first meal!?

Then we had dinner at the mission home which is super nice. And then we spent the night in hotels that were more or less super sketchy.  Elder Mattson and I were worried that our fan was going to fall off during the night, but it was way too hot to turn it on. Then the next day was changes, but there were like 40 missionaries who were super late because a bunch of people started a protest and blocked the two main roads. So I didn't meet my companion till later that day.

Elder Jensen, His parents were in Jeff and EmRee's 1st BYU Married Student Ward

My companion is super cool his name is Elder Lagos and he speaks hardly any English. He's from Costa Rica and a huge futbalista. He´s only been on his mission for 7 months but he seems like a really good missionary. We went to drive up to our area but got caught up in the traffic of the roadblocks. We drove on the wrong side of the road past probably 10 miles of parked cars. (Don't worry it's pretty normal here...the driving on the wrong side of the road.) The traffic here is crazy but everyone is a super defensive driver because everyone drives crazy! Anyway, we drove until both sides were backed up and waited for an hour and a half until the police cleared it all up. We got to Malacatan a little late so we stayed the night with Elders Fickes from the MTC and Vences. Then since we had baptisms lined up the next Saturday I went on splits with the ZL Elder Black and the other one went to got to San Pablo to do the interviews. 

The next day all we did was go around and look for houses because we had a pair of sister missionaries coming with no house.

Mi Companero Elder Lagos

Once we found one we moved all of their stuff in and then cleaned it up. The houses here are super sketchy on the outside but actually pretty nice once you get inside. Most don´t have sinks. They have what they call pilas which is their version of a sink. They're usually made of cement with 2 washboards on each side and a big bin for water in the middle. They're actually super nice! The next day I finally got to my area in San Pablo.

We are sharing the house with two other missionaries.  Both Elders Gonzales and Gavarette are Latino so English has rapidly been replaced with all Spanish.

There is a decent amount of members here but a lot are less active. Everywhere we go people always say "Hi" to the elders. The little kids love us. They don't care who you are but as long as you're an Elder they´ll run up and give you a big hug. They're way harder to understand because they talk super fast and it's so tough. Everyone here is way nice and everyone you see on the street you greet with a "Buenos tardes, or noches or dias" or some other greeting. We played soccer with a bunch of investigators. And my companions seemed pretty pleased with my ability to play even though I´m not that good.

Everyone here has a super hard time saying my name it's pretty funny. I now go by Elder Puck Mire or Elder Pack Man or Elder Pug-Mirror-Ay. But other than that life is good every day I understand more and more. Today was P-day and we all headed to Malacatan with all of our zones to play basketball it was super fun!

The very first day in the area I was a little shell shocked. All Spanish, new town, new food. Holy cow it's crazy. But we went to the church and there were tons of little kids who just ran up gave me hugs. They love the new local white guy. They're even harder to understand though. Eventually, I realized they wanted me to play tag. I thought, "you know I can do that, no Spanish required." So I played tag with these primary kids. It was just what I needed, a little tender mercy and blessing from Heavenly Father.

The transportation here is mostly buses, vans, and tuk-tuks, which are just 3 wheeled little buggies which are sweet! The members feed us usually every lunch and most dinners which are super nice. It´s rained every day here and we just kind of walk everywhere in it. No umbrellas or raincoats. The lightning here is amazing. We´re having a storm right now and the power went out and deleted a bunch of my emails. But it's soooo loud I love it but my companion is always worried he´s gonna get stuck. I told him if that happens he´s one in a million. I´m loving it here and things are looking brighter every day.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

I never received any packages or any letters except for one from Julia via dear Elder .com so just thought id tell you. Hope all is well and everyone is doing great! Love you!

Editors note:  He did get emails just not snail mail.  All letters are appreciated!
 You can send mail to:

Elder Scott Pugmire
Guatemala Retalhuleu mission
POB 30150
Salt Lake City Ut 84130-0150
(These letters need to be regular envelope size with one stamp)

Packages and other letters can be sent to:

Elder Scott Kayson Pugmire
Mision Guatemala Retalhuleu
Boulevard Centenario, Zona 2, Salida
a Coatepeque
Apartado Postal No. 26
Retalhuleu Guatemala
C.A. 11001

Some packages will require you to have the mission office phone number 502 7771-2325