Week 14...11/11/14...Testimony sharing magician, Wilson and the dog dazer

Alright kind of a crazy week. Especially since I'm writing Tuesday. The reason is that the brother of the owner of the Internet shop passed away and his funeral was yesterday. We attended the funeral since they are both members. But we couldn't write because the shop wasn't going to be opened up. And there isn't another place that was open that would let us four elders write for the time we needed. They only gave us a little time to write today so here's a quick update of the week.

Ok, here's the real story, I didn't include it in my original letter because I didn't want anyone worrying. But on Sunday I and Elder Lagos were headed to a dinner appointment around 6 where we were supposed to meet up with the other missionaries. We were thinking that we should stop by and pick up our USB drives that were being fixed by the shop owner. However, we both had a feeling that we should just do it the next day, we saw Wilson (Lysandro's brother) sitting on the curb of the street and we said hi to him, and continued on our way a few blocks away to the place where we were going to eat dinner. We sat there waiting for the elders and we called and called, but no answer, we both had a sickening feeling about it. By then the people we were eating with got a call with the news that there had been a shooting right outside of Lysandro's Cybershop. Not even 10 minutes from the time that we had passed it. We waited for a bit till we felt like we could go look for the other Elders there. We found them there trying to comfort Lysandro and Marisol who saw the whole thing, there were tons of people all over the street with Wilson just laying there dead. The cyber shop was a mess with broken glass from stray bullets but luckily no one else was hit. Wilson supposedly had been a mix-up with some bad stuff and that week 3 more people were shot and killed that were "linked with Wilson". Lorenzo was terrified that he'd be targeted because he was his brother, and ended up leaving for Mexico. So ya, there's the whole story I guess. 

One thing that is very common here are the earthquakes. We usually have 2-3 tremors every week but I rarely feel them. My companion always is like ''Elder, Elder, did you feel that?  Esta temblando!'' I just look at him confused and tell him that he's crazy. But this week we had one while we were teaching this guy who is a recent convert. It shook the whole house for like 5 seconds! Man, it was crazy! Luckily nothing happened but it certainly was an experience.

Also another crazy thing. On Wednesday we went to bring our clothes to get washed by the lady who washes our clothes. When we got back the other elders told us that one of our investigators asked if we could come to do magic for some elderly people at the new market. (And by us I mean me). We thought it could be a good opportunity for service so we went up. I was expecting some little breakfast get together of  15 people or so. But obviously, they were expecting us and about 30 elderly people were sitting in chairs looking at a little table. Around them were about 30 more people curious about what was happening. As soon as we got there they directed me to the table and gave me a microphone.

I tried to take on the stage confidence I usually have when doing magic but it was a lot harder in Spanish. After I introduced myself the lady took away the microphone claiming she spoke ingles and would be interpreted for me. (I continued speaking Spanish and she just repeated everything. Everything went really well and I think that everyone really enjoyed it.

Then in the end, the lady asked me if we wanted to say anything. I looked to my companion and he just gave me the thumbs up and continued sitting in the crowd. So I took my microphone back and told everyone why we were here. I told them about our message of Jesus Christ and how it could bless their lives. I invited everyone to hear our message and told them it was true. I don't really remember much because I think all of it was a different voice saying it. Definitely the Spirit in another manifestation of the Gift of Tongues.

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We continued cutting wood this week and I've got some sweet blisters. But the Guatemaltecos really enjoy watching the Gringos work. I got the Halloween package! Thank you so much it was perfect! All of my housemates say thanks too! They loved all of the candy and Carne Seca (jerky)! Speaking of food. I made the most delicious pancakes the other day. We don't usually eat breakfast but the other day I made pancakes with Nesquick mix mixed into it along with chopped up bananas. Oh my goodness they were sooooo good.

OH one other thing that was super helpful this week. I bought the battery to put into my dog repeller. Holy Moly that thing works wonders. We have this one investigator whose dogs always attack us. But the day I brought the dog repeller they ran up even more aggressive and mad than normal with no owner in sight. But then I pressed the button and they ran right back the way they came and we haven't had problems with them since. We got the chance to work with the AP's this week which was super awesome!

Also we had this one recent convert named Genaro. He is an alcoholic and very rarely is sober. But he is probably the most diligent reader of the scriptures. He always shares what he learned the last time he read. I don't know how he understands or remembers but he does. I really like him. If we could get him to stop drinking he would be so strong in the church. But the other day we showed up to teach him and he had invited a fellow alcoholic to listen to us. He said he had been sober for 2 days and was looking for some more help so Genaro introduced him to us. Now he is one of our top investigators and we have a baptism set up for him in a couple weeks.

Anyway, that's about it!  Thanks for all of your love and support and prayers! It all really helps every day! Hope all is well with everyone! Thanks again!
Love,
Elder Pugmire 

Tell Grant I'm way proud of him! He's such a good kid and man it seems like he's gonna be even better when I get back! It sounds like your doctor visits are tough but hopefully,  everything will get better! You're always in my prayers. That's funny to hear about Zac on his date! Just email as much as you want I'll have time to read it either this week or the next. Thanks again for the package! Everyone seemed to enjoy it! I've gone through a bag of jerky and vanilla tootsie rolls already which were super awesome! The peanut butter I'm savoring though. The status of the package was pretty good though. The sugar cubes, except for a few, all held together. The plastic bags of the gummy worms and caramels have ripped in a few places but for the most part, it was all really good!

Week 13...11/3/14 ...Holy Cow! Sunset and lumberjack

Holy cow. This week was insane! So many things happened it could have been just a month! First of all, on Tuesday we had our changes meeting to find out that a ton of people in our zone were leaving. Including our district leader Elder Vences and one of the other companions in our house, Elder Gavarrette. However, we also got news that we were going to get new elders to train. We got two new Latinos and one norte from the CCM. Elder Toala is the new elder living with us and he's from Ecuador and only has 4 days in the mission now. He's super cool though just a little quiet.

Elder Gavarrette, Vences, Fickes, Lagos, Me, Kanahele, Keck, and Gonzales

Kind of a crazy thing that happened the other day. We were contacting in the streets and had just turned down this street when this drunk guy ran up to us and said. ''Elderes! I want you to come and teach me and my kids about your church because I want to learn about Jesus and get baptized into your church.'' It was such a perfect thing that we went with him even though he was drunk hoping that we could meet his family. We had a lesson with him and his wife but his two kids were not there. Apparently, he had already had some lessons with the missionaries because he had a Book of Mormon and he remembered this scene from the testaments video. The part where Jesus is on the cross and says ''Father forgive them for they know not what they do.'' It was so funny because he quoted that part to us almost 10 times. It was all we could do to keep from laughing. He had the head bob down and everything. 

On Wednesday Elder Gonzalez went to get his new companion in Reu and so we went to Tocache in their area to go to a tarde de hermanamiento. Here the times a little different. It was supposed to start at 4 but people didn't start to show up until 5. So we got out super late and ended up missing some appointments. On the way home one of the members went to find us a pickup truck to drive all of the members back. Unfortunately, I think the driver was drunk. We ran into a van right as we were starting to leave the town. Luckily we were both going really slow and just the front of the truck hit the van going the opposite direction. Both of the drivers got out looked at the damage and just continued on their way completely different than how it would have been if we were in America. We got home safely thankfully, even with all of his swerving. We got off at the very first stop we could and then walked the rest of the way home. That was pretty exciting.

Right now I'm known as a magician, missionary, and professional lumberjack. We were with some less active members helping them cut wood. But here they cut it with the wood laying parallel to the ground. It's sooooo hard to cut even a little bit. But somehow even the old guys just go to town. But when it was my turn I just set up the wood how we would cut it in the states and just blazed through the pile of wood. So now everyone asks us to help cut wood.

Elder Meyer is our new leader de districto and he is super cool! I got to spend a day on divisions with him. This was during the day of the dead. We don't have Halloween here but everyone goes crazy for the day of the dead. Everyone goes to the cemetery to decorate every little square inch of gravestone and ground with flowers, food, and plastic decorations. There is also a substantial increase in the drunks passed out on the ground. We have started a new thing in San Pablo. We say HOYYYYYYYY really loud to greet people, and all of our neighbors answer back and the drunks too. They are usually just laying in the middle of the sidewalk or side of the street they actually look really comfortable... Not really... So flashback to the MTC we asked Hermano Mendez (MTC teacher) how he'd recommend teaching the law of chastity to someone who was homosexual. He said, don't worry we don't have that in Guatemala, which I no know is not true. San Pablo, it's known for its several gay men. It isn't a problem, but they are very open about it and we receive catcalls from them almost every day, especially if you're white (that's me). It's usually the only time I'm happy I don't really understand what the people are saying. It also is interesting because when we tell people we live on the "Callejon de Manfred" we get a lot of raised eyebrows. Manfred is a gay bar owner, so we have to make the clarification we live UP the street from him.

Some more crazy things that happened this week we were in lessons and there was this little green chile sitting on the table. It's smaller than a pea and I was just playing with it rolling it around in my fingers. But suddenly my eyebrow started to burn like crazy. It felt like I was all of sudden bleeding and I thought I had been bitten by some crazy spider. I felt it with my finger and it got worse. Then I licked it to see if it was blood because I couldn't tell in the dark. Then I realized what had happened because the tip of my tongue got burnt off. Holy cow that thing was sooooo hot! My tongue and eyebrow and then even the back of my neck was on fire for like 20 minutes but I didn't want to disrupt the lesson. Holy cow it was bad.....

Speaking of cow, we had this cow stew the other day. But it was like a soup of the rawhide of the cow. And most of the pieces of meat still had hair on them. Nasty. But it actually tasted pretty good.

photos of my first district huge toad bigger than my shoe...

Amazing sunset ...

Oh funny story about the sunset. We hiked to go see this sunset in the middle of the cornfield but then we were greeted by these two ladies with machetes. They thought we were trying to steal some corn and then told us that there were people that were really bad and would hurt us for being in their field.... so we left really fast.

But ya what a week!

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