Week 32...3/15/15...Daili Julio and Cristofer, Tacuazines

Hey Howdy Hey. Man, first of all, I was so pumped today because I got a bunch of emails from a bunch of people I haven't heard from since I left on the mission. Thanks, everyone for all of the emails, love, support, and prayers. Really, I'm flattered and extremely grateful. The numbers 3 and 2 definitely are significant this week.

3:  We had 3 baptisms this week! Daili Julio and Cristofer.  Three siblings who were super excited to get baptized. We had their baptism on Sunday but we ran into some problems we filled the font in the night and went to finish filling it in the morning. We later went to pick them up and when we got to the church someone had pulled the plug and only water knee-deep was left. Plus the light had just gone out.  And all of the water here is brought from underground with an electric pump so we couldn't add any more.  Luckily the kids were all pretty small and we got them all baptized correctly with only one redo. So that was super exciting for everyone in the branch and we had a ton of branch support.

I also gave my first talk on the mission this Sunday.  I told the story of how our lacrosse team lost in the state championship with 12 seconds left.  Just writing the talk made me feel way sad.  And I realized that I still could learn from the experience.  I talked about enduring to the end and how we can't lose in the last final part of our lives. Equally, we can't repent with only 12 seconds left.  It's not enough to save the game.  I also talked about how the last minute we wasted a ton of time just waiting for the other team to act.  We should be acting and not letting The Devil control our decisions.  I thought it was a pretty decent talk and I delivered it pretty well.

2:  We killed 2  Tacuazines or opossums this week. They seem cute on TV but they are vicious and pretty nasty. Look at your arm. Just visualized a rat the size of your forearm and tail the length of your bicep. That's basically a Tacuatzin. A huge rat that eats chickens and lives.... well lived in our house. Apparently, people also eat them here as a delicacy. The first one we chased around all night on Tuesday and man this thing was HUGE!!!!! But finally, with about 30 shots of the slingshot, we got some pictures taken and through the thing over the fence. Then yesterday I saw another one. You have to shine a flashlight in their face to keep them from moving. And I guess we learned from the last one because it only took one hit to bring this other one down.  I was pretty proud of myself, to say the least.:)

Taquatizine #2

I also got my Valentine's Day package! It was amazing! And I still felt the same amount of love even though it was about a month late. Thanks, mom!

OH! I forgot to report about what happened last week during the changes meeting! We got back our test results! And during The meeting, Presidente Ruiz read off a list of about 20 Missionaries with ''Brillando notas.'' Surprise!  Surprise! I was one of them! Then he asked me and some other missionaries who were moving to comp A to stand and told us it was because of our knowledge of PMG! I was pretty excited!

"We also helped this Hermana Florinda make bread. The big dirt thing is the oven! They just put a ton of wood and burn it to heat it up and then add the bread in pans! It's soooo cool!"

But really the week was way good! We had a ton of miracles! We have a bunch of people committed to being baptized in the weeks to come so we are super happy.  I can testify that hard work and obedience brings miracles.  I hope that everyone is doing well and that you are trusting in the Lord.  I love and miss you all.

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 31...3/9/15...Changes from San Pablo to El Codo. It is So HOT!

Ok so I'm gonna be writing like a hundred miles an hour and my mom tells me my grammar is deteriorating like crazy.  It doesn't help that there isn't an English spell check or keyboard... Tal ves solo voy a escribir en español? Then everything turns out good! Alright, so this week was crazy! On Tuesday they told us that a ton of people in our zone had changes. So we spent the rest of the day saying goodbye to everyone in San Pablo.

 Elder Virgin

Elder Fickes

Elder Walton

Emilio, Oralia y Wilder

Carlos y Familia (non-member friends)

Hna Marisol y familia

Super Cool Neighbors

Hnas Mary, Sucely, Estefany y Maria Luisa where we went to eat every day. This is like my second family here in San Pablo we eat with them every day for lunch.

 Familia de Hermana Gladis

Familia de Noe converts in San Pablo

I really wasn't sad until I went to the house of Hna Amelia, my first converts.  When I told them they just broke down and everyone was crying like crazy. So that was absolutely terrible but I was really was excited to go to a new area after 6 months in San Pablo!

Familia de Amelia

Familia de Romeo. This guy's family was awesome. Seriously one of the happiest guys I know and they are all so centered on the gospel it's unbelievable! 

Going to Transfers

So Wednesday we headed to Reu and during the meeting, Presidente announced like 20 people who performed the best on the Preach My Gospel Test. I was surprised to hear that I was one of them! Then I got recognized again as one of the people that was going to be moved up to be one of the senior comps!!!!

Then the changes came.

I ended up with a guy named Elder Rodas from Honduras! He's super cool and I'm finishing his training so that makes him my stepson in the mission! Kinda cool huh!

Elder Rosales and Elder Rodas

 Our area is part of the Reu Zone called ''El Codo,'' or the elbow. That's basically what it is. . . HOT and DRY. . .and like an hour and a half out of any other area. . . and did I mention hot!? It's called El Codo because It's basically one straight dirt road with 3 crossroads and then at the end of the road makes a 90-degree turn.

El Codo. . .Hot and Dry and did I mention HOT!

The cool thing is we are the only area to use bikes! Because the area is basically all farmland and everyone lives super far away. It reminds me a ton of what Wyoming is like so that's kinda cool! But man it's sooooo hot! I sweat through my shirts and have to keep my books in plastic bags because I sweat through my backpack too! (Thanks Dad for those genes!)  The members are super pilas! It's still a branch but everyone is super cool! The missionaries lived in the church before us but now we live in a house. It's actually just a bedroom of a member's house because there aren't any houses for rent, no one lives in El Codo unless they have to. The elders used to live in the church and shower in the baptismal font before the members let us move in. However, the mission is going to build us a house on the member's land we share a house with so that won't be a problem anymore. The place where we keep all of our water has fish in it to keep it clean so that's cool and it's farmland so we live with a ton of chickens and cats. UHHH I hate cats!!!!!  (Editor's note:  He's allergic to cats.) They keep eating my bread!

The only area with bikes. . .Editors note:  Did not come with helmets . . .trying to send them asap

Elder Rodas and Kevin

 We took a ride to eat lunch and it was soooo far away we just collapsed on their hammocks. Something weird we have for lunch here: It'll be like a million degrees outside and for lunch, we'll have caldo de res, a beef stew that's boiling hot.

The cool thing is we are working super hard here in El Codo and already had one baptism this week!  His name is Kevin. So that's super awesome! We're planning on baptizing every week but we've got some work to do!

Kevin

Familia de Kevin

But that's about my life here! I'm short on time but hope all well love you and miss you all a ton!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 30...3/2/15...Wow....30 weeks...There's no way! And robbery

Man time is unreal ...it feels like a few days can be a few months and a few months can feel like a week. So this week was pretty crazy! I thought I had escaped school for a few years but we had a test on Preach My Gospel on Tuesday. I think it went pretty well but we'll get the results on Wednesday.  Tomorrow I figure out if I'm getting changed or not so I'm really anxious about that.  I know that whatever happens, it's The Lord's will.

This week I got to do divisions with Elder Lovett, our District Leader. He's super cool and a great missionary.  We taught a bunch of our investigators and he interviewed Milton. Milton is just a miracle.  I think I've told you before but he comes to church on his own and just loves The Book of Mormon.  He knows that it's true and this Sunday he told us that he wants to get baptized because he received an answer from God that it is what he should do. So that was super exciting.  The only problem is that his mom doesn't want him to get baptized again. We tried to explain everything to her but here the churches do a really good job of confusing the people. That's probably the biggest challenge that we have...combating the lies that are taught to almost everyone. It makes it really hard for some people to change their beliefs. We're praying and fasting for Milton's Mom that she can give him permission. He really needs this in his life, he's been making some great changes, but if his Mom doesn't give him permission, I think that it's gonna be tough for him to keep making these changes without support from his mom.

Funny story of the week was we were visiting this lady and her son was eating a banana and his tooth fell out and man this kid freaked out! He started running all over the house screaming ''VOY A MORIR'!!!!' I'm gonna die! It was actually quite funny to us three but not to him. 

We also had another miracle happen on Friday. We were looking through our area book and found a reference of a lady that lives kinda far away. We didn't have plans to go visit her until Saturday but we both felt like we should go on Friday. So we went and started talking to her. She told us that like a year ago her husband died in an accident and that very day she was thinking about what it was like when she went to visit the temple open house  6 years ago. She told us about the peace and tranquility she felt there and told us she wanted that in her life. We told her that it wasn't a coincidence that we showed up on that very day to visit her. We both felt like she's going to progress in the church really fast.

So that's life here! Some more fun facts... You can build a house with concrete, rebar, block, and lamina. It's super easy. That's how almost all the houses here are built. The people are really short. I'll send a picture of a guy named Sheiden who isn't a member... yet..... but in the future will be because he is super cool! He's like 30 and well you can see just not that tall. So that's life! Hope that all is well! I miss and love all of you and hope that life is going great!

I'm not sure if this happened this week or last but we got robbed. I also hadn't included this in my original emails home just to not have mom worry. I woke up and went to put some hymns on my speaker like I usually do but realized that it wasn't on my desk where it normally is. It was scary basically someone had come in and taken a ton of stuff, and even came into my room! Good thing I'm a heavy sleeper, I probably scared them off with my sleep talking. They made off with my companion's cameras and some money. However, I had two miracles and also think the guy was way dumb. He stole all the coins that I had leftover but if he would have flipped over a paper next to it he would have seen all the money I had recently pulled out for the month. Also, they had rummaged through my entire backpack, every pocket was open except one. Inside that one pocket was my camera! I was so grateful for that!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 29...2/23/15...Well its me again! Temple Trip

Hey guys! Just your friendly Elder Pugmire in with another update. I hope that all is well with everyone and if not I hope that you all are relying on our Father in Heaven to help you get through the trials. Every trial we have has a reason and something we can learn from it. 

This week was basically like two days or at least that's what it feels like! It went by sooo fast! The highlight of the week was our temple trip. That happened on Wednesday!  Basically what happened was I was really trying to receive some revelation in the temple so I was up late studying, praying, and pondering. Then I woke up at 3 so that everyone had the time to get through the shower and then I continued to study. Around 5:30 am we got picked up with almost all of our zone to go to Xela or Quetzaltenango. It was a super long ride! We got there and went right into the temple. It was soooooo incredible! It was filled with huge pictures of Jesus and other pictures of the gospel! It was so amazing! I love it. Definitely my favorite temple so far. The best part was all of the answers I received while reading my scriptures in the temple. Every single question I had got answered.  It was incredible!

Elder Lagos "My Dad" in the mission

Elder Garboza my 2nd Companion

Temple Grounds Pano

 After that we had a great lunch but also had the opportunity to go to Wendy's for the first time so we took it. We all ordered a bunch of food and headed out. Unfortunately, one of the unwanted Frosty's spilled all over my recently shined shoes and backpack. It was fine. They both needed a wash as they smelled kinda funny in the first place...haha.

The other big thing we had this week was a church activity. We organized a movie night at the church to watch The Testaments because not a lot of people really know that Jesus visited this Continent of the Americas. It was pretty good but right before it started raining so not very many people came.

We are teaching a bunch of people and a few of them are progressing really quickly. Unfortunately, I won't be here to see them get baptized but I'm still really happy for them. One of the coolest things that have happened in the past two weeks was we had this family reactivate! This family has been married in the temple and was super active before. But something happened and they have been inactive for like 2 years. Two weeks ago they just showed up at church all dressed up and everything. They said they wanted us to start visiting them again and they are just awesome! I totally know what the scriptures mean when they talk about the Prodigal Son who left, got lost in the world but then came back.  The joy of The Father is just huge. It really is so true! We are all just so happy for the people that enter or reenter the fold.  So that's about life here. 

Just some fun culture stuff. . .  Every telephone pole, as well as the trees along the road, are usually painted for a political campaign.  People just make their own speed bumps outside of their house if they feel like the cars pass by too fast, just a mix of cement they pour on the concrete road. The people are just fascinated, as always, over my ojos del gato (eyes of a cat or blue eyes) and my brown hair on my arm. It's not uncommon for me to find a new hand from a grandma or kid, sneaking up to softly brush the hairs on my arm. Usually, people call me gringo, canche, or mecho (mesh-o) which basically translates to white, brown hair, and mixed hair. But that's just the culture here. A lot of people don't know the real names of people.  They just know the nicknames and a lot are generated from physical attributes like chino, gordito, mechito or stuff like that.  Almost every store is named either Tienda Nueva Jerusalen, Tienda Bendicion de Dios, or Tienda de 2 Hermanos 3 Hermanos or some variation of those.

A fun thing that I realized. . . I really haven't left my house. I'm living in a town called San Pablo which is translated to mean Saint Paul. Like how cool is that?!?!?

Life is great here and I'm so grateful for the chance that I have to serve The Lord.

Love and prayers always,

Elder Pugmire

Week 28...2/16/15..."Hey Guys!" Presidente, Quijas, Wedding, Baptism and Valentine's Performance

Hey everybody I'm super pumped right now because we had a great week with some crazy stories!

First of all, we all had our interviews with Presidente Ruiz. He came and shared a great message with all of us about changing how we look at some things. Then we all got like 15 minutes to talk with him personally. He basically told me that I'm going to be leaving this area of San Pablo soon which is sad because I love everything about it and all of the people and members of the church are so amazing. . .but changes are always good so that's one way to look at it.

So in our house, we have these things called Quijas or something like that. They're basically geckos but they're everywhere, slightly transparent most of the time but harmless. So what we decided to do was capture them. I used my handy dandy slingshot and some 10 centavos coins shotguns style to knock them off the walls and we got 2 of them put in a plastic water bottle so that's pretty cool. 

The funny story of the week. . . So we went to go teach this lady who is super devoted to her church and definitely not interested in our message. We shared a message with her and then asked her if she would give the closing prayer. After a bit of protesting, she agreed but told us we had to come into the house to pray. By then we knew we were going to experience something different. The types of prayers here in Guatemala vary from an almost inaudible whisper to shouting and shrieking. This one was about in the middle but the lady threw herself on the floor and covered up her head with her prayer towel. We were respectful and after got up to leave, but she insisted that we stayed to drink something. As we were drinking this 5-year kid got a hold of the prayer towel and trying to be funny attempted to replicate the prayer. It was so perfect my companion and I almost lost it.  Luckily the lady thought it was funny as well so we knew it was OK to laugh.

We also had a baptism this week! Oralia finally got baptized! She's been ready to be baptized for like 2 months but we've just been waiting for them to get married.

But we got that all taken care of on Thursday. When Saturday came we got everything all set up for the wedding ceremony that my comp directed since the branch president was stuck in Xela and sick.

She was so happy and excited to get baptized and The Spirit was so strong! She asked me if I would baptize her which was just an honor and I happily agreed. We had a great baptismal ceremony with all of her family present we didn't even fit in the room! Then they provided lunch for everyone. Elder Garboza ran the wedding ceremony which I thought was a good idea since he's definitely a native Spanish speaker, and I haven't been to many weddings. Unfortunately, I don't think he had either. Basically, the ceremony was "thanks for coming, they're married, no onto the more important ceremony, the baptism." I insisted we take some pictures though to give to Oralia later.

We barely got everything cleaned up in time for our ward activity which was composed of different types of dances from every group in the church: Relief Society, Young Men and Women's, and Primary.  There was also a special act from the Missionaries presenting magic... (that's me!;)) The crazy part of the day was we rented these huge stage pieces that weighed a ton. We spent a few hours just transporting them across town in a sketchy pickup truck. While we were loading the stages back up the breaks in the truck gave out and it started rolling down the ramp at the bottom of the picture on to the street. We barely were able to pull some kids out of the way while another member jumped in to drive it out of traffic while 3 people in the back of the truck tried to keep the heavy tables from tipping over or tipping the truck over. The Lord was definitely with us that they didn't break the truck in half.

But that's about the week! I'm doing great here! Just an update on the generals... it started raining again and all of the kids went back to school last week so it's harder to find people in their houses. Did I mention the earthquake from the volcano last week?  That happened... Luckily nothing big..but hey kinda cool. I was talking in my sleep in Spanish but not just anything. . . I actually made sense. I was teaching and testifying to someone in my dream about how they can receive their answer to prayer. So that's pretty cool!

Hope all is well.  Miss you all!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 27...2/9/15...1/4 Mark!

Wow, this week was honestly so fast! I've been so tired all week because we have actually been working like crazy! We've met so many amazing people in the week that there's just not time to get to visit them all every day. I'm gonna let you all know about the people we've been teaching and just a few different highlights of the week. 

My comp has been telling me all about this food called ceviche that is from Peru.

They have it here in Guatemala but he says it's completely different. But one of the members who had learned from a Peruvian how to make it invited us over to eat. My comp was sooo happy! It tasted way good too! Also, we got back to playing soccer with our investigatores again. We invited a bunch and during the game, I scored 3 pretty impressive goals if I do say so myself. So I was pretty pumped about that.

Alright so here are some of the people we've been teaching...

Maria: she's someone we contacted into a while ago who has talked to the missionaries before. She's pretty cool and likes to learn and she's super excited because she and her boyfriends are getting married soon! So that's super awesome! She has a deformity on her right arm and has met with the Testigos a few times before.

Thank you Patty Maltez Riley for the photo of
  Volcan de Fuego

Oralia: Ok Oralia is amazing. She's the Girlfriend of a member who we've been teaching and she knows basically everything because her boyfriend has been teaching her too. They've decided to get married so we're going to hold their wedding on the 14th! She's gonna be baptized the same day! So that's incredible and we're super pumped about that!

Judith:  She's a girl that's 16 years old. We've taught here only like 4 times but she's already accepted to be baptized too! She's super smart and loves learning about the gospel. We are also teaching her sister and mom! 

Santos: We met this guy in the park one day when he walks up to us and asked us when we were gonna start teaching him. He was drunk then but we told him we'd stop by some time. Then he started talking to us about the Book of Mormon. He's read the whole thing and says he knows that it's true and loves studying it. We stopped by his house and he's been super positive only we've had a hard time finding him at home. But we're also teaching his family and his wife says he hasn't been drinking since the time we visited him last! So that's awesome!

So there are a few of the people we see during the week!

Thank you, Patty Maltez Riley
for the photo from Antigua.

I'm learning a ton as well here through reading the scriptures every day! This week was kinda crazy weather-wise. One of the volcanoes here in Guatemala exploded and we had a small earthquake which is normal. But in Malacatan ashes were raining everywhere.  Also, it started raining again and yesterday the streets were just complete rivers. That's basically it for this week!

Hope all is well with all of you that are reading.  Thanks for all of your love and support! OH, also I got a few letters from people this week! Thanks For those! They always are a very welcome surprise! Love you guys!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

1/4 MARK

(I was curious which tie he burnt.)  Which tie? Just one that I bought for 2 quets that the world is better off not having in full form.  Man, it was ugly!

Week 26...2/2/15..."Alright here's another friendly weekly update!"

My comp at the restaurant where we ate! It was super good! We had this amazing pasta. . . probably worth at least 30$ in the states. . . with a soup and drink. But how much did it cost here? 

38Q That's right 5 Bucks. I LOVE THIS PLACE!

My new Companion Elder Garboza

WOW, THIS WEEK WAS AMAZING! So right now I'm in a super good mood because we are allowed to download Disney music!!!!! WHAAAZZZ UPPPP!!!  I'm super pumped that in a few days when I buy my new speaker to be blasting out "Let it Go" in English and Spanish! Yup that's right the whole frozen video has a Spanish Song Track! WHAZZZS UPPPP WITH THAT!?! Anyway needless to say I'm super pumped!

This week was way good though! Unfortunately, I'm having trouble sending a lot of pictures. So I'm probably only gonna send a few due to time. This week the biggest thing that happened was we got to go to Multi-Zone Conference where one of the 70 of the Church President Ochoa came to visit us!

Elder Garboza

District Mateo...Elder Pugmire, Elder Ellgren, Elder Evans, Elder Willden, Elder Fickes with 6 months of stories

We learned so much from him and I took like four pages of notes! We've been trying to implement some of his teachings by looking for the people that are ready to accept the message we have for them and extending commitments more to be baptized and go to church. So that's been super amazing! We have had some miracle happen this week because of that. Also, I got to see Elder Evans Willden who I haven't seen in forever, and Elggren. They are all doing good and had some crazy stories except for Elder Evans who is still sick but still has a good attitude.

My new comp is absolutely amazing though! He is such a fantastic teacher and we get along super well! This last day we had some crazy experiences. we went to eat with an Hermana who was gonna feed us. We ate a delicious dinner and at the end Elder Solorio was leaning on their house when it broke. Ya, their house broke! The houses here aren't that sturdy and the wall caved in. Luckily he caught it before the tin roof came down. We quickly hurried and with my vast knowledge of knot tying (please use extreme sarcasm in reading this.... I have no idea how to tie knots!) tied their wall to some post that looked semi sturdy. So that was cool.

Today was super cool too! We went to the falls again so I got to go get all of my pictures from there again! So that was nice considering I've lost the others twice.

Zone Malacatan

Elder Garboza and I.  We went to the falls today which was good since my last pictures here got lost.

Elder Walton from Cody WY!

So this waterfall also has some hot springs by it that's what the orange is! HOT WATER! I wish that I could have showered in hot water there.

Notice the bandage on my elbow, evidence of the stitches that were taken out, then reopened because there was an infection that had formed. The zone leaders hadn't purchased the medication I needed to keep it clean, but after I had to go get it restitched up I got them.

This last Sunday was a complete miracle. We have really had a hard time getting people to come to visit the church. So we've been praying really hard that at least one person could come on Sunday. We called everyone we had been teaching and then went by their houses in the morning but every person we visited told us they couldn't go. So we went to go stop by some people that we met on the street that told us they would like to go sometime. When we got there we asked if they were gonna go and they told us they weren't ready. Which here in Guatemala means no. But the Joven about 15 years old jumped up and ran into the other house. We started talking to another guy who recently got like 76 stitches in his head from an accident he was in. Then all of a sudden two guys came out and said they were ready to go to church! So we went and had a great meeting. The Joven named Milton said he wanted to see a Book of Mormon because during the Testimony meeting everyone was saying that they knew it to be true.  I gave him a copy and he started reading it and at the end of the meeting said it was a ''bonito libro'' so I told him he could keep it and he stayed the rest of the meetings! We also had 3 other people investigating the Church at the meeting! It was truly a miracle!

I'm so happy that we have the chance here to change the lives of people! I hope everyone is well! These next couple of days I complete 6 months in the mission! Man time flies!

I love you all I'll talk to you next week!

Love,
Elder Pugmire