Week 74...1/4/2016...Christmas and New Year's

Walking through the forest with my companion.

Alright. Not gonna lie. I haven't had the desire to write at all these past weeks. There's just not enough time in the day! There's just so much more to be doing but I know that you all want to hear what's up with life and all so I'll let you know. The good thing is that I took a lot of photos these last few weeks so you can see all those.

Basically, last week all we did was run around looking for the photographer from the Coro Navideño. We need all of the photos so that we can contact everyone that went there. But, we never found him.

Thursday, was Christmas Eve and it was crazy! Here are a few of the traditions that they do here.  

A tradition here is to throw a ton of pine needles in on the ground to make it smell like pine trees.

They love to eat grapes and tamales. They even put grapes inside tamales sometimes! They also love the fireworks! There is a store to buy fireworks on any corner! They are sooooo ridiculously cheap it was torture not to just buy the entire store not to mention not buying at all.

Your typical firework stand with 100 shot roman candles 2 for 15 quetzals, like 2 bucks.

The difference between a fake and real bill here in Guatemala}

But all the kids love them and right at 12 the sky lights up! Right as the clock strikes 12 everyone in the town puts on their personal firework show! It's insane! The whole sky lights up and it's so loud you have to shout to hear someone!

We ate Christmas dinner with Gaby y Alberto. Usually, they eat it right before midnight but they were nice enough to change it for our schedule. We passed la Navidad con Elder Keck, Elder Toala, Elder Sanchez, and Elder Thomas. It was a blast!  We got onto the roof of our house to be able to see the entire town light up! 

Elder Keck Elder Thomas Elder Toala Elder Huesca Elder Sanchez, and I

Some fun photos from Christmas Eve with Elder Keck and me (laser gun presents).

Then Christmas Day we had some trouble getting the wifi all set up but eventually, we did get to talk with our families! That was the best Christmas present ever! Even though the Yo'yo Grant sent me is a highlight for me and my comp! The portable fans are awesome here! It started getting a lot hotter here so we definitely count them as a blessing! 

In our Reunion de Zona, we did a gift exchange and la Hermana Cabrera gave me an American flag tie and a wallet and candy! It was awesome! 

The presents and Christmas tree.

Hermana Cabrera

We've been having some problems with punctuality in our zone so as a solution we started charging for every minute people come late! We were able to have a super good snack thanks to the generosity and lateness of the zone but you'll all be happy to know that this week not a single person was late. In fact, they were all there 5 minutes early to see if we would get there late.  (We didn't.) 

Elder Peralta with La MULTA!!!! For being late!

P'day was a blast! Presidente Ruiz organized an activity with zona Malacatan and Tecun Uman where we watched The Christmas Carol and then played soccer and AMERICAN FOOTBALL!!!!! Man, it was such a blast!  I haven't thrown a football in so long! But it was a bast! They provided pizza and hot dogs for everyone! And then announced that everyone that had over a year in the mission would get an extra gift! We were all so pumped and went running into the room where the mission nurse was waiting with Brand new flu shots... Uhhh we were pretty bummed not gonna lie.  But after that, I and my companion headed to Reu to have a meeting with the Assistants and prepare goals for the next year. We played soccer afterward and it was a blast but that's why I didn't write last week.

This week we finally got in contact with the photographer and we had to organize all of the references to give them to all of the different areas. There were over 100 so that took some time!
Hampster and my companion!

Hamster and my companion!

My companion is ready to go home. It's not that he doesn't work he's just kinda done.  He's actually a fantastic missionary! He teaches super well and I've learned a ton from him! He's just super baggy.

Tuesday was such a blessing. From meeting a goal I and my companion got to go to the temple for the nighttime session. One of the last sessions of 2015. It was so amazing to see the temple at night!

I received so much revelation for my life. We were just waiting in the waiting room when I was reading my Patriarchal Blessing. I just read one line and it jumped out to me in a way it never had before. I'd read that thing thousands of times and never had understood what that part really meant. But I realized that I needed to come home in August when my mission ended and not extend. I don't know why. But I know that it's what I need to do. 

Me elder Wilcox and Elder Call

Me and Elder Cancino

We've found so many super positive people this week! One guy named Luis came to church 3 weeks ago with his girlfriend. I talked to him a little and then the next week his girlfriend came again and told us he wanted to meet with us. We set up the appointment and now he's preparing to be baptized this week or next week! He's so awesome!

A crazy type of fruit that I tried. I think it's called maracuya.

We also have an awesome family of 6 that we found. Here's their story. We were at the Christmas choir, me and Elder Keck, Elder Johnson, and Elder Thomas went nuts inviting every single person we could to go to the choir. A lot of other missionaries were just chatting it up but these kids work hard running alongside cars and everything! Then a family of 6 got a little red card that one of the missionaries passed out and decided to listen. They loved the choir, They took a photo and we went to contact them. They live soooooooo far away! There's no way we would have ever found them if they hadn't have taken this photo. But they were super positive and should come to church next Sunday! It was pretty funny! One of the daughters named Sandy was super excited to see us. We were lost looking for their house with Direciones chapinas when I saw her and recognized her from the photo. She and her brothers ran out of the store to say hi to us. I was quick enough to put my hand out for the handshake but my comp got the traditional kiss on the cheek greeting. I tried to hold back from laughing. He tried to escape but it just happened super quick. It was pretty funny and we had to explain our standards as missionaries.

We've been having our correlation with our new mission leader which has been awesome! 

Our trip to Reu.  Everyone carries everything on their heads.

If you’re in the center and need a restroom this is what you use. . . 3 quetzales with toilet paper 2 without.

Busses from a first-person view

The new year was crazy but not as crazy as Christmas. 

HAPPY 2016!

The next day nothing was going on. Everyone sleeps so that's pretty tough. We walked through the Centro Market and no one was there which was pretty crazy because usually, it's super busy! 

Meta Mercado empty on the 1st

Today we played soccer which was a blast.  Life is great! Thanks for all of your support!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Brownies that I made. My companion was super happy with me.

Tamales!

Me and elder Thomas in the rain!

This is in the house of the Elders In Gardenias. It's pretty cute I guess.

Week 73...12/31/15...I will write next week

I'm alive and good.  We've just got some work to do. They said we could write today because we had a meeting Monday but there's no time. Anyways... I went to the temple Mom. I won't be extending. And I talked to Elder Cook about rooming.  I don't know if his mom has talked to you. He said she was going to contact you. Anyway. Happy New Year's Eve!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Week 72...12/21/15...FEZIZ NAVIDAD

Hola Familia y Amigos! Que tengan una Feliz Navidad! I hope you all have the greatest Christmas of all! And that you can all remember the true meaning of CHRISTmas. I love the word Christ-mas. Because in Spanish mas means more. More of Christ. Christ Mas. I love it. I hope that you all can have a season con MAS CRISTO. It will make this season the best of all if you can fill it with the love, and joy of our Savior Jesus Christ. I know He lives. I know that He was born and lived and died. But that He rose the third day to be the Savior of the world. Unto us, a Savior was born, that we may have hope, joy, and peace in a world full of hurt, despair, and chaos. He is the greatest gift that has been given, that ever will be, and the greatest gift that we can give. Share it.

This week was full of sharing the Christmas spirit with everyone! We started off the week bright and early at 3:00am on Tuesday morning to get to our Christmas devotional in San Marcos. On the way, we were overwhelmed to see just an amazing sight of a sea of clouds with mountains that looked like islands. It was just incredible! This country is so full of beauty.

The sea of clouds, and modeling attempts.

The sea of clouds!

We had a great devocional with some talent show and a great lunch! President also had all of the people that memorized ''El Cristo Viviente'' come and recite it in front of everyone. It was so cool to be part of the 4 in our Zone to do it. It really has such power to share such a document by memory.

Me and Elder Wilden in the Devocional (He's a branch president up there!)

The lunch!

The rest of the week we had activities every night. If we weren't presenting the ''A Savior is 

Born Video'' with our district we had an even bigger activity.

On Thursday I went on divisions with Elder Keck and we found this one super cool guy! He started off not being that positive but we just tried to have the faith that he was going to understand our message and he did! He had an awesome bunch of questions and we invited him to our activities we've been planning.

On divisions with Elder Keck, I threw this piece of grass into a river and ended up catching myself a little snack! Actually, I threw the speared fish and it was quickly eaten by a chicken.

This week I made my debut on national Guatemala Canal 5 punto Rojo television. So that was pretty exciting. The studio was pretty sketchy, just a tin roof over all of the camera equipment. But it was pretty cool! Elder Wolfgramm and I announced our lantern activity and everyone was just super excited for it!

Me & Elder Wolfgramm

Me in the studio. They had just got done interviewing some Rappers so It was kinda crazy seeing two different worlds in there

Friday was the first-ever Lantern Launch in the park of Coatepeque. We showed videos and sang hymns as 24 missionaries and had people sign up to be able to launch lanterns.

We shared copies Book of Mormon and Tons of Pamphlets. Finally to end the night we sent off 100 Lanterns! Everyone loved it! They came from everywhere to watch! Honestly, it was an answered prayer. We prayed all week for good weather and then started praying that no one caught anything on fire. They both were answered as nobody caught on fire! 

The photos of the lantern activity! (notice how full it ended up getting.) Definitely, some heavenly protection was here, one of the lanterns hit the big tree in the park, but didn't get stuck and continued rising into the sky rather than catching the plastic Gallo beer tree on fire.

Then on Saturday, we tried to get permission for Denis to get baptized but his mom kept coming and going and we could never get it.

We got asked to help with the Ward gathering and me and my companion helped cook all of the food.

Elder Huesca

Chicken, salad, pineapple drink, and more CHICKEN!

Sunday we had a miracle happen. . .
Last week we found a family who's Dad is a serious alcoholic. He had a month of just being super drunk. We came to his house and told him that we had been sent by God to change his life and that God needed him in His church and that he needed to stop drinking and come to church next week. And guess what!? HE DID!
His family is so pumped! They came to the Convivio on Saturday and he came to church the last 2 hours so that was awesome! He said he loved every minute of it!

Elder Moritaya and Elder Rodas!

Then we had the Coro Navideño! We had a stable set up outside so that we could get all of the references of the investigators that came. We had them take photos and write down their direction so we could go and drop off the photo and visit them! We had a ton of people come!

Me in the stable.

This is the photo we took with all of the investigators.

This dog just chilled the whole day right next to us.

I found this awesome hat that moves by itself and put it on. It destroyed my hair because we were running alongside cars to invite them to the Coro. And with all the sweat and such I became required to keep the hat on. It was definitely a bad hair day after that.

Me Elder Sanchez, Elder Vides, Elder Retana, Elder Huesca, Elder Sanchez and Hna Cabrera and Hna Gunderson

ME Hna Garcia, Elder Perez, Hna Bustillo

Elder Keck

The Coro was amazing! So much young talent! The Piano player was younger than 12 years old! It was made up of Malacatan and Coatepeque so there were a lot of familiar faces! It was a great event! We had a ton of people come and they loved it!

The Coro Navideño

Today as a Zone we went and did Zumba! It was a blast but I'm super tired!

Me and Elder Vides

Hope all is well! We've got another activity today in the mall so we've got to get over to that! FELIZ NAVIDAD A TODOS! Can't wait to talk to the family this week!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Some of the lanterns got ripped in the activity so we’ve spent some time patching them up and Elder Huesca and I have had a fun time inventing some things so that they work!