Week #30: Area attacks and Deadliest Warrior

   

If you click on the picture and enlarge it you can see him.

   Sorry about last week's email, I am okay and doing well. In some ways its weird to think that the only info you all get is from these weekly emails and so a week featuring 3 Nefi quote can be a tad rough to handle.   Anyways all is well!  Interviews with the mission president ended up being postponed until after changes which will be Wednesday of this week.   I am somewhat confident that there will be some changes here in Rio Blanco, as Elder Owen and Elder Rivas have been here for quite a while and the air is thick in anticipation for the changes.

     This week things are looking even brighter in Maclen branch.  We had the first area attack in all of Rio Blanco history. As you can imagine getting 14 other missionaries up to one of the most remote areas in the mission can be a little hard but after a little schmoozing we managed to get a bus driver to help us out and get all of the missionaries up and back down the icy mountain.  Somewhere in the blur of planning and transport the zone leaders forgot to inform the other people in the zone that it is really, really, cold up there and they didn't dress for the best as evidently shown by all of them huddled around two little heaters in our house while all of the finale details were being worked out. Over all the attack ended up being a very big success, with many contacts, many opportunities for service and many opportunities to just uplift people.
        I had the chance to go out with Elder Lambson twice this week, he is one of our zone leaders. He is the son (meaning Elder Portillo trained him) of Elder Portillo, my first zone leader, which now that I think of it is a little weird, but awesome none the less. I am glad to say that I learned a lot from him as I did from Elder Portillo. On Monday we stayed down in San Pedro because we were supposed to have interviews with the mission president but this isn't our area so we ended up doing divisions with the zone leaders and work in their area for the night.  Elder Lamson and I went and contacted a professor with the member who had given him as a reference. He had been talking to this member on the street and has had many interactions with mormons in his life. At one point he even played basketball with all of the missionaries on p-day. As we started the lesson we became a little worried, I knew right away that this was going to be a different kind of lesson, this guy is a professor after all. We started the lesson with a song and a prayer and then he asked us about the mount of transfiguration...we answered very carefully and then lead the lesson over to more basic doctrines. Sure we could talk about deep doctrine in all the lesson but without a foundation to build on trying to jump straight into the hard stuff is a little difficult. It is like math you don't start trying to do cal BC before learning how to add or in piano try to play beethoven before learning every good boy deserves fudge. As we went on with the lesson he became really interested even said that he holds the Book of Mormon which we gave him as holy and was practically jumping at the chance to come to church and hear the church hymns. Really cool guy and I hope he keeps progressing.
     Dogs are very fun in this area. I know that every week I say a little something about them but they seriously are a topic buzzing in the air up here.  No matter where we go we hear of a dog that is buen bravo. and wherever we go we end up finding these dogs that are in dead buen bravo. However this weeks dog story is brought to you by deadliest warrior. Its a little series I used to watch back in the day when I wasn't on the mission.  In these episodes they would tell the story of different kinds of warriors throughout history and put them up against each other in combat - like a ninja vs a navy seal. They would fight and see who would win.  Now I pose a question. Out of a dog and a pig who wins? Anyone?  Well the answer is pig. This week as I finished eating my lunch of caldo, I took the chicken bones and through them to the dog as is normal disposal procedure here. No sooner did I do this when a pig comes running up the hill, rams the dog and starts fighting the dog for the bones.  Over and over they fought and over and over the pig won.  Maybe it isnt the dogs that we have to look out for. Maybe just maybe its the pigs.

    I am so happy for the opportunity to serve the people in Guatemala.  I see the joy and happiness that the simple teaching of Jesus Christ brings into their lives and feel blessed that I could be a part of that.

cropped from the picture above