Week #83: Off cycle transfers bring new adventures

Truth of life. Every time you get comfortable in where you are and who you are a rapid wind of change comes to disfigure the world you know. this is week 83 of my mission and I had thought with such little time that I have left that I was going to go through my entire mission unscathed by Emergency changes. about 8 months ago I had a close encounter and nearly had changes to the Office however with some luck  I escaped and stayed where I was. Now 8 months have passed and what I thought I had escaped finally caught up with me and I have been pulled into the the Office of the mission. On the bright side at least I finally get to drive the pickup of the mission.

It was a Tuesday night we had gotten back from a district meeting and we were in Asintal.  We had gone and set up the baptism of another from the finca.  After coming back down we went over to the house of a new investigator of the two other Elders in the area. We had a good lesson with him and he is as strong in conviction as ever and said he would go with us to church and would pray to know if this is the path in which he must follow.  We were visiting with la familia Maldonado, after the lesson we went with them back to their house to finish the night with a little something to eat. Just as we entered into the house and having sat on the couch my phone began to ring. I looked down to see Assistant #1 calling and didn't think much about it.  Then as though, it were no more than a casual conversation, he told me that I have changes and that I would need to bring my stuff to the meeting that we were having the day after. I looked up after the short call realizing that this would probably be the last time I would be in the house with this incredible family. A family that has most certainly become part of my own and I apart of theirs. It is amazing how close you come to people that you meet in your mission.
       That night I went burning the midnight oil, packing away all of my stuff.   The next day we left the house with my bags and jumped into a taxi leaving to go from Asintal to the meeting. (that is one of the beautiful things about here in Guatemala you can pay someone 30 quetz and they will take to to the other end of Reu) When we arrived at the meeting,  after doing a brief introduction and having breakfast they gathered all of the people with changes into the cultural hall  of the church.  Then in true suspenseful fashion with me being last, told me that I was going to the office.  I was still uncertain as to what my new assignment was going to be, but as Saturday came and the office had its weekly correlation meeting  with the President he told me that I would be the new Comisario de la mision. Every change is a new adventure and this one seems like a very different type of adventure as the workings of the office are a little different then any other area in the mission.  But excited to learn and grow and serve where ever and how ever I can.

Week #82: Cushin It!

Well I am feeling better, those mosquito born illnesses can really slow you down but things are going better as time, and lots of liquid in plastic bags cures all.  I don't have much to write again. Things have been a little less filled drama wise, but still filled with drama as we continue to learn to work with various members and leaders in the branch.  As is probably true in all wards and branches, some members are a delight to work with, and others not so much.  I hope all who read this fall into the "delight" category.  If not, take inventory and see what you can do to be a "delight" in member missionary work or just relations with the missionaries in your area.  I am sure that they are just as charming as I am.  :-)  Have you hugged your missionary today?  Wait...you probably shouldn't hug the missionaries in your ward, at least not physically...just do it spiritually.

Things have been going really good here,  we have been working really well as a team of four, finding new people to provide service to, to teach and to baptize.  We have been teaching a beautiful little family that lives in la finca Santa Margarita.  We have known them for a while now and we have become pretty close to this family.  It is a hard life that they have living on the finca.  The men in the finca wake up every day at around 3:30 in the morning to go to work in the forest picking at trees collecting the unprocessed rubber sap that comes from the trees.  After picking at the trees they go around and collect the sap.  They are there in the forest working until just about lunch time. the women of the finca follow behind and paint each tree as it has been cut so that they don't go around cutting the same trees over and over again.   Anyway, this family has gotten to know us pretty well and have even given us some weird fruit called "Cushin" that is actually really good, but a very very weird fruit. Their youngest daughter got baptized on Saturday and Sunday when she came to church and got confirmed she was so excited to go back home and invite all of her friends next week.
     My comp and I are getting along great. As I have said before there is always something special about being with someone that has the same about of time as you in the mission. Though it is also a little weird because you can talk about all of your friends who started the mission after you and are now finished. So weird to think about that sometimes. But more than anything things are going great and we are having a great time. I feel at home here. I love the people and I love serving the Lord.

(Parental commentary:  In our email this week, we had Chase ask TD various questions that he was curious about since Chase is putting his mission paperwork together.  TD answered them...and we log this brother-brother-to brother communication unedited.)

What is the last thing you just purchased there and why?
a ride in a tuc tuc and why you may ask? because Its Pday so im not walking

Who was the last investigator you talked to and what was the subject matter?
Glenda from El Salvador we talked about painting and drawing.

What is your favorite thing about your companion?
that he is absolutely crazy.....

What was the last toilet you sat on made of?
actually the last one was made of air I popped a squat

Was the paper two-ply or one-ply or is Guate TP more like sandpaper?
actually I used a piece of paper I didn't really have any tp nearby one ply or 2

What do you drink most of the time during the day? Can you drink water?
Bags of water. like plastic bags filled with water if not that then Isomax which is like nock off gatorade in plastic bags. You bite off a corner and suck

Are there any food that you are not supposed to eat as a missionary?
anything that they sell on the street is off limits.but then again most of the members are the ones selling there.....so I wonder then if we are breaking mission rules...it's quite the conundrum...

Do they have ice?
yeah, remember those bags of water well you stick it in the freezer and they magically turn to ice...

What do you do on P-day for fun?
It depends, today we went to the beach and took pictures......

How do you clean your suits?
clean your suits?...wait, we are supposed to clean our suits.......hmm...that might explain a few things...

What is the one piece of advice you would have for me as I prepare these last few months for a mission?
read and listen to the words of the prophets...find as many talks and good music as possible and stick them on a good ipod listen to them as much as possible during down time...if mission rules allows bring to the mission...read the book of mormon, read Jesus the Christ...

Week #80: Temple Trip, Pizza Hut and Elder Garoz

Xela Temple...because it's to hard to spell it the long way.

Well we are now in the year 2016.....That is pretty weird....I finished high school and entered into the mission in 2014 and so I am now another year here....Its a weird thought, I guess I am learning that term..."when time flies".
      This has been an amazing week!  On Tuesday we went to the temple. It was a fun little experience. We had a the chance to go with President Ruiz and do a session in the temple with him.  We had instructions and left from Reu to Xela at about 1pm. However there was a mishap and the office didn't tell us that the session wasn't until 5:30pm. We had arrived at the temple a little bit before 3pm and when we called to find out what was going on they apologized and said that President was still in Reu.... The cafeteria at the temple was closed, so the moment that I heard that President Ruiz was still in Reu and having been craving pizza for some days now, I called Pizza Hut to send in my order and to have them deliver to the temple.  As soon as I hung up some of the Hermanas came over asking, "Did you just order Pizza?" and had me order them one as well.....no less then a min later some of the other Hermanas there, seeing that we had just ordered pizza asked if we could order another....of course we said yes. By the 3rd time one  us calling they immediately knew It was Elder Wilcox and I knew it was Cindy and she already knew what was about to happen....I think that might have been the first time they had delivered to the temple if not it was at least my first time having them deliver to it.  After eating and taking pictures for a long while President Ruiz made it and we when inside to a session packed to the brim.  By the time we had finished it was 9pm and by the time we got home somewhere close to 11pm.
     Reinforcements have arrived! While we were there at the temple I was talking with the mission president and hinted that another set of missionaries would be good for Asintal.  Apparently he thought so as well, and sent another pair our way within 15 hours of that conversation.  Elder Fairbanks now is no longer my comp, he is now comps with Elder Huasupoma.  My new companion is Elder Garoz. He is from California as well and will actually be finishing the mission with us. With four us working here, things are a lot easier, and the burden of teaching all of the fincas have just been cut in half.
    The people of the Auroa Castillo and Santa Margarita are doing great. A lot of them have there little problems or just haven't been there during the Christmas/new Years season. Now things are settling back down, we as well as the rest of the mission are pretty interested to see what happens here.
    Anyways the New year is here and it is going to hold alot of surprises in store. I could not have imagined just how much my life would change just from just one year back. This one holds a lot more in store....and I am anxious to see what is in store.

President and Sister Ruiz and Elder Fairbanks

w/ Elder Call

w/ Elder Bastian

The field is white...er green

Getting ready for a lesson

Christmas Mission President Photo w/ President and Sister Ruiz and Elder Fairbanks

Sometimes they think I am a jungle gym

Week #77: Birthday, Christmas Videos and True Love = Beef Jerky

   



 Anxious is the life, but good is this the life of the anxiously engaged. This week has been a week of being all over the place and data and experiences that cant be expressed in paper or virtual paper as is the case.

     It's Christmas time which always means extra work especially when we have to teach everyone why they are celebrating Christmas. Last year I didn't really notice just how few people understand why we celebrate Navidad but now it is so obvious that I don't understand how I could not have seen it before.  Maybe this shows my own state of mind, where my head, hearth and spirit are in this Christmas season.
      As the assistants of the mission have instructed we have been doing activities in every area sharing the new Christmas videos. The first activity was in Pedregal. Here we decided to go to the maxi despensar which is kinda like a Walmart here in Guate or at least as close as it gets.  There with the equipment from the office we set up a projector and the laptop with some nice big speakers and then became missionaries and brought family by family to see the videos and share quick little messages with them. We did an activity like this in every area in the districts of every zone of every mission. Everyone of this activities went well for the most part. then came ours....just like always anything that can go wrong will go wrong. so ours was actually quite a bit more complicated than any other activitys. For one it was in a finca that doesn't have any real roads to it. 2) has absolutely no electrical power. 3) it is out of the way and to bring everyone together out there when no one has a phone is something very very hard. After much work we arranged for a truck to take us there. A generator to be borrowed from a member in the stake and as normal all of the the office equipment with us.  After what seemed like the slowest truck ride of my life we made it to the finca and just as we get all of the bugs worked out with the equipment and sound and generator on queue it starts to rain.....however after all was said and done, the activity was still a success and everything went moderately well.   After the activity was over we were walking back to Asintal with some of the people who had come from another finca....Turns out this other finca is in just about the same situation that is, Bunch of people no church and they all are more or less feeling like something is missing in their lives.
    There really are not any holidays in the mission.  That is one thing I have come to accept or maybe its not that there are not holidays, but that holidays just don't feel the same here in the mission.  Sin embargo, this was a special birthday I was able to celebrate here.   There is a family here in the branch that really is our family here. Like we go over here whenever we don't have food to eat, if we need to go and teach with someone or if we need to set up skype calls with our parents for the Christmas. I like this family so much I share my beef jerkey with them (and that is true, eternal love when you share your beef jerky) they are our family and its awesome being around them. As normal Friday night we didn't really have any food so we went over to their house ate and then they broke out a nice ice cream cake...(which is the first ice cream cake I have seen here is Guatemala). it was amazing!

Thanks to all for the special birthday wishes, and for keeping me in your thoughts and prayers!

We always ask how his shoes are holding up...looks like they are starting to show their wear and tear...but rocking the socks.

Week #76: Ha nacido un Salvador

 

    Well another week come and gone. Time only goes faster and faster the older you get. But there are some hints of technological progress in the mission. I guess with the all of the new videos coming out in the last two years someone thought it might be a good idea to have some way to share these beautiful videos that the church is letting out.  You are probably thinking, 'The Missionary Department's iPad program has finally made it's way to Guatemala?!'...no that is not quite the case...
       Wednesday we had yet another meeting to get us ready for the Christmas season and the new videos that the church has launched....speaking of that I have to change the homepage of all the computers in this Internet cafe.....one sec....alright. So https://www.mormon.org/spa/navidad?cid=HP_SU_11-29-2015_dMIS_fSPC_xLIDyL1-A_ is being put into every Internet cafe that every missionary goes to throughout this month.  This didn't come down by any formal direction, it just seems like a little something we can do "outside of the box".    This is in part as always to get the church better known and Christ in the minds of all as they go throughout this great season were we focus on him and his life. In addition every district leader has been given a DvD player to use to share these new videos and to use during district meetings so that we can better inspire the missionaries in the mission to work and work and work.  It kind of feels like cheating to use videos to teach. But I guess that is the way the world is moving and pretty soon missionaries that can teach are going to be replaced with missionaries that can push buttons.
     This week has been a beautiful week. I don't really understand why it is so easy to forget where I am and the incredible simple beauty that this country has, that I am actually here in Guatemala. But there there are weeks like this one were we go and find an area so beautiful and its just like wow....I cant believe we are actually here. It is something so....I don't know somethings just cant be expressed.
     Friday we made a little trek out to the finca [ranch] with a good chunk of the zone.  It was kinda funny because none of us knew where this finca is so we had to rely on a 11 year old member to be our guide and take us to where we needed to go. By some miracle we made it and as we walked down the path we split off in twos to go and teach each of the houses. When Sunday came around 28 of them came to church and stayed until the block was over.   They are some good people.
    I have learned some knew life skills here on the mission.  I will let the pictures tell you the thousands words about such life skills.
    Well things are weird this change.   Wednesday we have changes and then starts a full two month change. There was some kinda problem sending people home and bringing them into the mission so close to Christmas time.   I don't think I or my comp will be having changes [transfers], which is great as we still have much work to do and  for crying out loud we just finally got moved out of the old moldy house and into the new one house!
    Anyways its my birthday this week and I thought I would celebrate Guatemalan style! Tamales and Fireworks! just need to find someone to make some tamales!   Thank you all so much for your birthday wishes!

The life skills one learns in Guate!

Watch out Colonel Sanders..we are coming for you!

Week #75: Turkey Day, Temple Trip and Christmas Lights

Things are always fun around the Holidays - it makes one a little bit baggy, but none the less very fun.

About a month ago Pres. Ruiz decided that all of us in the mission should learn to celebrate the american tradition of Turkeyday and decided every zone should have turkey, pies and some canned cranberry stuff. He also made it an official commandment that we must have mashed potatos. So we had an official turkey day. All of us headed over to the office of the mission and started on our Thanksgiving meal prep at about 10am in the morning.   By 1pm we had finally finished with the mashed potatos,  Luckily,  the turkey and everything else had come pre-made....if not we would have been there for a long long time.  We ate together as a zone and had our little, 'what are you thankful for' part of the meal and it was all very nice. Definitely not like the ones back home, but it was nice, created memories that I will have and cherish forever.

Before we had turkey day we kinda jumped out of order and went Christmas caroling at the old folks nursing home.  It was a very interesting experience considering after we had finished our second song one of the old men there suddenly fell out of his chair, hit the floor as hard as a rock and remained there on the ground. We were all thinking did we really just kill an old man with Christmas carols?  He ended up being fine but we were are a little bit anxious to get out of there after that.

On Friday we had a great baptism....In  Guate there isn't always (rarely even) warm water to fill up the baptismal font with so we had to improvise...this meant using our "state of the art" electric stoves to head up bucket after bucket of water until the font was a mild lukewarm. With all of the work we were doing with that we didn't notice that the water wasn't really very...clear... until we had quite a bit of it in there.  This wasn't the first time that had such a problem, so we quickly ran over to the tienda and grabbed some blue water coloring powder (all that they had) and proceeded to pour that into the water until it was more blue than brown. It made things interesting but our branch president was awesome and was helping us the entire way!

Saturday we had a rather rare experience so far as things go in the mission. I dont know if President Ruiz is being a little more open to letting people go to the temple or he has just kinda gotten sick of me asking but he gave us permission to go to the temple with our branch. We went and did baptisms for the dead which was very special since we were the ones baptizing and confirming the people. It was kinda like doing practicas of teaching but rather something a little more special and real.

Last night we put up the Christmas tree. It wasn't in our house but rather in a super pilas family´s. Either way I was just kinda excited to think that I probably put up the Christmas lights before you guys did back home.