Semana Tres

Hola Familia!! Yo extrano Ustedes!! Anyways, today marks the three week mark and I am almost done with Guatemala!! I’m sorry if this is a little shorter, there were so many emails to go through, I love all the pictures that you sent me, and it looked like Halloween was awesome!! I am so proud of you mom with your choir concert!! and Bella and Brock and Jacob I miss you all so much!! Also Jeff and Josh, I miss my buddies. Anyways, things are in full swing, I’ll tell you more about what I do here.

Every morning we wake up and get ready and eat, at eight we do personal study for an hour. Which is anything that you want to study scriptural wise. I use that time to study the Book of Mormon and Bible, I also use that time to prepare for lessons that I will be teaching my investigators that day. Then we have an hour of language study. Which means grammar, words, phrases... the Spanish is coming slowly... it really is mainly the grammar that I am having an issue with. All of the conjugations and such. Then from ten to twelve we have class, on either grammar or teaching. All in Spanish, then we have lunch and come back and do more classes until three thirty. From three thirty to five we have deportes and cena. Then after cena, we teach our investigators. Our investigators at the CCM are our teachers... so far, me and Hermana Nelson have three: Miguel, Daniel, and Mario. Miguel is blind, his baptism is on the 15th and he is getting married on the 12th. We have been able to teach the first three lessons, but now it is time to focus on how to help him with one of his sons that’s rebelling. Daniel is a little tricky, he is committed to baptism, but he is not as motivated as Miguel is. We need to work on finding out what his need is and helping spark that desire in him. Mario... he’s hard.... he’s atheist and never talks during the lessons, and we can’t figure him out. But I pray every day that we can figure it out and help him.

Sundays are the best. We have meetings all day, and all of it is in Spanish!! But, sacrament meeting is in Español and since it was fast Sunday this past week, I bore my testimony in Spanish. It’s amazing, three weeks here and I already know how to pray, bear testimony, and teach lessons. I also memorized the first vision in Español.

Presidente and Hermana Cox are amazing. They are the CCM presidents and they are like our parents away from home, you can tell that they really care about you. Presidente is a big believer in working your hardest and believing that you can be the best missionary you can be. And I totally agree with him, as long as I believe and have the faith and work my hardest every day I will be successful.  There’s a quote that I like. Work Will Win When Wishy Washy Wishing Wont. Sometimes it can be discouraging, but each day is a new day and I pick myself up and work even harder. I pray every day for the focus and diligence and discipline to work my hardest and be worthy to have the spirit with me. Also he is a big believer in obedience with exactness, if we aren’t obedient to every rule then the spirit is not with us, and I love that too. I do my best to be obedient to every single rule, and I know that when I am the spirit is with me.

Last P-day we went to a market, and WOW things are amazing there!! Everything is so different, I wish we could have had our cameras, but we have a rule and we aren’t allowed to have our cameras during our time here. I got a falda, which is a skirt, and it’s so cool and it’s authentic. We also went to Wendy’s for lunch, that was complete heaven. This city is huge, and going around there made me realize how lucky I am to have lived in such a beautiful place, people don’t have a lot here, but they are so happy, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to have my eyes opened. Another thing we did was we went to a relief map of the entire country. This was made in the early 1900s and with the tools in that time, the map is 98 percent correct!! Isn’t that Crazy!!!

We also got to contact for about 20 minutes in the town square!! That was such a cool experience, it’s amazing how the lord blesses all of us who are learning a language, in that moment I was able to understand almost everything that the man we were talking to was saying, and I was able to talk to him and he could understand me. I am so grateful for the gift of tongues.

I got called as the Hermana leader of music for all of the meetings in the CCM. Haha, surprise surprise.

Anyways I love you all so very much!!! I challenge all of you to share your testimony with someone this week, because you never know whose lives you’ll touch with words that you say every day!!!

Con Amor

Hermana Reed