April 26, 2010

This letter made me cry. (not that that's hard to do these days) I loved to hear the blessing of gift of tongues working in his life. He's such a great kid! I miss him to pieces. Here is his letter.

I did send a letter, I resent it so I hope you got it. Also, some clarification on some things. What sounds like garbage trucks all the time are what we call chicken buses. Basically, buses made out of old school bus parts and old loud engines. They´re how we get everywhere we go if we don´t walk. Getting food isn´t hard at all. Every other building is a tienda and they all have the same things. I live in Choki which is at the end of my area, right before the river or stream changes directions. Our area ends at the bridge on the main road that goes across the river. Our area runs north into Chikilaja and San Philipe and beyond. It´s almost impossible to reach the end our area. The investigators that we have are:
Pablo who still has his baptismal date and is getting married with his girlfriend on the 8th.

Mariela is the name of the other investigator who is the novia of Gustavo. She talked with her parents and they don´t want her to, but she has decided to be baptized.

Juana Audelina Juanon is some one we contacted while she was working. We found her looking for a contact´s house when we went down the wrong street. She´s had two lessons. She has 4 kids and her husband has left her. She was doing really good. After our first lesson she asked if we could do anything about her being sick, so we taught her about our blessing the sick and gave her a blessing. She reads all the pamphlets we give her and remembers almost everything we teach her. I´m worried though because we had a cita (appointment) with her yesterday, but when we got there, her kids said she wasn´t there even though my companion saw her face and her youngest son was calling her name. I´ve been worried about it all day. We´re going to try and see if we can talk to her today.

There's another family we´ve taught one lesson. They own a pan shop and we taught them in the shop about a lot of things. The wife was extremely excited but the husband was cautious as everyone probably should be, but we taught them how to know whether what we were teaching was true and then how we get revelation. It was interesting because the wife asked me specifically how God spoke to me. So I taught her about how we get thoughts and then we pray to know if they are of the Holy Ghost and then how we feel that it is right. I did that in Spanish and I still don´t quite know how because I can hardly say anything still. Then my companion taught how we have a prophet who speaks with Christ face to face and receives revelation that way. It was a very interesting lesson and I´m anxious to go talk to them and see how they´re doing.

There are other people that we have contacted that are interested to hear and we have dates to meet with them but I don´t know much about them.

There is a kid here named Anthony who is about Colton´s age and reminds me a ton of Colton too. His family isn´t a part of our church but they are friends with all the members. We haven´t taught them a lesson yet but we are going to soon.

I don´t remember exactly the names of the others in my zone. I don´t have any new pictures. We´re not really allowed to take pictures very often and I haven´t had a reason to quite yet. I will take pictures at baptisms though and things like that or if I find anything unusual, but I´m in a very mellow place.

Don´t worry about writing too much. The more the better. I need the love. Living a mission life is living a strictly business life. I love to hear how things are going. I´m finding that that is one thing I´m missing. I miss just being able to spend nights with family and friends after all the work is done and just enjoying playing games and enjoying each other´s company. It´s something I will forever appreciate after my mission. I´d still like to hear stories from Dad´s mission. If for nothing else, just to feel some commonality in a place different from home. I love the people here. They have faith like you could not believe. The only hard thing is to get them to actually accept us. There are just about as many churches here as there are tiendas. It´s crazy. And most people don´t want to hear us and don´t want to change. They all think that since we´re all Christian that we´ll all be ¨saved¨ even though we all belong to billions of different churches with billions of different doctrine. I love it when we find someone who actually thinks for themselves and actually believes instead of just going to a church to say that they go to church.

My mailing address has been so confusing but I think I´ve got the right one this time.

Guatemala Quetzaltenango Mission
5A Calle 14-35, Zona 3
09001 Quetzaltenango
Guatemala

I love you all and love to hear from you.

Love Elder Landon Crapo