27 de Agosto

Pretty much a summary of Guatemala

My Comp

This week we contacted a guy who works at a bike shop, he´s really cool and has a lot of the beliefs of the church even before we taught him.  For example he´s catholic but he doesn´t believe that his church or any of the evangelicals that he´s seen are correct, also he told us that he beleives the bible is the word of god but that people have changed it and mistranslated it.  Hopfully we can help him develop belief in the Book of Mormon and the restored authority of the church.  Anyway we had Stake Conference this sunday and Hna Virginia (the Mother of the kids we baptized) Came and we got her a baptisimal interview, which she passed so she is now ready to be baptized on the 2nd.

20 de Agosto

Me and my buddy Tacun Uman posing like bosses

My Comp. Crossing the monkey bridge we cross every day.

This week I turned four months in the mission, which is not much but it just means that I have the much longer to work (I´m trying to be positive in loving the mission but sometimes thats really hard, and 19 more months seems like forever) anyway this week has gone well, we have 2 new, positive babtisimal dates, one is the mother of the kids we baptised and the other is from a part member family.  So we{re doin alright and I can´t complain.

13 de Agosto

The Amazing Spider-Spider

(I Don´t like the way this picture turned out, the carton it´s in is actually fairly large and the spider is about the size of my palm)

Turns out the poor people of every country drive the same thing......

 This week has not been the best, our one investigator with a baptisimal date told us that he doesn´t want to be baptized because he feels that he´s not ready to give up sin and if he is made clean he´ll just mess up again and his salvation will be lost.  We tried to explain the purpose of repentance but he still doesn´t want to  be baptized.  And we can never seem to catch our more positive investigators home to teach them.  My comp and I get along fairly well but thats just ´cause i´ve learned to ignore him, he´s a good missionary and he knows how to teach but he is wildly Immature and nothing makes him happier than belittling me, but thats the mission.  This week we went to a members house for FHE and the ploped a bowl down infront of us with some nasty yellow sauce and a chunk of something floating in it.  After mopping up most of the sauce with Tamalitos I found that the mysterious object was a chunk of meat that looked like a sponge, and my comp leaned over and wispered "Cow stomach".  It was Gross, but I finally managed to cut of pieces and swallow them with little chewing involved, and I was able to mask most of the retching by pretending I had swallowed wrong.                                   Elder Balhorn

6 de Agosto

This week has been fairly slow, we don´t have a lot of progressing Investigators but some of our newer investigators look more promising. 
 One of our Investigators with a baptisimal date told us that he was through with taking lessons from us.  we asked him if he had read the BOM to know if its true and he said he read the Bible to know if the BoM was true, Logic.  anyway the real reason is cause we told him to quite drinking and his Pastor told him that drinking was perfectly fine, and since he doesn't want to quite guess who he listened to.  Our other investigator with a Fecha turned out not to be actaully married to his "Wife" (who is a member) but the bishop is gonna help us with that and he has real desire and believes. (The problem there is that a Marriage License is expensive in Guatemala and he is very poor even by guatemala standards, but the church  will help with the cost)

The View from our roof.