Week 30: Freezing, Turkey & Kekchi

1) Why the new email? What happened?
The church had google turn the myldsmail.net into a gmail format which makes it much faster and much more efficient. You dont have to worry about lost emails now:)
2) Are you sleeping at night?
Not much. I'm trying to figure out why. It has been absolutely freezing the last couple weeks.
3) How is your companionship going?
Great! We've finally found the groove. We know each others senses of humor and get along great now. And we can teach! Well he can, I can bare my testimony- haha.
4) Do you need us to pray for anyone this week?
Pablo. He's less active and if he reactivates his family will have like 5 baptisms :)
5) Anything special happen this week?
No, not really. This week was really really slow. We did have an investigator come to church and he's awesome! Pilas-we say here. Very interested and very different- as in he has a different perspective.
6) Best part of your week?
We went way up into the mountains-so high we almost touched the clouds. That was cool and I got good pics too.
8) What happened in church this week?
Not much. It was normal. My companion gave a talk. He can barely speak the language so I'm not expecting tons of progress in my language but im putting in the effort. :)
9) Can you teach a lesson yet in Kekchi? Can you read the language yet?
Not really, but I still can recognize the words and everything I need to understand it. Speaking it is a whole different story unfortunately.
10) When did you send the package to us? Still not here. :(
The post office guy called us and said it didnt send. He said it costs 300 quetzales instead of the 120 he charged me. I'll save it until I can send it :)
11) How much longer until changes?
We hear who has a change this Thursday. This is the last week of this change.
12) We heard about your split with Elder Schone. How did it go?
We went to a couple appts in spanish and thats all we could really do. We tried contacting a lady and it really did not work out too well. She just stared at us and spoke the more difficult words in response. She didnt try and simplify it for us. haha- so we left.
13) More pictures of the monkey incident? Do you have one with you holding it? I got the one with Elder Schone holding it.
I'll try and send it.
14) What all do you do on your P-Day?
We go to latinta, use internet do district meeting, buy food and leave.
15) Are you eating any MEAT? What kinds? Just Caldo and do you know how to make it?
No, I dont wanna learn either. The american soup we eat is much better. I'm eating lots of eggs. Not much meat but im working on it.
16) Anything you would like to tell Brenton before he goes into the MTC? I gave him your new email address. :)
Stick in there! It's gonna be dang hard. The language will kill you at first. But then when its all over you're gonna look back and see that there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Just study hard and pray even harder. You're in the hollow of His hand. He'll carry what you cant. Love you. Take care. Write me!
17) Favorite scripture this week? Spiritual moment?
Well I was looking at the facsimile no. 2 from the book of abraham. The number seven in the image and its explanation are very interesting. Read the exp. turn the image upside down and see if you recognize anything drawn there. :)

Congratulations to Justin and Kelley! Tell them for me and try and send pics of the little guy.

I am picking up the package today to save it until I can send again.

Apparently there are alot of old statues of people in the mountains above my area and the old people here guard them and dont let people take them or the "mountains will fall". I wanna come back and see them.

What is the name of the grinding stones that the native americans use? I seemed to have forgotten it wrestling with the three languages in my head. Mano and matate? I dont remember, but thats how they grind corn here.

Hey, I was thinkng the other day and for some reason Gary Groome came to my mind. I wonder how he's doing. Does he know I am on my mission? For some reason he really made an impression on me as a very faithful and spiritual man. I like to think that I'm dealing with "mountain people" such as him.

Yesterday a turkey started trying to attack me cuz I whistled really loud at it. So I started fighting with it/messing with it. Im gonna go back and take a video of it for you guys. It was hilarious.

Other than that, nothing is going on here. We have plans to go on long trips this week to a place called Moca which is way far away. I'll let you know how it goes. This is gonna be an interesting week.

I'm so glad you got the job! Now all thats left is for dad to impress the bigwigs. Which he can do! What does that job consist of anyway? Supervision or doing it all yourself? Should you take the bar exams for plumbing and everything to just get it under your belt?

I dont know. Being here gives me alot of time to think about things.

I miss you all and love you so much!

Say hi to everyone for me!! Tell them to write me and tell me how things are going!

Love,

Elder Larsen (TAY)

PS The crosses are in front of some creepy weird cave thing. Pretty cool picture though huh? I have a couple more from it. You guys will like this memory card!