Week 80: Ham Dinner, Christmas and Poqomchi

well merry christmas to yuuz!

How are you??
i'm great!

How was the Christmas conference and good food that you were promised?
it was awesome. a great conference. very relaxed. the spirit of the conference was what got me. if i hadnt had a cold i would have sung with elder turek, elder gonzales, elder howard, elder smith, elder norton and the sisters. they invited me but i couldn't sing. my nose makes it a lot easier to get colds and stuff. i will really need to fix it. but they sang away in a manger in qeqchi, spanish, and english. it was amazing. the spirit was very strong. i love this season. elder fadel balled. i nearly did.

Did you eat till you were stuffed? Was it a ham dinner? well yes and yes. i ate till i was stuffed and it was a glazed ham dinner. it was a ton of food. made me miss home though. thats the only thing ;) next year eh?

and no i dont know another dialect. just words. general greetings. they are very similar to qeqchi so would be easy....kinda....to learn. i would love to learn two languages called poqomchi and quiche. they sound sooo cool. i have a testimony written down in quiche. trying to memorize it. it wont be for anything but it would be really cool.

today for p-day we went to sacsuha and played ultimate frisbee. im outta shape. horribly. just means i have more work to do. we played with smith, turek, gonzales, my companion, lopez and norton. it was fun. really hot though. i feel like a new man (besides the pain and soreness) now. refreshed. i finally sweated profusely. mmmmm.

i think i have decided what i want to be. it will be hard but i think i can do it. i have the mind for it.

i have no idea what to write you guys. we will be talking in just a little bit! :)

i will call you guys tonight i think to set up the call and stuff. the forty five minute thing is so families dont wast money. and that is how it has always been. the whole mission. they always say that.

on friday we didnt work. i was wiped out. with the cold and all. my body just wouldnt get up. especially after the trip to coban and back. we got to the house at like nine at night.

the news with the baptisms. ricardo and elena seem really reluctant. i'm pretty sure they want free hand outs. they are having a tough time. we went to teach them this last week and the owner of their house accompanied us and seemed to be very touched by our message. she said she was going to come to church with elena but didnt make it.

the little girl Olga who was going to get baptized on the 25 still wants to. her parents are super reluctant for some reason. i have no idea. just gonna have to use the scriptures. she told me she wanted to get baptized on christmas but they are just making excuses not to do it. they really dont get it. we'll see how it goes. tonight we will go with them.

good to hear about peyton and that he is making progress.

ian cracks me up. they couldnt at least stick it in a microwave before blessing and passing it? one time i had to break and bless crackers in santo domingo. like club crackers. it really doesnt matter though. as long as the ordinance is performed. you can use anything.

what songs did you sing in sacrament?

i really have no idea what to say haha. if you have questions ask them tonight. just know that i love you all and wish you a very merry christmas.

TAY

ps. i know she got married. how weird is that?! so did alexis wilson from BYU. and HAPPY BIRTHDAY KELSEY AND BAILEY!!!

Week 79: The Chicken

well hello, good afternoon. how is it going?

so sorry it took so long to write back. we are in coban today and tomorrow for the christmas conference with president and the senahu, coban and verapazes zones. it will be very enjoyable. sister torres told me there will be a ham dinner. oh yeah. i cannot wait. i need good food!

this last week. interesting.

first we went to help this family take tamales and goods to a festival that they were also in charge of where they burn a big statue of a devil or demon and do crazy things with fireworks. well we carried all the stuff there. we were able to watch a little of the fireworks then left to go teach people. well when we went back to help them carry their stuff back the husband, who was in charge of making everything (fireworks too), looks at me and says in qeqchi. "here we have a good friend of mine, chicken, lets here some of his words in pure qeqchi...". that is when i thought 'oh crap' i had no idea what to say! so i asked how everyone was and when nobody responded i just answered for them and handed the microphone back, at which point in time brother 'o' (for such is his name) says "lets here what the chicken sounds like, you know, for all the children." ugh. everyone always asks me to make the chicken noise. except this time it was in front of about 500 people. very awkward. i hope that story was legible and not totally discombobulated.

tangent. elder mortenson today, being who he is says, quote: "I love everyone, i'm so happy." jolly green giant style. and that is how he is!

this member family just got what is called an iPAD. it is insane! it is basically a touch screen computer that looks like a big iTOUCH. i want one but they did the price conversion and it would be about 700 dollars. that is alot.

so you know the saying, lets make like a tree and leaf....well lets make like a deaf man and get out of hear. elder lusty and i concocted that one.

i'm starting to get compliments on my qeqchi. finally haha ;) i'm progressing!!!!!!!

elder turek and i this last week went to a place called san vicente dos. we started our journey in canlun early in the morning. well we had heard that trucks go up there and that where we waited is where the drove by. so we sat there and waited and waited and waited. every truck that passed was full and did not take us. finally we just decided to walk. we first got to this place where there was a little tienda. there was a mom and a little boy tending the tienda-store. well the lady was way nervous the whole time. who knows why. must be the gringoality. well the little boy liked us and so i started to talk to him in qeqchi, but he responded that he only knew poqomchi. so i started speaking to him in that. which is not much i only know a few phrases. well the lady didnt like that and quickly snapped-he only knows a little bit! weird.

so we keep walking. and walking and walking. we find some guy that wants to get baptized so we take his name and keep walking, seeing as we are not in elder tureks area yet. we ended up walking 4 and a half hours to get to this place. it hurt soooo bad haha. i loved it. and i missed that feeling.

when we got up there everyone wanted to talk to us. they all let us in and asked when we would be coming back. they were very good people. its just a little place.

from where we were we could see a waterfall that started in the clouds and dropped for thousands of feet. it was gorgeous. it was soooo far away though. someday, maybe though.

it was soooo dang cold up there. us coloradoites froze our butts off. we were shaking. the last place we contacted there was a kid just sitting there in the middle of a room waiting for us. (turns out he was also a truck drivers son-you know, the ones that left us). he listened and was respectful but very closed hearted. he started asking useless questions like what are all the apostles names and where are they nowadays and if we are saved because of prophets and stuff like that. pure saduccee. doctor of the law, trying to catch us in word traps. well we didnt fall. told him that salvation only comes through christ and obedience to his commandments which knowledge comes only through his chosen servants the prophets. when we left i saw the first qeqchi woman ever smoking a cigar.

well we werent able to make it all the way back to teleman and were able to stay in the canlun house for the night. which was also cold somehow.

so that is my story.

i love and miss you all!!

ELDER TAY