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

Week 75: Changes & Friends in the 'Chic'

well hello my junkab'lal. how are you peoples? that is qeqchi for family by the way.

well this last week was super interesting. first my companion is a companion that i have had before. weird huh? it is elder vasquez! i was with him in Santo Domingo. remember? he has not been ZL before. this is his first change doing it. he is good.

it shall be fun this change with him. and yes the change of elder burden came as a surprise. we thought we would be together at least another change. he had been in the 'chic' a long time though. he came in with me. i'm thinking i am next. we'll see though.

this last week was pretty eventful.

first. i heard that president falabela who is in the first quorumn of the seventy had nice things to say about the missionaries in our mission. that was nice. :)

second, changes were crazy. my companion left on tuesday for coban. so i stayed with elder gonsalez and elder howard in teleman while waiting to hear who our companions would be on wednesday. well we finally heard thursday in the morning that a lot would be coming in from the capital. my companion came in from the capital and didnt come in until thursday. so i had to take care of all the organization of the changes by myself. it was pretty hectic. my companion left coban in a trio and when they were leaving one of the missionaries said he forgot stuff so he got off the bus. the other missionaries (including those going to senahu) were coming an hour behind. and those that had left stuff got on that bus too. it was super unorganized but it all got taken care of. sometimes being so far away from everything involves traveling alone though. lots of missionaries have had to do it so no worries.

elder turek, elder smith and elder schone came into the 'chic.'

elder smith is in santo domingo with elder howard. they already set a baptismal date with someone! i have no idea who it is though. they will be doing well there. i'll make sure to get a picture with elder smith! :)

third, while elder howard, elder gonzales and i were in teleman waiting for transfers, someone broke into the missionaries house in sacsuha'. so we had to go there and take care of that as zl's also and talk with the owner about fixing the house to make it more secure. elder gonsalez was pretty bummed but he is better now. its still safer here than the capital though. he is companions with elder turek.

i don't really know why the adams apple is called an adams apple but it is funny to hear qeqchis explain why. they think that adam saw that eve partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and he started to. but he only swallowed it halfway and that is why we have adams apples. hahaha. :)

we went to canlun this last week with elder hexem and elder lusty to do some baptismal interviews. that was cool. i got to know canlun. we have to cross it in a canoe. that is what the picture is. and a tree. and a huge beetle we found today in el estor.

we are in el estor again today. came to give the invitations to the missionaries for the open house. its all going as planned. it is going to be pretty huge. elder clark from the second quorumn of the seventy is coming. (also the area president).
they say that elder packer had a lot to do with the new church there. he has come here to the polochic valley and especially went to chulac. and now they have a huge district center that holds around 400 - 500 people. it is amazing and i will send a picture of that too.

i will be sending a memory card soon. i got a little mini SD so it will send better in the mail. they make you send a package if you have anything hard in your letter.

did you guys get a ticket for driving in that lane? or did you just get a warning? dont go dyin on me while i'm an the mission danget. that wouldn't be cool.

i attached the invitations.

ricardo and elena come to church every sunday. they came again. he told us he wants to "give his heart to the faith." so we'll see if he can. he still has to learn a lot.

some lady had me translate a chicken song about baby chicks to english and twinkle twinkly little star. who knows what she is using that for. she is old. like 20 or so and surely getting her masters. you'd think they would have her translate songs like that when she's in 3rd grade or something. the education system here needs work.

did you get a bull tag and go back to shoot those things?

dont ever complain or say you dont want to go to church. suck it up. just remember how hard our Savior had it. he didnt give up. he did what his Father needed Him to do.

i love and miss you all!!!!


till next week, hasta la próxima semana, toj sa' li xaman jun.

ELDER TAY