I don`t think we`re in Kansas anymore, Toto

¡Buenas tardes!

This week was amazing. We had the General Conference of the church, and got to listen to the prophets and apostles of God teach us the things that He wants us to know right now, in a live video broadcast. My companion and I watched it in English in a little air conditioned room in the church called the "bunker." I learned a lot from the talks in conference about how to have joy, and how to understand what Satan is trying to do to take that joy out of my life. God just wants us to be happy, but a lot of the time we don`t realize that because of all of the things that we think make us happy that actually aren`t good for us. The conference was really refreshing for my companion and I, and gave us a lot of motivation to work this week. 

One of the days of conference we bought an entire roasted chicken to split and eat for lunch in between sessions, because we got really hungry. Someone also gave us this fruit called a sincuya from a tree in their property. It`s pretty gnarly looking, and it was pretty tasty! We also helped our friend Mishelle clean out her house that got flooded from all the rain. I also went to a really fancy store and got to play the nicest ukulele I`ve ever seen. I think I might go back to buy it someday. 

The sincuya

We cut it open...and then we had no idea what to do.

We got drenched pretty much every day this week from pouring rain that comes in the afternoon and lasts sometimes into the night. We had some really funny experiences pretty much every day.  My companion tried to jump over a river of water in the street once, and he made it, but the telephone fell out of his pocket and landed straight in the water and got completely soaked, battery and all. We bought a bag of rice and carried the phone around there for the rest of the day. We had to go to the Hermana`s area that day for a meeting, so we took a super dangerous trip in a Tuk-Tuk down a road that was just totally filled with water. We finally made it, and found the Hermanas there, only to learn that the meeting had been canceled. They said they had called us like ten times, and when they asked what happened, we just showed them the bag of rice. We then returned to our area down the same dangerous road, but my companion`s agenda ended up getting soaked, and then it fell into some poop. So he decided he needed a new one haha. That was one of the funniest days in my whole mission, because nobody was home and pretty much everything went wrong. We just laughed and laughed all day. Luckily, the rice saved the phone and so we don`t have to use payphones anymore. 

We discovered that my-size clothes don`t really fit Elder Hoskins very well. He made it happen though...

Life is good, and I`m learning a ton of things all the time. Whenever I start to feel like I know what I`m doing, something happens and I realize that I still have a TON to learn. But the good thing is that there`s still time for me to keep improving.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

We did it!

¡Hola todos!

This week was crazy! 

We had the baptism of José and Flor, and by a crazy miracle, Flor´s sister Evelyn decided that she wanted to get baptized too! That was super awesome. But they went through a ton of trials to get there. José ran into some problems at work that made some financial trouble for the family. Flor got sick and we had to give her a blessing. They didn`t really like the missionary who interviewed them. Finally on the day of the baptism, we came to church and the water in the baptismal font was green and full of bugs and grass! We drained it to fill it back up, but it turned out that there wasn`t any water anymore because the young men had broken the water system in a sketchy overnight activity they had. But through everything, José, Flor, and Evelyn stayed strong and were baptized on Saturday! We had to go all the way to Santa Lucia and take the people with two trips in a bus. It was a beautiful service, and they were all really happy. We all were grateful to be able to see the family choose to follow that commandment of God. On the way back, the bus could only do one trip, so we stuffed everyone in there except us, without knowing what we would do. We just started walking, and by some crazy miracle the Stake President was passing by in his car and gave us a ride all the way back to Siquinalá. God takes care of his missionaries. 

We were walking down the street one day, and we bumped into someone my companion had been teaching in his old area in Escuintla! He hadn`t been able to progress much back then because of a lot of problems that he was going through there, but now he lives here and he`s doing way better! He has been reading the Book of Mormon that Elder Hoskins left with him, and he really loves it. He told us that he and his wife want to go to church, and if they feel it in their hearts, they are going to get baptized too. It was awesome because my companion had already started the work with him, and after leaving for a while, the guy had prepared himself to really learn a ton and change his life, and now we get to keep teaching him. We`re excited to see how that goes.

Today we took the zone of 14 missionaries to Guazacapan to drive through this auto-safari zoo place. We got to drive right up next to all of the animals, and it was a really cool experience. There was also a normal zoo part afterward. We had a lot of fun and saw some really awesome and funny things.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward