A Note From Isaac's Mom

Hello All!

Isaac’s mom here.  We just wanted to give you an update on how Isaac is doing. He was able to borrow a phone and we had a great video chat on Wednesday evening! He is doing really well.

This Monday morning, Isaac’s mission president texted all of the missionaries a list of supplies to purchase that would last them two weeks and asked them to go and get them that day, just in case.  The missionaries in his area went as a group, found the store largely empty and well stocked, and were able to get everything they needed.  They said that a lot of people they met were really scared, but the missionaries all felt upbeat and positive.  That very evening, the President of Guatemala locked down the country and asked everyone to quarantine themselves at home for the next 15 days.  Isaac said that they felt really blessed to be led by leaders who were inspired to do what was needed before the need arose!

For the next two weeks they are supposed to remain at home, except if they need groceries (which they probably won’t) or to exercise with their companions, avoiding others as much as possible.  They have been encouraged to stay in contact via phone with other members of the Church as well as gospel learners they are currently teaching.  A lot of other protocols have been put in place to keep everyone safe and healthy.  If they can do it from their apartment, the missionaries are allowed to contact families at home twice a week, but it may not be possible for them to read/respond to email.

Right now Isaac is happy but already a little stir-crazy.  🤪  We imagine that it is agonizing for missionaries to be cooped up and not able to serve or interact with the people around them.  Please continue to pray for him as he and the other missionaries in his zone work together to stay positive and feel productive.

Thank you for your support and prayers!

—Sarah Cloward.

I don´t have Corona Virus

¡Hola todos!

This week was frustrating, and then awesome! On Thursday I got sick again and we had to be in the house on Friday and some of Saturday too. It was so frustrating! But we´ve been totally healthy this week, and it´s been the best. It´s really hard to live feeling like you´re not accomplishing anything, so it was a boost of happiness to be able to go and help people again. Looks like I don´t have the corona virus after all.

The funny experience of the week was something we decided to do for Elder Machuca´s birthday. He´s one of the newest missionaries in the zone, and his birthday was last Thursday. We wanted to surprise him, but we didn´t know how to do it without it being obvious, because we´ve done the same thing for like three other missionaries here. So we decided to have a fake zone training, where we all went to the church so that my companion and I could "share a message" with the zone. Everyone knew that it was fake except for Elder Machuca. Elder Rosas and I started off by telling the zone that we were really frustrated with the way that they´ve been behaving. We started to reck them really, really hard, just going off about all of the bad things that they´re doing. It was all fake, but the missionaries pretended to be offended, and some started arguing. We got really mad, and took everyone into another room. That room was all decorated for the birthday, and we all surprised Elder Machuca a ton. I think we scared him a lot...but he was super happy and excited to learn that it was all fake. It was one of the funniest things I´ve ever done in the mission. Afterward we all learned a real message about the gospel.

Elder Machuca´s Birthday!

The Hermanas slammed his face into a piece of cake...oof

Yesterday we went to Pacaya again to help the missionaries there. It was really great because we found a TON of people who are really excited to hear our message, and they could really feel that it´s true. We got to this one house though and the lady said she was busy. I asked if we could help her, and she´s like "okay!" She took us out back, and it turns out that she was killing and defeathering chickens to sell to the neighbors...and...I learned how to do that. It´s kinda nasty to reach your hand into a recently killed chicken to take out all the stuff in there...holy cow. I thought science class was gross...but the lady was really happy that we helped, and I was happy to learn something new haha. Service is service! I was also happy that the power didn´t go out and so we got to take warm showers haha. All in all, the missionaries there are amazing and I love them a ton.

Defeathering and deorganing chickens. That was so nasty...

This lady was really nice. 

It´s been a really fun week of learning. Right now, we´re teaching all of the missionaries here about how to make goals. A lof of us have "goals" that we want to achieve, like "live a happy life" or "get closer to my family" or "read more books" and stuff like that. These things are good, but they really aren´t goals; they´re just desires, and they´re really hard to fulfill just by having them. An effective goal should lead us to achieve our desires, and should have three things: It should be specific,  it should be measurable, and it should have a specific period of time attached. For example, if I want to be a nicer person, I can make a goal that this week, I´m going to give three complements to people every single day. That is specific, can be measured, and has a time period. And it also helps me in my quest to be a nicer person. I invite all of you to make one goal like this for the week, and do it! It´s honestly really fun, and it makes you feel like you´re really progressing in life. These are the kinds of goals that make people change the world.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Visiting the Periquera with Hermano Edwin

The coldest place on Earth

¡Hola todos!

This week has been crazy. My companion got better, and then I got sick. We got to do just a few visits in our area, and then we had to stay in the house again because I got sick and threw up in the street. It wasn´t fun in the moment, but thinking back, it´s pretty funny to think about because it was in the most busy street in Palin, and everyone that passed by made fun of the white guy who was sick in Guatemala haha. Sometimes it happens. Actually, there are only two of the ten missionaries in the zone right now that aren´t sick, so it´s kinda crazy. It honestly makes me laugh that things are so rough for everyone. We´re happy though, and life is still good.

Before that, I got to go do divisions in Pacaya with Elder Machuca! We went into the mountains to visit the people there that want to learn about the gospel. They´re teaching a ton of really awesome people! It was a really fun time, except for the next morning. I was really excited to go there because Pacaya is really, reeeally cold, but they have an electric water heater on their shower there, so at least the shower is nice and warm. When we got there, I asked Elder Machuca if it was gonna work. He told me that the water tank was full, so the only way we possibly wouldn´t have water was if the power went out. And guess what happened?! When we woke up in the morning, there was no power! We waited, but it didn´t come because there was so much wind that the power had been knocked out in the whole city. So I went and took the coldest shower I´ve EVER taken ever! I got out and got dressed and everything, and that´s when I start to hear Elder Machuca screaming and cheering. Turns out the power was back. !!!. So he got to enjoy a nice warm shower, and I just got to laugh a lot (and shiver). When life doesn´t like you, it´s fun to just laugh. 

This week, we went to a multi zone conference in the capital, and we got to learn from the leaders of the mission. It was a really awesome experience for me, because they talked about exactly what I needed to learn, and I felt like a new person after leaving. Some of my favorite things I learned were about following God´s will and not our own, changing the way I pray to know God better, embarking on the quest and serving everyone, and not feeling bad for not being perfect. A lot of the time we feel like we aren´t as good as other people, or that we always mess up, or that we´re not the one who needs to be where we are. But we´re always enough, and it doesn´t matter how much we have, just how much we try. The world only cares about results, but God cares more about our effort and our progress than our standing compared to other people. That´s the part that makes me feel good. Nobody is better than you at being you, and without you the world would be as good as it is. I hope you give yourself credit for being awesome this week.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Little League Soccer

¡Hola todos!

I hope it´s been an awesome week for everyone. I know it has for me, but I really don´t remember much of what happened haha. That happens a lot here because the time goes by SO fast that I feel like I was just here writing the email last week. 

My companion has been really sick, so we haven´t been able to work too much, but we´ve done some pretty awesome things in the little time we´ve had. On Sunday after church finished, this teenager came up to us and said he wanted to go visit people with us. We asked him who he was, and he said his name was Anthony, but that everyone calls him Taquito. I got super excited, because in my almost 5 months of being here, I´ve heard a TON of things about that guy. Apparently he used to always visit with the missionaries, and he knows a ton of people to visit. Nobody had seen him in a really long time, but he finally came and found us, and we got to go visiting with him the next day. He knows about a ton of families who used to go to church and now don´t, which is gold for missionaries. The whole time he was just showing us houses where church members live that we don´t even know. We´ll probably start visiting with him a little more often now.

On Saturday we had an activity where we invited a ton of kids from about 6 to 18 years old on the street to just come play soccer in the church. We thought that maybe five or six would come, but we were wrong. There were probably 30 kids in there, all playing soccer at the same time! We eventually had to make more teams and split it up a bit better, because there were way too many people on the field at once. But it was awesome, and some of them came to church the next day! We´ll probably end up doing the same thing this week too. It was really funny watching a ton of kids going crazy chasing after a soccer ball and having a great time. 

This week I´ve been starting to study a lot more from a book called "Jesus the Christ." It´s basically a super, super in-depth analysis of the life of Jesus Christ, all meant to convince the world that He is our savior and redeemer. It´s one of the most complicated things I´ve ever read, and I can´t read much more than a chapter at a time because it analyzes EVerything, and leaves me with a TON to think about. But if I´m learning one thing, it´s that Jesus Christ was perfect. Every word He said was carefully chosen and placed to teach the people His gospel. Every story He told was pretty much the best possible way to help the people in that point in time. Every question He asked was exactly what the people needed to question internally the things that they were doing and what they needed to do differently. When I learn about the actual meaning of everything that He said and did, it really makes me amazed at how detailed the bible really is. No man could have thought of something so perfect, and the only thing that men have done to the bible is make it a little less clear. My favorite parts of the bible are just the four gospels that explain what Jesus did when He was here, because He gave us the perfect example. I invite you all take a little time this week to learn more about some of the things that Jesus did, because He is our best example. I know that He lived, and that He is the way, the truth, and life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by Him.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

The eggs outside of our window hatched!

Yuck...

Tacos a la Mexicana hechos en Guatemala...

We did it!

¡Hola todos! 

This week was the best week ever but also the most frustrating one. We saw some incredible miracles, but at the same time we didn´t get to do much haha. We did get to spend about 5 minutes watching a dog who´d sneaked into a duck pond have the time of his life chasing the ducks all around and going crazy and not listening to his angry owner yelling at him to get out of there. That was fun. We also lost half a pound of meat we bought to make spaghetti, and we have no idea where it went. Oh well...

So we had changes in the zone this week, but guess what?? Out of the ten people in the zone, only ONE of them had changes. Hermana Beyeler left for the coast, and now Hermana Ming is here. We will miss Hermana Beyeler, but it´s great that we´re all still here. Today we celebrated by having a water balloon fight in Amatitlan. We all brought the new zone shirts that Elder Rosas and I designed. I think they look pretty awesome. After getting all wet, we took a "photo chapina" to show them off and be silly. Elder Rosas and I also got a haircut today at the fanciest barber shop in Palin. It was craaazy nice, and cost SIXTY Quetzales! That´s SO much! But now that I think about it, that´s like less than 8 dollars...good gosh. 

So this week has been really crazy because right now the new president in Guatemala is trying to get rid of some of the crime and gangs in the country by sending the army all over to search people´s houses and look for problems. There are a lot of crazy things going on here in Palin right now because of that, and so for this week we´ve had to go back to our house at 6pm every day to stay out of all the problems. It´s been kinda crazy to have all of that time just in the house, but we´ve been making it by. 

The most amazing thing that happened this week was that we had a baptism! Hermana Lilian from the Periquera got baptized last Sunday, and it was super happy. We had to go through a lot of crazy things to help her to be able to do it though. She almost didn´t pass the interview to get baptized because of some crazy things that happened, but she did. On Sunday morning when we went to pick her up for her baptism, she came out of her house and told us that she wasn´t going to be able to go, and maybe it would be better to do it another week. When we asked why, she said that her baby daughter had been sick really, really sick, and that she hadn´t slept because the girl had been up coughing and crying the entire night. It was a really windy day, and so taking her daughter out that day could make it even worse. The daughter was crying and coughing a ton. So in that moment, we told Lilian that we as missionaries have the power of God. It´s called the priesthood, and it´s the same power that Jesus gave his apostles to heal the sick and cast out demons. And that´s the truth. We told her that if she had faith, we could use that power to heal her daughter in that moment so that Lilian could take her to the church and get baptized. She said that she believed, so we gave her daughter a blessing. When she lifted her daughter up for us to put our hands on her head, she stopped crying and because very calm. We blessed her that she would heal, so that God´s work could be accomplished. After we finished the blessing, the girl coughed once, and then was perfectly fine. She accompanied her mom to the baptism with a smile on her face, perfectly calm and peaceful. She waited through two hours of church without getting upset once, and then watched as her mom was baptized by the power of God. I have known that little girl for about a month now, and have never seen her so calm. This stuff is real. Lilian was so happy to be baptized, and we all loved watching, especially because nobody in our area has been baptized in over a year and a half. It was a miracle. Now we´re going to keep working :).

The mission is awesome. I´m never doing enough, but I´m always learning and getting better. I hope all of you have an awesome week, and do something to get to know God better today. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Zone temple trip

Zone bowling trip

Zone shirts!

Foto chapina

Lilian´s baptism! Yay!

Us with the Zona Amatitlan, all wet...and there´s a dude behind us who´s about to get us even MORE wet haha

Crazy week!

Buenas tardes! 

This was one of the fullest weeks in my entire mission. We really weren´t in our own area almost at all. But we did a ton for other people and learned a ton of things too. 

We helped the Hermanas out in the zone, and I went with the ones in Palin 2. We helped a lady to clean her garden, which was more like a mini jungle. We chopped wood and cleaned up things and it was really fun. We also threw a surprise birthday party for Hermana Ceballo! We had to be really creative so she wouldn´t know that we were going to do it, because it was the second time in the same change haha, but she had no idea and was really happy. We also finished making the design for the zone shirts that we´re going to buy, and they should come this week, so I´ll send a picture when we have them. They´re super cool!

We´re working really hard in the Periquera, and this Sunday we went with a ton of missionaries and stake leaders. We found a ton more people to teach, and it was a huge success. We´re teaching someone named Lilian there who is preparing to be baptized this Sunday! Please pray that she can be strong and overcome temptations. She would be the first baptism here in over a year, and it might be my last Sunday in Palin too, so it will be really special. 

My companion and I had to go buy new shoes, and so we went to this incredibly fancy shopping mall and found some nice ones. My camera isn´t letting me send a lot of the pictures I have from the week, but maybe next week I´ll be able to show them. We also found one of the few IHOP restaurants in this country and ate there, and it was super tasty. Here, IHOP is like a super high-class, fancy, dress up nice kind of restaurant. I might be wrong, but I don´t remember it being anything like that back home haha.Toward the end of our "shopping" experience, I ran out of energy and didn´t even know what to do anymore. I´m still not used to being around things that fancy, and I honestly don´t even like it much. I´m more comfortable in cinder block and sheet metal houses now. 

Today, we went to the temple with the zone! I haven´t been in an entire YEAR, which is really crazy to me. But it was a really fantastic experience there. The temple is God´s house, and there´s a really special spirit there. I loved it. Afterward, we went bowling, which was really fun too! We just got back from that big trip, and we´re all spent. But it was really fun!

We did a lot of things this week, but hands down, the best thing we did was on Saturday, when we got to see an apostle. Elder Ulisses S. Soares of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles came to visit Guatemala, and he gave a conference for only the zone leaders of 4 of the missions in Guatemala. So almost nobody got to go. But we did! He´s from Brazil, and speaks Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Every time I see an apostle, I´m reminded of the incredible power that God trusts us with. The apostles that live today have exactly the same function and power as the ones that Jesus himself called in the bible. And you can feel that when you shake the hand of someone like that. He told us that God trusts in us, and that´s why he´s called us as leaders of the mission in the last days of the world. He said that the things that we´re learning right now in the mission are to prepare us to lead in the life afterward. He also said that the prophet loves us a ton, which felt really awesome. I love apostles, and I know that they´re on the earth because God loves us too. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Hermana Ceballo on her birthday!

Elder Rosas and I when we went to see Elder Soares

Elder Rosas and I in IHOP. Pisto!

Traveling across the world

¡Buenas tardes!

This week was the best. We traveled to Villa Hermosa, walked a lot and a lot, traveled to Amatitlan, and brought people from the Periquera to church for the first time! It was awesome.

Elder Rosas and I have been all over the place. It´s crazy how much we´ve been walking and traveling. I think it shows in our shoes though. 

This week they´ve been repairing the road in Palin, and so we haven´t been able to take many buses to visit people in the zone. We´ve mostly just been walking. Yesterday my companion realized that the whole in his shoe was so big that he also had one in his sock, and his bare foot was touching the road all day haha. Oof! That´s what it´s like to be a missionary. It´s super fun!

We had a huge victory in the ward this week because we finally convinced the leaders to send a little bus to the Periquera (the really poor place with people who really want to go to church but can´t pay for it). We went there and found a bunch of people who we´ve been teaching, and they came! All the members of the church got to meet them, and it was a really cool experience. I think the people here were surprised, because they´re going to keep sending the bus. Some of the people there are really excited to be baptized, and so we´re going to keep working a ton with them over there. 

We´ve been visiting this lady named Hortencia who wants to come back to church after years of not going very often. She is really awesome, but she´s also hilarious. She always makes fun of Elder Rosas and I for being opposites. She calls us "the fat one and the skinny one." She was telling us about a place where it´s really cold, and she says that the iguanas are freezing on the trees and falling down. I asked her what she´d do if an iguana fell on her head, expecting her to be scared. And she was like "If one of those things fell on my head, I´d grab it real quick, cook that baby and eat it right there!" It was so funny. 

We got a call this week from some people that my companion was teaching in his old area telling us that they were going to get baptized! So we got permission to go all the way to Villa Hermosa in the capital to see a family get baptized. They were so happy. When the dad came out of the water, he just stood there with his face in his hands crying and thanking God. It really touched him to be able to be baptized in the church of Jesus Christ, because he´d been searching his whole life for just that without even knowing. It´s amazing to see people like that who understand how important it is to follow the Lord. There really isn´t anything more important than that. And it´s awesome because that´s why I´m here, to help people find that joy. It makes me really happy to help others to be happy, and the gospel is the happiest thing there is. Every day I learn more ways to help people. The mission is awesome!

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Elder Rosas when he eats my snacks

"American food"

The Mermaid Lagoon

¡Hola todos!

This week went by super fast. We got kinda sick, threw a surprise birthday party for Hermana Sosa, went to Pacaya, and did some other awesome stuff. It was a good week!

Today we went to una laguna (lagoon...?) en Calderas, which is an aldea of San Vicente Pacaya, right by the volcano. It´s beautiful! We had a picnic, played uno, and just enjoyed being together as a zone. The weather is perfect up there!

This week we didn´t have much time to work in our area (as usual haha). We helped the hermanas with a wedding and a baptism, and helped the other hermanas with visits, and went to conferences and did all kinds of stuff. But yesterday was one of the first days where we were actually going to be able to do some awesome work in the Periquera, which is an aldea with a ton of people who are really ready to hear the gospel. I was all ready to go, but then my companion told me that he felt like we shouldn´t. I was kind of confused, but I decided to listen to him, because a lot of the time God tells us to change our plans in order to complete with His, which are always a lot better. Also because the Periquera is really dangerous, so if we feel like we shouldn´t go, it might actually be a life or death situation haha. Anyway, we stayed in Palin. We were walking down the street talking to everybody, and my companion met a lady named Wendy who is just awesome! She really wanted to hear our message, and she told us to visit her in her house that very day! So we went, and taught a really awesome lesson, and she´s really ready to change her life. I don´t know exactly why we didn´t have to go to the Periquera, but I´ve never met anyone like her that wants to learn so much before, and I know that we wouldn´t have met her if we had gone. Miracles happen. 

I don´t have much time to write this week, but I hope everyone has an awesome week! Life is fantastic :).

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

The entire zone of Palin hitch hiking in the back of a pickup truck on the way to Calderas...

Surprise party for Hermana Sosa! She was super happy.

Smile :)

¡Hola todos!

We did a lot of crazy things this week. We went to Pacaya again to help the Elders and the Hermanas up there on divisions. We also went to the capital again to learn from the mission president and the other leaders of the mission. We also went to the capital again to pick up my mission replacement debit card that I´ve been waiting for for about 2 months. And we also went to Amatitlan to learn from the church leaders here. We went everywhere this week! 

We had an awesome conference with the mission in the capital. We got a lot of motivation to be more focused on the work here. We´re literally here to change people´s lives. We´ve chosen to serve for 2 years, and so we might as well put our all in to it. Being lazy isn´t worth it, and so my companion and I have been working on helping everyone and sharing the gospel with as many people as we can. We found some random people moving into a new house, and helped them out. We also helped cut firewood and carry bricks. People usually let us help them if we don´t ask permission first ;). 

The missionaries in the zone are awesome. They all act like they´ve been doing this forever, and it honestly doesn´t feel like they´re new anymore. It´s super great, and makes me really excited to see them grow in the next couple months.

I feel like the time is passing faster and faster here in Guatemala. I really don´t know what´s happening a lot of the time, I just know that I´m working hard to help everyone to be happy, and it makes me happy too. I don´t always know the best way to do things, but one thing I do know is that God lives, and He loves us. That means that it´s okay if we aren´t the best at everything, and it´s okay if we mess up sometimes. But it also means that we´re going somewhere, and we need to walk forward, not backward. It´s all about everyone else, and not about us. If we´re helping them to be happier and feel better about themselves, we´ll be happier too. I hope you all have an awesome week, and hope you can give a smile to someone who needs one.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Happy picture!

A "foto chapina." In this country when people take pictures, they just make a straight face and it looks like they´re a statue. Hermana Beyeler and I aren´t very good at it...

Funny picture...

One man´s trash is another man´s treasure

Hey, how´s it going?

This week was full of work. We talked to drunk people, got in a minor car crash, got a new bishop, and found lots of awesome people to teach. Overall I´d say it was a great time :).

We´re starting to go to a part of our area called the Periquera. It´s a little town that´s kinda far from Palin, and it´s the poorest place I´ve ever, ever seen. There´s muddy water and trash in the streets, and kids don´t have shoes. A lot of the people don´t even have enough money to make their houses out of rusty sheet metal, so they just use sticks and tarps. But the people there are the most humble people I´ve ever seen. They really are ready to hear the gospel, and always let us in and listen. We´re working on a way to help them to get to church right now, because they don´t have enough money for the bus ride. 

This morning we got a text from a number we didn´t know that said that they were the next door neighbors and they were really upset and tired of calling us every night to tell us to be quieter. They were honestly not happy, and if it happened again they were going to make us move out. "If you want to jump up and down and play and have really loud conversations, go to the soccer fields; that´s what they´re for." We were honestly kinda scared, because we really didn´t think we´d been making much noise. We were thinking like "sometimes when we go up the wooden stairs it makes a little bit of sound...?" So we asked if they were really talking about us. We quickly got a message back that said "oh oh sorry! We were trying to reach the Elders from Amatitlan! Not you guys, sorry." So we sent the messages to the zone leaders of those Elders. We were relieved for us, but those guys are really gonna get it...

Yesterday, my companion and I had to go to the capital so he could get his hurting knee checked out. It was all fine, and afterward we went to Oakland Mall to eat lunch. That place is the richest, nicest mall I´ve ever seen. I´ve been to some really nice ones in the states, but I´ve NEVER seen a place as nice as that one. Everyone was wearing weird expensive clothes and didn´t even look at me if I said hi passing by. There were a million types of clothes, makeups, creams, phones, pens, watches, and everything anyone could ever not want. I really felt out of place there. I didn´t really talk much to my companion in there, because I just felt uncomfortable and kinda confused. When we left, I was exhausted and just slept on the way back. 

Thinking about the week, I couldn´t help but think about the contrast I experienced. I went to the poorest place I´d ever seen, and then I went to the richest place ever. When I was in the rich place, nobody cared about who I was or what I was doing there. If they looked at me, it was probably to wonder why my shoes were dirty and I needed a haircut. But when I went to the poor place, everyone wanted to meet me, listen to me, and tell me about all the wonderful things in their lives. People shared, played, and just sat to talk about life. I couldn´t help thinking about how happy people can be when they aren´t focused on things. Walking through the mall, my companion gave a really profound insight. He said "I don´t think I really would be happier if I had all of this stuff..." And I think he was right. Material things are really attractive to the human eye, but distracting to the spirit. If we just stop for a little while and try to think about other people, we will see past the wall that so many people have in front of them. God doesn´t want robots who dye their hair green and wear window curtains that cost a thousand dollars. He wants servants. He wants people who love other people, and care about making them happy. He wants people who have faith that life is for our good, and that it will be better for us if we make it better for others. The poor people who live in the Periquera will die someday, and maybe sooner than the rich people in Oakland. But after they die, they´ll have a lot more than the richest of the rich, because they already found the most priceless things in the world. I hope we can all take some time this week to think about the most important things in life.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Changes!

¡Hola todos!

I am now in the same area as before...but with a new companion! I´m with Elder Rosas now, and he is super awesome. He´s from Mexico city, and he´s tall and super funny. He loves to play sports, joke around, and help people to be happy. I´ve only been with him for one day, and I´ve already had a great time. He hasn´t been a zone leader before so I´m "training" him, in a way. 

It´s been a crazy week. Elder Payan got the news that he is being sent to Sipacate, which is right on the beach in the southern coast of the country. It´s one of the hottest, hardest areas in the entire mission. It´s in the Siquinalá zone, and you might remember me talking about visiting there sometimes to cut down bushes with machetes and eat coconuts and stuffs. It´s a really cool place, but Elder Payan wasn´t too excited to go. We spent the week going around and saying goodbye to the people here, which was hard for him too. But he´s going to have an awesome time...just has to get used to the heat. 

Elder Payan is really, really good at cooking. One day, an Hermana invited him to cook, but he was going to be with the Elders in Pacaya, so it was my turn to cook! I made spaghetti the way my mom always does with the Hermanas from Palin 3 and Elder Delange, and it was super tasty!! We had a lot of fun making it with the limited materials that the Hermana had, but it was also really fun to eat :).

This change, EVERYONE in the zone is training. Every single companionship has a new missionary except mine, and I´m training Elder Rosas to be a zone leader. But the new missionaries are amazing, and they´re all super ready to work and be awesome. It´s exciting. New missionaries are great because they´re just thinking all about the real reason we´re here, to help people to come unto Christ. They always teach me a ton. I´ll send a picture of the zone new week if I can. Right now I have to run because we have a meeting with the stake president and the mission president to help the work move forward. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Us and the spaghetti :)

Elder Rosas (on the right) and I (the white guy) with Tony, who just barely got set apart to be a missionary, going to Peru! He´s super cool. 

My family sent me some kazoos in a package, and so we decided to put them to use. Hahaha

Christmas and New Years!

¡Hola todos!

I skipped a week of writing because on Christmas I talked a lot with my family. That was so fun, and I love all of them a ton. But today I get to talk about Christmas AND New Years. It´s been a great time, and even though there are always tricky things that happen, I´ve been having a really great time. 

It´s been pretty tricky to find people in their houses that want to listen, because lots of people are out celebrating for the holidays. But in the little time we´ve had, we´ve been able to find some really great people to teach that are really positive and want to learn and have a happier life, which is really awesome. 

On Christmas eve, we stayed with a family in a really super rich residential. We ate an awesome turkey dinner, with tamales and ponche. For Christmas here, everyone eats tamales and drinks ponche. The tamales that they make are wrapped in banana leaves and eaten with bread, and ponche is basically a mix of water and all of the fruits in existence, and little cinnamon and boiled together. It´s super tasty. And everyone burned fireworks like crazy the way they always do. Where I come from, it´s illegal to light fireworks. Here they blow up so many things that it´s just funny. They almost hit someone with a firework that fell down right when it launched too, and I´d imagine that there are lots of experiences where that actually does happen. 

On Christmas morning, we had a little party with the zone of missionaries where we made pancakes and hot chocolate, gave presents to everyone, and watched Coco! It´s a lot better in Spanish...sorry! It was a great time. 

For New Years, we spent the night with another family that has even more money. I mention that just because it feels super weird to be with people that have more Christmas decorations and fancy food and things than people in the states, because I´ve never been accustomed to living like that. We all had an awesome time together. We got back home at around 1 in the morning (with permission), and slept a lot today. But we´re all happy. 

One of my favorite things that happened this week was getting to see someone open her mission call. When I got my call, they all came by mail with a letter to open and papers to read to everyone. Now, they come in an email, and they come super fast. It´s a lot different. But the hermana read to everyone her letter from the prophet of the church, telling her that she is called to serve as a representative of Jesus Christ for the next 18 months of her life, in the mission of Cusco, Peru. I got really emotional hearing her read to all of us that she will find more blessings in this work than she would in anything else she could do. It reminded me of the day when I read my mission call, and now of the incredible blessing I have to be here and serve the Lord here in Guatemala. I´ve found so many miracles, and I´m learning so many things that I couldn´t have learned in any other way. I´m really happy to be here. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

They gave me presents too!

Chocolate pancakes, hot chocolate, and a silly peluche the Hermanas gave me.

Look at what they got for my companion!