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!