Make Their Eyes Shine: 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