Remember that villain in Tarzan...?

¡Hola todos!

This week was really fun. We found a ton of people to teach, learned how to cook some tasty food, and did some awesome service. 

Today, we got the whole zone of Palin and the zone of Amatitlan together (24 missionaries), and made a huge churrasco for everyone. We grilled meat, corn, and potatoes, and it was really tasty. The meat was kinda cheap and turned out kinda hard...but it was really good haha. We also played soccer, and everyone was really happy. 

Yesterday we did some of the funnest service I´ve done on my entire mission. If you know me well, you know that I love climbing things. I guess I never grew out of climbing trees, because the service involved climbing up trees and cutting off some infected branches with a machete. It reminded me of that bad guy in Tarzan who tries to chase Tarzan with a machete in the trees and ends up cutting the branches that are holding him up. I almost did that too...yikes. It was probably a bad idea, because we were really high up and we could´ve really hurt ourselves, and a huge tree branch almost fell on my companion, but we were safe and nothing bad happened. After cutting off the branches we cut them all into firewood. My hands are really blistered now, but the lady was really happy that we helped her. They made us a tasty dinner afterwards :).

My companion bought a really big speaker, and even though on the mission we only listen to music that talks about God, we´ve been enjoying listening to really good tunes. Yesterday I was so distracted that I didn´t notice that the water tank on the roof had filled up from the pila downstairs, and the bomba was still sending water up there. All the extra water was flowing out and falling into the street, and the neighbors knocked on the door to see what on earth was going on and why there was so much water everywhere. Oops...

We´ve been working with a family of investigators (Alberto y Delia) and this Sunday they came to church! They loved the things they learned and the way they felt there. They can´t read, but they love to listen. They know that the church is true, and want to get baptized soon also. We´re really excited for them.

I´ve been thinking about something really interesting this week. My companion and I were telling riddles, and I remembered that a wise person once told me that the thing that makes riddles so hard is that we all have misconceptions and assumptions that block us from finding the real answer. The answer is something simple and explainable almost every time, but we get locked up thinking in only one specific way, and we don´t allow ourselves to figure it out. That´s how it is teaching people too. Every one has a need. The need can be a reason they aren´t choosing to do what God wants them too, or it could be something that they really want in life. When we find the need of the person, it´s a lot easier to help them, because the gospel answers any question and solves any problem. But we have to find it first. Like a riddle, the need of the person is often very simple. It could be that a family member died and they feel like they´ll never see them again. It could be that they want to feel like someone listens to and understands them. It could be that they think that you need to be able to read to go to heaven. Needs aren´t always simple to resolve, but they´re simple to understand. We just need to not assume we know why the person is doing bad things or not changing, because there´s ALWAYS a reason why. If we assume we understand, we may be creating a wall that makes it so that there´s no way to understand, and we can never help the person with what they really need. The main need will always cause other smaller things. For example, if your husband feels like you don´t love him, he might get mad a lot. But just winning the argument and convincing him he doesn´t have to be mad everytime it happens is like killing the ants that are on the apple. Finding out WHY he´s mad and helping him know that you love him a ton is the way that you get rid of the anthill so that the ants not only go away but also don´t come back to the apple. I hope we can all work to understand people better. Think about the bigger problems and needs, and find out how to help people with what they really need, that causes them to do the things they do. It´s a real thing.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

This dove is domesticated, and walks up to you and lets you pet it and play with it. It came to this family on it´s own two days after a loved one passed away, and just stayed to comfort them. Now it´s part of the family. Pretty interesting, huh?

Elder Payan loves cats :)

It´s lucky these pictures still exist, because my memory got a virus and I had to find someone really smart to hack in a take it off. But we´re all good now!

We all have cats! 

Tasty churrasco with elote and papas