Miracles

¡Hola todos!

This week was crazy. We sort of just were better at all of the things this week, and it was really cool. I`m not sure how it happened, but we felt really good about the work we accomplished this week, and we feel like God is helping us a lot. 

My companion had been struggling a little bit with being shy, and not wanting to talk to people very much. I found a talk for him called "The fourth missionary" that really changed my mission when I read it. It talks about putting everything you have into your work, and focusing 100% on serving the people and serving God. I`m not sure if it was from the talk or just from the Spirit, but after reading it he all the sudden wanted to talk with everyone! And he did. He talked to everyone he could, in the street, in their houses, in the tienda, everyone! And he talked so much that he lost his voice and couldn`t talk anymore at the end of the day. It was really funny, but it was also really awesome to see him change so drastically and gain a desire that he really didn`t have before. Talking is what missionaries do, and so I`m really happy that he`s learning to meet people and invite every one to change their life. 

This week a bunch of our friends came to church, including a boy named Lester that said that he "didn`t like church" because it was boring and he wasn`t interested. At least that`s what he said going in. But then when it ended he was practically jumping up and down with excitement about all the things he got to learn and the other kids he met and how excited he was to be able to come back next week. It was great! His mom Silvia really wants to come to church too, but it`s hard for her because she works every Sunday selling fish. We`re working on a way to help her with that. They`re a really great family though. 

We also met a miracle this week. We met this woman named Nanci, who went to church for the second time on Sunday before we met her. She is dating a member of the church who wasn`t going anymore until he got this really strong feeling that he needed to start going to church again. So they both started going. We met them last Sunday, and Nanci now wants to be baptized as soon as possible, and they both want to get married. We are going to help them a ton, and it`s very possible that they will get married this Saturday and baptized this Sunday. If not, it would probably be until the next week, and I might not be here anymore to see it because changes are coming up soon. But either way, they are super cool, and they have a huge desire to do what God wants them to do. We are really excited to be helping them out. 

The email next week will probably be full of tons of crazy changes, and my whole life is probably going to be different by the time I write again. But we`ll just have to see.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Ruins of an ancient Catholic cathedral

A really pretty market in Antigua

A guy we saw fixing his bus while going full speed on the freeway. I can`t really say stuff like that is uncommon here. 

Antigua

Hi everyone!

I don´t have much time to write this week, but it was a really short week for us. We actually got really sick and had to stay in the house for a lot of the week. I think we got dengue, which is this mosquito born disease that makes you pretty useless physically. It was okay though, because I got to read and learn a lot, and we´re pretty much better now. 

We didn´t have much time to teach, but we actually had some really, really good lessons with people when we did. It felt good to know that we were working efficiently with the time that we had. God always blesses us. 

Today we went to Antigua. It´s probably the biggest tourist city in Guatemala. It was really fun, and we saw a lot of really cool things. I´ll have to share some more next week, including some of the really good pictures I have. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward 

The Police took my watch

¡Holaaaa! How´s it going?

We had a very full week. Lots of rain, teaching new people, and finding awesome ways to spread the word of God. 

Today, for our Pday, we all came to Rio Santiago and had a water balloon fight. That was really funny, and we got super wet. Another fun thing we did this week was an English class we taught in the church. It was super cool because a lot of people here ask me to teach them English, and we finally started classes for people. We taught them all how the alphabet works, and how to meet someone and introduce yourself in English. The people all said that English is weird, and I agree. But they were super excited and liked it a lot. 

Before the class, we had an interesting experience because we got locked outside of the church, and nobody was there that would have the keys to let us in. We called everyone we knew that would be able to help us, and none of them answered. So we did what we always do when we need help: we said a prayer. We asked God to send us someone with the keys if he really wanted us to be able to teach the people in this way. And so then we opened our eyes, and a lady from the church was right there walking up to us with the keys in her hands saying "I´m here, I´m here!" It was super cool. God looks out for us, and He always listens to our prayers. 

This week one of our police friends told me he liked my watch. I´m not sure why, because it´s a really simple watch that doesn´t really do anything besides tell the times and the day of the month. But he kept talking on and on about how much he liked and wanted the "beautiful watch" that I was wearing. He wanted to pay me for it, and I told him I didn´t really need money but I did need a way to tell the time. So he went out the next day and bought a brand new watch for me, and came and gave it to me so that I´d give him mine. The one he bought has an alarm and a stopwatch and a light that flashes rainbow colors...so I said it was a deal. It was really funny, and I still don´t really know why he wanted the old one so much. 

My companion is learning a ton about how to be a diligent missionary. And he´s teaching me a ton also. He´s always joking around, but he has a really strong spirit about him and has some really strong roots in the things that are important to him. The people all tell him his accent is different, which makes him really confused. It´s very true, and it makes me wonder if my brother Josh will also have a weird accent in Spanish, because he´s serving his mission in the country that my companion is from. 

We met this guy on the street this week named Adrian, and he was smoking, but he was really excited to hear our message. And then on Sunday, he came to church! Usually people need more time of learning before they feel comfortable, but he has a lot of faith and is really excited to learn about the things that God wants him to know. We are teaching a lot of awesome people right now, and it´s really fun to be able to make them happier every time we visit. God really touches the hearts of the people, because I don´t know why anyone would actually want to change their life just from the invitations we give them without feeling that they´re really going to receive blessings from what we invite them to do. Prayer and reading the scriptures everyday honestly changes people´s hearts, and even the lowest, most distressed and struggling person can find peace in Christ.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

A Seiba, a huuuge type of tree and a symbol of peace here in Guatemala :)

The light of the body is the eye

¡Hola todos!

We did a lot of really awesome stuff this week. We found a ton of new people to teach, got super wet, cut a lot of firewood, learned a new teaching technique, and my companion got a new toy dinosaur...(?)

We made a goal this week to find as many new investigators as possible. And we found more that ever before. We found more than two new people to teach almost every single day, through doing service, asking friends, and just talking to everybody. For example, one day we were walking down the street, trying to evade the rain that was about to come, when we saw a lady with a TON of firewood that she was taking into her house. We decided to help her. She said the usual "no no, you guys are gonna get dirty! I´m fine, honestly," but we just helped her anyway. And it´s a good thing we did, because the rain started coming down really hard while we were working. We finished it all a lot faster than she would´ve alone, and while we all got completely and utterly soaked, we saved them a ton of work. After finishing and while waiting for the rain to pass, we talked about how powerful God is that He can just send mountains and mountains of rain, and there´s literally nothing we can do to stop it...but at the same time, this all powerful being wants nothing less than the best for us. We had a really good conversation, and now they want us to come back so they can learn more. 

My companion went to another area for a day this week, and I was with a my friend Elder Loaisiga for a day. But when my companion came back, he had this huge dinosaur toy that´s like a foot tall! He said he traded it with someone for one of his ties...? I was really confused but it made me laugh a lot. 

We´re learning a really cool way of teaching more with the Spirit of God. Jesus said that (translated from Spanish because I don´t know it in English very well) "The light of the body is the eye, so if your eye is pure, your whole body will be full of light." It´s similar to the phrase "the eye is the window to the soul." So that means that if you have something good inside, it will show through your eyes. For the first part of my mission, I couldn´t speak Spanish confidently enough to hold eye contact with the people. But now that it´s a little more natural for me, I´m finding that making full, direct, and deliberate eye contact with someone allows them to feel that you really love them as a brother, and want the best for them. And when they realize that this love comes from God, they can feel the love that God has for them. It also makes them realize that the things that we´re saying are true, and when something is true, people can feel the peaceful and happy Spirit of God. We´re getting a lot better at asking really good questions while looking people in the eye. And we can tell that they can really feel it more too. 

We´re working hard here, and finding lots of little miracles everyday.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

My comp is such a goof :)

Swimming down the street

¡Hola gente!

I couldn´t write until today this week, but it should go back to normal next week. This week...winter started. And here that means RAIN. Every single day pours rain really, really hard on us. The mornings start hot with clear skies, and then all of the sudden dark clouds come out of nowhere and start pouring! The streets become literal rivers, and sometimes we just have to walk through. We´ve gotten really wet, but it´s really fun and definitely worth it to be able to help the people. Last week we helped build a wall for some of the members of the church. This week we helped them to move, because they didn´t put walls on all sides, and so the house flooded anyway. It reminded me of helping out in Houston Texas after hurricane harvey struck. The water had gone up to the people´s waists. So we helped them to move out, even though it was still raining. They were all okay.

This week has been full of teaching my companion what it is to be a missionary. He´s learning how to get over the fear of talking to people in the street, and we´ve actually found a ton of new people to teach! Some of them are true miracles, and really excited to learn the gospel of Christ. My companion is super excited to be able to teach people too, and he´s actually really good at it. Now that I have a latino companion, I speak almost no English all day, which is crazy to think about. But it´s going great and it´s super fun. 

One day when we were eating lunch with some members of the church, we were given some chiltepe peppers. Chiltepes are VERY spicy, but my companion didn´t know yet. Ther´re really small (one is about half the size of a pea), so he wasn´t really worried and promptly put one in his mouth. I then got to watch him run around for like ten minutes breathing heavily and drinking water and talking without stopping about the flames in his mouth. It was really funny, and I ended up eating one too just to make him feel better. But I was still laughing so hard that I hardly noticed mine. 

We went to teach some people this week that haven´t come to church in a long time. They live with a guy who isn´t a member of the church, and we´re starting to become really good friends with him. He gave us each a coconut yesterday from his tree so we could drink the milk (something that´s really common here), and we started talking about the scriptures. It was a really good conversation, and the investigator was really interested, asking lots of really good questions. All of a sudden, out of nowhere this really old, wise member of the church showed up and sat down next to us. He started explaining the Book of Mormon, and how nobody can read it without knowing it´s true. The Bible talks about it multiple times, and the only thing that it does is testify of Christ. We started teaching about the truths of the book, and my companion helped us teach too. And then the old guy said he had to go and just disappeared. Reminded me of Master Yoda. It was a really cool lesson. 

There was another time this week where we passed a bunch of kids playing soccer in the street. We made teams and told them we´d buy them all water if they beat us. It was a really fun game, and they ended up winning. So then we sat down with all of them and read the scriptures with them and taught them about how they need to serve their families and be kind to others. It was so great. On the mission, we just want to be more like Jesus. And while we may never get there, we´re getting better everyday.

I have another son

¡Hola todos!

This week was crazy! We ran around meeting and helping tons of people. We met some really, really cool people to teach, and we had five people come to church this week for the first time. We had to wait a while for a family that we met, but we brought them and they were really happy. I´m really excited. 

Me, Elder Lopez (one of my zone leaders), and Elder McArthur. Before my haircut

Quick story from this week. There was this one moment where we were in the house getting ready, and I was waiting for Elder Myler to finish preparing. I put my head on the desk and closed my eyes for a few seconds. And then I hear "now´s my chance!" And then a sudden buzzing sound right above my head. I looked up and saw him with an electric razor, right about so shave my hair off! And when he saw that I saw, he instantly closed it up and pretended he wasn´t doing anything. He´s one of the funniest people I´ve ever met. 

Me and Elder Torres! We both got haircuts today.

This week, we had changes. Elder Myler was sent to Villa Nueva, to be with Elder Eborn. I´m gonna miss him a ton, because we got really close and learned sooo much together.  But I´m really happy for him, because Elder Eborn was my companion for about 10 weeks, and I love him a lot. So I´m staying here in El Palmar in the coast for another change, but...this time I have a companion who is BRAND NEW to the mission. Today is literally his second day in the mission field. Crazy! His name is Elder Torres, and he´s from Ecuador. He´s actually the greatest guy ever. He´s super goofy, but also super pure and good. I can tell he really wants to learn and serve everyone, which is the real purpose of the mission. It´s really funny how different his Spanish is though. He keeps saying words and making hand symbols that are normal and fine in his country, but happen to be really, really bad here. He doesn´t even know until he sees the shock in my eyes from the huge swear words he´s accidentally saying. It´s really funny how different the culture is. But he´s going to learn quick. I´m super excited to be with him. 

I´m also district leader now, which means that I get to serve over the missionaries around our area. It´s super exciting to be able to help them with everything and make them feel awesome. The truth is that the mission is all about learning to show the love of God to everyone around you. And that´s something that I really love doing. Making people feel like they´re important, that they´re powerful, and that they can do the things that they set their minds to. It feels really great to help other people to see their worth. The way they react is really the essence of making their eyes shine, because you can really see the happiness in their countenance. It´s the greatest thing.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Quicky

Hey! 

Don´t have almost any time this week. We had some great experiences with service and teaching lots of people this week. The clouds are getting really, really dark without raining, because WINTER IS COMING. "Winter" here is basically just rain and rain and rain. So much that it floods if you don´t have a wall around the house. So my comp and I helped some members build a wall. And we worked so hard we broke the pickaxe of the members. It was really funny. 

Today we went bowling in the capital, and then we got to go eat lunch with the President of the mission. That was super cool, and now we´re here serving in Villa Hermosa for the rest of the day so that we don´t have to go three hours back to the coast again before the multi-zone conference tomorrow. 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward