Freezing cold, burning heat, and sandstorms

¡Hola todos!

We have been busy working and working and working. This week we finally got to do a lot in our own area, and it´s been nice to just go to work here. We found some really awesome people, and we´ve done a ton of family home evenings with the families in our area to teach about the birth of Christ. It´s really awesome. 

Yesterday we had an interesting experience. For some reason the whole day was insanely windy. There was SO much wind that the dirt all picked up and blew into our eyes. We had to walk with something in front of our eyes to not get blinded by the dirt. Sometimes the wind was so strong that it almost pushed us backwards when we tried to walk forwards. Because of all the wind, it got super, super cold. It really felt like Christmas. And the wind blew strong all night, and so the water tank on the roof got super cold too. We got to take the coldest shower yet today haha. 

Today as a zone we all went to the auto safari chapin. It´s a safari where we bring the vehicle, and it´s pretty cool. I have been before, but almost nobody else in the zone had so it was fun to be able to show them. We went to a really nice mall to eat lunch afterwards, and some really nice members of the church in Esquintla bought lunch for my companion and I!

Recently, the dad of one of our friends was killed. We went to the funeral and gave him lots of support. He said he really didn´t know how to explain what he was feeling, and he didn´t know what to do. We told him that we didn´t know how he felt, but there´s someone who did. Christ suffered everything that he was going through, and so He knows exactly how to help. I know that that´s true. Jesus didn´t just suffer for our sins, but also for our sorrows and our problems too. And if we feel like nobody understands, we can turn to Him and He will. And He´ll help us to feel peace again. I have felt that power in my life tons of times, and so I know that it´s real. And not only do we find peace in Him, but we can find peace in knowing that death is not the end. Everyone lives after death, and we will have the opportunity to reunite with them someday. I know that that is true.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Elder Garner and I as monkeys...

The best Ukulele ever. It´s only 800 Quetz. Maybe I´ll go back and buy it someday...

I found Bishop Morales in Escuintla! I haven´t seen him in a long time, but we ran into each other and it was super awesome. He´s a super great dude, and taught me a lot back in Siquinalá.

Holy Moly...

Hi!

This week was really, really crazy. Let me explain why.

We have been working all over the place, and this week we didn´t have very much time in our area. But when we were in our area, it was kinda rough because almost nobody was home in any part of our area. It was actually really funny, because pretty much every single house we went to, even with people who had told us to come at that time, didn´t answer or couldn´t receive us. We went everywhere and walked more than I have in my entire mission, but there wasn´t much luck with anyone. We really wore ourselves out just working and talking with people and trying everything we knew how to do, but sometimes God wants to teach you something. We had one day where we just walked and walked for hours, and finally just sat down to figure out what to do. The scriptures always tell us what to do, and so I opened my Book of Mormon up to a random page, and read what it said. The scripture was Alma 41:14, and it said this:

14 Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and ye shall have good rewarded unto you again. 

I bolded the parts that really spoke to me. The scripture told me that if I could keep working to do good and to be merciful to the people, God would be merciful unto me, and I would be rewarded with everything good. So we got up and went to work again. We then found a house with a really amazing woman who was ready to learn and hear more about the gospel. Later, we discovered the way that Alberto and Delia need to learn, which was huge for us because we know that they´re ready to learn and progress but they´re really simple people and struggle to understand the things that they hear. So the day ended really well. Obviously I needed to learn a lesson that day, and it took a lot of walking and working before I learned it. But God doesn´t leave us alone.

One of the missionaries in our zone got really, REALLY sick this week. After a few days of her being in the hospital, we learned that she has dengue demoragia, which is like the worst form of a really awful disease spread by mosquitos. It makes you just bleed and bleed, with a super high fever and an incredible pain in your bones and muscles, and this Hermana lost almost half of the blood in her entire body just in around four days of being in the hospital. The worst part is that she is going to finish her mission in less than a week. She is finally getting better though, and we got to see her yesterday and today. She´s one of the wisest missionaries I have ever met, so it´s sad that she´s struggling so much. But she´ll be better soon.

Yesterday we had the multi-zone conference for Christmas. It was super awesome. We got to hear musical numbers from people all over the mission (some super awesome and some kinda rough) and perform one too! We also had a white elephant gift exchange and learned a ton of things from the leaders in the mission. There is a really powerful spirit in this time of year because Christ really lived and died for us. He was born to save the world, and if we look to Him, we don´t have to be sad. I love Him so much!

Love you all too!

-Elder Cloward

I was so tired from all the work this week that I actually fell asleep while praying :/. My companion thought it was hilarious and took this picture. My neck STILL hurts from being in that position for so long! Never again...

Also, some cool dudes playing music across the street.

Changes!

Hey!

This week was super packed. We really didn´t do much at all in our own area, because we were just running around helping everyone in the zone to prepare for changes. I´ll talk more about the people we´re teaching next week. We knew that I was going to stay here in Palin, because I just got here. But we didn´t have any idea about my companion. The good news is, we´re both staying together for another change! I´m super happy, because we´ve learned a TON from each other, and now we´re doing fantastic. He´s so awesome, and we´re going to have even more time to learn together now. 

Aside from us, every other area in the zone had changes. We had some pretty big problems last change with a couple missionaries who really didn´t want to follow the mission rules and were getting into a lot of trouble, and we worked a ton with them to help out. But all of the missionaries who were struggling are now in other areas, and it feels like our zone is just full of super happy, obedient missionaries who want to do all they can to serve. It´s honestly super great. The zone was great last change, but this time it´s even more awesome! My companion and I are really excited to be with all of them. 

Today we got together with a ton of missionaries and some Mexican missionaries made us some really tasty tacos! The day before the changes, a lot of families thought that my companion was going to leave, and so they all invited us to dinner. We ended up eating three dinners, and ended up soooo full. Life is different when you´re not in the coast. 

We´ve been doing a lot of crazy things, but the best thing we get to do is celebrate the Christmas season. The way we do that on the mission is by talking about Jesus Christ with EVERYONE. We´ve been inviting everyone to invite people they know to their houses to have an evening where we all just learn about the birth of Jesus, and talk about how we can give gifts to Him this season. I love getting to do that, because everyone can feel the Christmas spirit, but they don´t always know where it comes from. Teaching about Christ is the best :)

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

The old zone

The new zone!

Tasty Guatemalan food :)

The lonely mountain

¡Hola todos!

Today has been crazy. And yesterday. And pretty much everyday haha. We had to go to the capital on Monday night, because I had to go to migration to get some paperwork all good. And guess what! I´m a legal Guatemalan resident now! Yuh! Had to go to bed late and get up at 4 for that one. But I got to see all of the people that were in the MTC group with me in the very beginning, which was super cool. Most of them aren´t in my mission, and I didn´t really think I would ever get to see them again. 

The day after that, we went to sleep in San Vicente Pacaya. The next morning (today), we woke up at 3 in the morning to climb the volcano. We got our jackets and backpacks and headed up a steep trail up the side of the mountain. Soon the dirt turned into lava rock, and it got really, REALLY cold. We got to watch the sunrise from the top, and it was honestly beautiful. All of the sudden a ton of thick fog came in super fast, and we couldn´t see anything. When it finally cleared up and we could see from the sunlight, the view was really awesome. When we got back down, my companion and I took a really long nap, because we were exhausted from all the things we´ve been doing. But now we´re better. 

We got to go to church twice this past Sunday. We also got to make some really tasty food for some members of the church who were sad. I also learned a lot about prayer. When you´re struggling, you can just go talk to God, and He listens. You can talk out loud if you want to, and you can talk to Him as if He was right there, because He is. You don´t have to talk as if you´re reading someone else´s words, and you don´t have to talk as if He can´t respond. He is always listening, and a lot of the time He answers in the moment like a normal conversation. If you don´t believe me, try it! You´ll feel peace. You´ll know what you need to do. And if you do it, you´ll change people´s lives. It´s true; I´ve done it. Promise.

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Me at 3 in the morning

Before the sunrise

Elder Payan and me. Volcan de fuego (the one behind me) is exploding

The sunrise :)

Me and Elder Osorio with Elder Cruz! We haven´t seen him in so long. In his mission (Antigua), they´re allowed to drink Coca Cola, but we aren´t in the central mission. So he bought one and drank it in front of us...

The volcano was blowing smoke rings. I didn´t know that was possible...?

You can see Palin (my area) in the very middle of this picture. It´s at the foot of the volcan de agua. Looks so far away from the volcan Pacaya!

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

There´s only TWELVE of them. That´s IT!

¡Buenas!

This week for the first half we decided that we weren´t doing enough, and so we put some really good goals and started working a lot harder. We felt a lot better when we decided to live up to a fuller potential, because life isn´t meant to relax, although sometimes we get casual with the important things. We feel like we´re going to find a lot of awesome miracles in the next little while, and it´s really exciting.

Yesterday we saw the coolest thing ever. One of the twelve apostles of God came to Guatemala to talk to us! His name is David A. Bednar, and he is one of only twelve people in the entire world that Jesus called to serve us. A lot of people don´t know that God is still the same as He was a long time ago, and that there is still a prophet and 12 apostles. It´s fun to share that with people. Elder Bednar taught us some AMAZING things. I felt like he really knew what we needed as missionaries, because a lot of the things he said applied directly to me. He had a translator, and so I got to hear everything he said twice! He taught us about how if we have faith, we´re going to go and do everything we know how to do to make God´s work move along. We don´t ask God to do our job for us, but we ask Him to help us to do our part the best we can. He´s not gonna tell us what to do if we just sit there and wait, but if we go to serve, He will tell us the course He needs us to take. Elder Bednar also talked about how we need to learn from the spirit more than from the words that the speaker says. He told us to stop writing down everything he said, but instead to write down only what the Spirit says to us, which is really important because it applies directly to us. It was cool because he didn´t have a prepared talk. Instead, he asked us questions about what we have learned, and let us ask him questions about things that he has learned, and through that process we all learned together. He was also there with the entire area presidency of Central America (three members of the quorum of the seventy), and all of their wives. Elder Bednar´s wife is so humble that what she says really gets straight to your heart. I want to be like that too someday.

The hermanas in Palin 3 are helping a couple that just joined the church. They just got married after living together for years, and they´re struggling a little bit with their relationship. We decided to pull a "parent trap" and sneakily help them out a little bit. The four of us got them together and taught them a really direct, spiritual lesson about the importance of marriage and the family. Then, we opened a curtain and revealed a table, chairs, and dinner that we had bought for them. We took away their phones, and left them alone for about an hour to eat together and just talk together. When they finished, something was different. I´m not sure what they talked about, but they were REALLY happy afterwards. They were holding hands as they left the building, and it made me think about how when the goal is to live together for eternity, both sides are going to do their part to make it happy and joyful. When the goal is just to be happy in the moment, it doesn´t last very long. That´s why God is eternal, and the world isn´t. Everything that He offers is something that lasts forever. Pretty crazy to think about...

That´s about all. We´re learning everyday, and the time is going by super fast. I love being a missionary :). 

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

My son Elder Torres! He had to go home because he got sick. I didn´t think I´d ever get to see him again either, but he´s back in the mission now! I was his first companion ever, and I got to talk to him again at the conference also.

Some really tasty food at a pisto restaurant called Rosy in our area, and the cherry-stem-knot I tied in my mouth. I´ve been trying to do that for weeks!

My friend Elder Alexander! We were in the MTC together a year ago, but we went to different missions. He was my best friend over there, but I didn´t think I´d ever get to see him again. When Elder Bednar came, the East Mission came too and I go to talk to him again! So great.

Fiambre...

¡Hola todos!

This week was awesome. We had some really fun experiences and tried some really weird things. But all in all, only three missionaries ended up sick in bed for more than 12 hours...oof...

So this week we did divisions with the missionaries in San Vicente Pacaya. They literally live in the skirts of a volcano, and so the pueblo is in the middle of super green mountains and valleys, and it's all different in elevation, and there's this super sweet breeze blowing through all the time. It's probably the most beautiful place I've seen in my entire life. Anytime you don't know where you are, you just have to look to find the smoke leaving from the top of the volcano, and you know which way is which. It was really cool to be there, and we also found some really cool people for the missionaries there to teach. It was on the "Día de los Muertos," and so my companion and a couple missionaries just walked on the path to the cemetery, talking to everyone who was going to celebrate the lives of their ancestors, and explaining to them that they'll be able to see those people again. The day we left, the four missionaries had an adventure that they are currently regretting...

They found a place that sells rabbits, and so they bought a couple, and went to a church member's house to kill and cook them to eat. That's not that weird here, but I don't think they cooked them very well, because three of the four just happened to get a "stomach bug" at the same time the day after. It was pretty rough, because all of them had to be inside the whole day...but they're all almost better now. 

Some sad news from this week is that we lost 5 missionaries in the zone. four of them got moved to the Amatitlan zone, just because it's closer. They are all super good missionaries and super funny, so it's sad that they had to leave the zone. The fifth one went to the New Mexico in the United States, because her mission is actually over there, and she has just been here waiting for her visa. She was a really good missionary, and even though she only has 2 months in the mission, she acts like she's been here all her life. Now she just has to go learn English. But I know from experience that God helps his missionaries to learn languages that they couldn't speak before. It's a miracle...

The second of November here is a special holiday where everyone eats this special dish called fiambre. It's basically a salad where they mix together just about every type of vegetable with just about every type of meat, and then they eat it. It's kinda not good. The night that we ate that, we were on our second dinner, so it was a tricky experience. I found a picture that's pretty similar to what we ate. I'm a little happy that they only do that once a year. Most of the food here is suuuper good, but that one is a little different.

We're having an awesome time out here. We're really working to find people that want to be disciples of Christ, and learning a ton along the way. Next week I'm gonna have a really awesome story to share :).

Love you guys!

-Elder Cloward

Elder Jeria, one of the missionaries that left the zone. He´s one of the funniest people I've ever met. In the back is Elder Cascante, his companion. He learned English just by watching movies, and he speaks it really well! Crazy...