Letter # 98 - "I have put my words in thy mouth." - Mazate Las Flores, Guatemala

hi! so it was another week here in guatemala. but i guess i should start of with the big news, i had changes and now i am in mazate las flores.  it is a good zone with strong wards and great missionaries, it seems like the best place to finish the mish.  so im really stoked to be here.  my comp is elder vences he is from texas and has 19 months in the mish. i knew him a year ago when we were in malacatan and we have always been good friends so its great being here with him.  mazate is the niciest city in the mish it has a mall, wendys, taco bell, and subway.  so that is exciting :)

we had a pretty solid week - we worked hard and good things are happening.  we met this lady named paola who was super cool. we were contacting and we started to talk to her and she just lit up and asked us to come in.  it was a great lesson and we are excited to keep working with her. 

as far as what i learned this week i loved what i read in jeremiah 1.  as missionaries we always used 1:5 to teach about the preexistance and how we lived with God before we came to earth, but i had never read what else was part of the story. 

6 Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.

 7 ¶But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.

 8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.

 9 Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched mymouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put mywords in thy mouth.

as i read this i thought about jeremiah and how he must have felt to be called to be a prophet and how hard that would be. and then i thought about how the Lord helped him know that God would help him and give him the rigth words.  i have felt this as i have been a missionary.

 

answers to moms questions:

 in our house it is just the 2 of us which isnt as fun as a house of 4 but that is ok. the house is pretty nice but there are a lot of mosquitos.  we are in a ward with 140-160 active members and we share the ward with hermanas. right now we dont have too many investigatores but we are working with paola, estuardo, and iris.  i dont know them that well but we are going to work hard this week to see if maybe we can have a bapism next week. the best thing i learned this week is what i wrote about jeremiah. there arent that many weird animals here but i still think it is weird that people have chickens as pets, and then when they get big they kill them and eat them.  its like a farm just right there in the house.  

sounds like the trip to utah is just full of adventures haha! i really loved what you wrote about enduring to the end.  it kinda sucks, haha, its hard, we get tired and sick of doing it, but heck that is what we have to do.  and thats just the way it is.  

well  think that is just about it for this week. i hope you have a great week

love

elder meyer

GO HEELS GO AMERICA

foto - this is the last pic with elder saunders my comp from the ccm.  this was in the change meeting right before he went home.

 

 

Letter #97 - "We can't rest or be quiet..." - Las Brilliantes, Guatemala

well hello!

 

so it was an interesting week, and we had some good stuff happen.  first of all we had a baptism :) it was my first baptism in quite a while so it was really sweet.  when i came to brillantes i met a girl named dulce.  she is the friend of a member and she had already come to church, she had gotten ready for baptism, but then had some problems with her mom and didnt do it.  and that is when i showed up.  we tried really hard to help her understand how baptism would help her change the way she is and would help her be happier, and when she finally understood this she

got baptized!!

so besides that i just wanted to share with you something cool that happened on sunday.  in the afternoon i was very tired and very unmotivated.  i felt so sick of being in brillantes, and all of our people couldnt meet with us.  i started to read the scriptures because i didnt know what else to do and i read this:  Isaiah 62:6-7 

6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem,which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence,

 7 And give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

i love how it says that we cant rest or be quiet and i realized that i what i needed to do. so with that, we left and started working. in the night we found a super cool family that will be coming to church this upcoming week!! the scriptures tell us what we need to do, we just have to do it!!

 

 

answers

 

things are going better in brillantes than they were when i got here, and that is what pres told me i had to do so that is good!  we eat lunch with members everyday and then sometimes people give us dinner.  the best food of the week was this really good fried chicken.  the funniest thing of the week was when i was in divisions with elder garcia who i lived with when my comp was Quiroz, and we just laughed about everything that happened when we were together.  biggest accomplishment of the week was helping the zone baptize 10 people!  i just live with my comp; the house has 3 rooms, a tin roof, running water, and a really gross bathroom with a lot of cockroaches.  yes i am still sweating a lot. on wednesday there will be changes but im not sure where i will be going, there are basically 3 options.  favorite person is angelica. investigators:  we are going to schedule baptism dates with dayan and rolfie today.  we have other people that we are teaching we just need a little more time. well i really hope that the huntzingers move here that would be the best thing ever!! oh my gosh you have no idea how cool this family is.  

 

 

 well i think that is about it. i hope you have a great week

love

elder meyer

GO HEELS GO AMERICA

 

Letter #96 - "We dont need mediocre members!" - Las Brilliantes, Guatemala

well hello there

so this was a very interesting week.  on monday night i got a call from the assistants telling me that i had emergency changes because they were closing my zone. that was expected. so the next day i came down to the office and i had a pretty good idea about what was going to happen but then they blew my mind when they said that i was going to brillantes.  i honestly thought it was a joke, but then i realized they were being serious.  so i returned to my first area,  and began to sweat like i had when i was here the first time!  right now im not a zone leader.  pres closed our zone and sent me and another zone leader to the zone where we are right now because he said that this zone should be one of the best in the mission and that for a long time it has been horrible.  he told us that we (the 2 zone leaders that arent right now) are incharge of fixing the zone in 15 days (but a week has already passed by) because that is when normal changes are so then we will leave to be reassigned somewhere else in the mission.  i really like the other zl that is helping with this, no he isnt my comp and to be honest we feel like we are making some good progress. we are working with a sister missionary also who is so cool so the 3 of us call ourselves the dream team haha and we match in what we are wearing every day hahaha 

then there was the general conference.  when i showed up to brillantes we had like 0 investigators and only a few days to try and get a bunch of people to come to conference. i had no idea how we were going to do it, but thanks to the help of the members we brought 8 people to general conference!!! so that was just a huge miracle for me!!! so now we have cool people to work with and to baptize before i leave brillantes (i am only going to be here til the 15th) so it gives me a week to do it!!

and then there was the conference, and for me the conference was so hard because the topics were family, family, family, and more family.  so that was kinda hard to keep me focused on the mission when less than 2 months away from going home all i hear is family family family, but conference was soooo good.  i loved the talk by Elder Anderson of the Seventy, and how he talked about the gospel being like dancing, you have to learn the steps and hear the music. we have to obey and feel the Spirit.  i love that example and it was a great reminder to me about how important the Spirit is.  i also loved the 70 who said that we dont need mediocre members.  it made me want to not just be a mediocre missionary but a great one.  there were so many other things that i learned and loved during conference but that is what i think i loved the most.  favorite talk of conference was Pres Eyring in the priesthood session.

 

easter was just normal work for us, nothing special. i watched conference in spanish because i knew it was my last opportunity to do it. we ate dinner on easter with angelica and she made us chowmein.  (in guatemala they celebrate the whole week before easter. everyone goes to the pools and the beaches and a lot of people drink, that is about it, and then no one does anything sunday.)    yes i was sad to leavle Palo Gordo. a

 

lready seen the easter video and it is awesome!! well i think that is the answer to all the questions and i think ive already told you everything else :) 

well i hope you all have a great week. 

love

elder meyer

GO HEELS GO AMERICA

PS. i have no idea who i want to win the ncaa title, all i know is that im glad that kentucky lost haha

fotos

me on a super skectky bridge that we went on today!

 

 

 

 

Letter #95 - "...an effectual door shall be opened unto you!" Palo Gordo, Guatemala

hello again

so it was a pretty good week.  we really started to look for people who the Lord has prepared for us, and as we looked we found them.  monday we were contacting by our house and no one wanted to talk to us but two or three of the people that we talked to told us we should try to visit a certain house, so we did. when we did we found a lady named brenda who is so cool.  she had a lot of questions so we helped her get the answers, she is reading the book of mormon and she came to church this week!! so that was really cool.  besides that we just always tried to talk to everyone and invite everyone and it is really helping.  we are also preparing for the general conference and we are hoping to bring a lot of people to conference so that they can hear the prophet and feel the spirit.  we are going to share this scripture with everyone we talk to (2 chronicles 20:20)

Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye propser.

besides that i would just like to share something that i learned this week.  i was thinking about what i could share to motivate the zone because we had a bunch of trials this week as a zone. that plus the attitude of most in the mission is that it is impossible to baptize in the mountains. as i was looking for what to share i found these scriptures.

 

D&C 112:19

Wherefore, whithersoever they shall send you, go ye, and I will be with you; and in whatsoever place ye shall proclaim my name an effectual door shall be opened unto you, that they may receive my word.
 

D&C 118:3

Let the residue continue to preach from that hour, and if they will do this in all lowliness of heart, in meekness and humility, and long-suffering, I the Lord, give unto them a promise that I will provide for their families; and an effectual door shall be opened for them, from henceforth.

 

1 Corithians 16:9

For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries.

 

i love how God promises us an effectual door that He will open for us so that we can do His work.  if we are with God we cannot fail.  i hope we use the effectual door of general conference to listen to God as He talks through His prophets and that we use this door to help people who arent members of the church to listen to the prophet and feel the spirit

 

 

answers to moms questions:

 

changes will be this week and i will be leaving. the last i have heard is that i will be going to the office to be with the assistants, (not sure if i will be an assist to Pres. or if i will just work with them until the normal changes).  ereiser has become impossible to find.  (FYI Ereiser is a young man Charlie and his companion found a couple months ago who was making great progress but was always afraid to get baptized.  He finally did commit, then cancelled and they have not heard from him since.  Charlie is super sad about it.)  sadly i wont be here when he gets baptized, but hopefully in a couple months the missionaries will teach him again and this time he will accept baptism and really do it! its really sad, but we have done all we can. the zone finished the month with 6 baptisms which for 10 missionaries in the mountains is very good.  and april will be even better for the zone!! the best service of the week was we helped build a house. there is a member who is having a house built and she asked us to help so all morning long we were mixing concrete and moving cinderblocks,  it reminded me of belize :) iim not sure what the funniest thing of the week was, im sorry im forgetting everything.  

well it sounds like the tourney in vegas was tough for sam and john but it was at least an excuse to travel :) well i hope everything is going well

i hope you have a great week

love

elder meyer

GO HEELS GO AMERICA

GO ALL TEAMS NOT NAMED KENTUCKY 

 

 

 

Letter #94 - "Doing the right thing always takes courage!" - Palo Gordo, Guatemala

well hello there its been a long week. lots of divions lots of baptismal interviews, so if all goes well soon there will be a lot of baptisms.  as far as specific things that happened, it was a fun but hectic week.  because that this is going to be a short email....

i just want to share something that i learned this week with all of you. i love the story of Abinadi (in mosiah 11-16) i love the courage that he had to not just teach, but after being kicked out that he had the courage to go back and do it again.  after all of that i love how alma had the courage to then stand up for abinadi to try and protect him. and it was king noahs lack of courage that was the reason that he had abinadi killed.  doing the right thing always requires courage!!  thanks to the courage of abinadi and alma we have the BOM because without them the story would be so different.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 TImothy 1:7

 

answers to moms questions:

 

well ereiser still hasnt gotten baptized... im not really sure what is going on... it is driving me crazy. he knows he needs to do it and he says that every time we ask him if he commit. he wants to say yes but then he gets scared and doesnt do it,... im kinda lost for ideas, we have done like everything i can think of.... but i guess we will just keep working with him... things are going good with Contreras; we are doing a bunch of divisions to help out the whole zone and that has been good but exhausting.  im sorry i dont have any pics of the suit, im thinking im just not going to let you see it until i show up at home in it haha!  the house pic i forgot but i will send a funny random pic.  the best food of the week was this really good grilled steak type things that i ate on divisions.  the best thing that i have learned from president is that excellence is not an action but a habit.  what i love most about guatemala are the people.  still not sure when they are going to combine zones, but it is driving me crazy - i just want it to happen already so that i can go to my last area and get to work!  

 

that's sweet that the ward is going to go to martins cove again!! i love that trip - if i could go i totally would haha.  

i love that quote from pres uchtdorf. i feel like that's exactly what i need to do...have more patience.   I have been kinda frustrated because we havent had a baptism in a really long time, and ive been super frustrated but i guess i just need to be more paient and just keep working and have faith.

 

well i think that is it for this week, i hope you have a great week

have a great week and enjoy march madness

love

elder meyer

GO HEELS GO AMERICA

 

Sweet very large baptism dress we found in a closet at the church!!

 

Letter #93 - "we had 16 investigators in church!" - Palo Gordo, Guatemala

Tuesday night, 10:17 -

 

Hello!  yeah i know, this is a crazy time to write, but we just got back from reu (just had a 2 day conference with pres.) and we found this internet café open so we decided to write right now.  we were going to do it tomorrow but this gives us the opportunity to work all day tomorrow.  so changes were last week and hutch is gone.  I am really missing him!  im still in  palo gordo, but now i am with elder Contreras. he is from honduras, and he came into the mish with me - we were in the ccm together and he was one of the few latinos that i tried to speak with in the ccm so that is kinda cool.  he is a good guy, it will just be an adjustment cuz I was so used to hutch! im trying to adjust - im sure things will get better.... yeah we are still living with mendez and guitierrez. im way happy to still have them.  im not quite sure how i feel about staying in palo gordo; president announced that he is going to combine our zone with another because they are both really small for zones (they each have 10 missioneries, and sometimes zones have like 26) but yeah, so for sure im not gonna finish my mish here, so i would just like to know where im gonna go to end and go there so that I can go work hard there, it makes it really hard to focus here sometimes.

 we went to the gym on monday and we are going to go tomorrow - its gonna be hard to keep going but i am going to do it!! the best miracle of the week is that we had 16 investigators in church as a zone!! and we are going to have 6 baptisms in the zone this week!! yeah, my new suit is sweet, but im sorry this writing wasnt planned so there are no pics, next week i promise. the best thing i learned from an investigator this week is how to trust in God. we are teaching a lady named Irma who woke up one morning and couldnt see anymore, she just went completely blind, but she trusts God and is just awesome.  ereiser accepted baptism for this saturday!! please pray fror him so that he will do it!! we have a couple other people that we are working with but we really need to start finding more positive people

yeah we are still with mendez and guitierrez. im way happy to still have them.  im not quite sure how i feel about staying in palo gordo, president announced that he is going to combine our zone with another because they are both really small for zones (they each have 10 missioneries, and sometimes zones have like 26) but yeah, so for sure im not gonna finish my mish here, so i would just like to know where im gonna go to end and go there so that I can go work hard there, it makes it really hard to focus here sometimes.

well, its late and I need my beauty rest!

have a great week,
love,


elder meyer

GO HEELS  GO AMERICA
 

Letter #92 - "God works in His way and in His time...." Palo Gordo, Guatemala

well hello there

so it was another week here in palo gordo, and sadly it was my last week with elder hutchinson.  he leaves to go home on wednesday so i will have a new comp, but no idea who it will be.... this week we worked like crazy so that ereser would get baptized before hutch went home.  we had like 3 sweet lessons with him and he was so close, but sadly it didnt happen..... it was really sad especially for hutch, but we know that soon he will be baptized.  it was a good reminder to me that God works in His way and in His time, and that it doesnt really matter how many people Hutch and i baptize. all that matters is that they get baptized so that they can be saved.  so yeah it was a good lesson to remember but at the same time a hard lesson to learn.  going into sunday i was pretty bummed, then all of the people that we had committed to come to chruch didnt show, so i was super bummed.  then i got texts from the rest of the zone and as a zone of 12 missionaries we brought 17 people to church!! it was a huge miracle!! in all of my time in palo gordo the most that the zone had every brought was 10, so 17 was a HUGE improvement.  i realized that this was the miracle for working so hard to get ereiser baptized; although the result we were hoping for didnt happen, God blessed us for our hard work.  

it was exactly what i learned this week.  i found the story in Mosiah 8:

 8 And they were lost in the wilderness for the space ofmany days, yet they were diligent, and found not the land of Zarahemla but returned to this land, having traveled in a land among many waters, having discovered a land which was covered with bones of men, and of beasts, and was also covered with ruins of buildings of every kind, having discovered a land which had been peopled with a people who were as numerous as the hosts of Israel.

 9 And for a testimony that the things that they had said are true they have brought twenty-four plates which are filled with engravings, and they are of pure gold.

king limhi had sent them to find zarahelma, and they couldnt but they were DILIGENT, and they did find the 24 plates that became the Book of Ether.  they probably thought they were a failure, but without them we would not have Ether.  their diligence over 2000 years ago has blessed us with 15 more chapters of the Book of Mormon, and they are amazing chapters. it was the same with us - in spite of our diligence with ereiser, he didnt get baptized but there were many blessings for other people because of our diligence.  

 

answers to moms questions:

 

ereiser is SO CLOSE, he is ready but is scared. his brother who has really been helping him is going to work in canada for 6 months in less than a month so ereiser is scared about what is going to happen when his brother leaves.  arnoldo is still cool; we are just trying to figure out what we need to do to get him to church. erlin came to church, this is the weirdest thing ever.  when ever we go visit him he seems super cool and so close to baptism, but then doesnt come to church for like 2 weeks after we visit him.  if we dont pass by, he goes to church and seems really happy there but still hasnt been baptized..... irma is super cool but she had to go to the captial to take some health tests (she is like 40 and heathly but just out of nowhere lost her vision, now she is completely blind, and doctors have no idea why, she reminds me a little bit of Job), because of that she didnt come to church , but is still super cool.. besides that we have to start look for some new people to teach.

hutch leaves on wednesday, he is excited but sad to leave also. im really sad, he has been my best comp, we have had so much fun together and i have learned a lot from him.  he is going to work in utah and is trying to get into byu so hopefully i can see him there. i have no idea what will happen, i hope i can stay in palo gordo, but i think there is a 50-50 chance that i leave. i have some ideas of people who could be my comp ( as a zl there are a lot less options of comps, so i know basically anyone who could be my comp) im excited for a change but nervous at the same time.  the best thing i learned from pres was this ¨excellence is not an action, it is a habit¨ - love that!  the suit is sweet, im sorry i dont have any pics in the suit... the best meal of the week were dobladas (potatoes and chicken folded inside tortillas and fried.)  at the restaurant we eat fried chick, carne asada (a steak cut really thin and grilled) or chuleta (pork chop that is breaded).  there is a lady named leti who is super cool who does our laundry we pay here 125 quetzales per month each (like 20 dollars)  our branch pres. is super cool, he is named Roel.  he has been a member his whole life but was inactive for a long time.  he drank a lot but then 4 years ago he came back to church and then less than a year after reactivating became pres.  i havent got the package from dori yet but i have to go to the office this week, so hopefully it will be there.  that is crazy that the homecoming talk date is set, any idea what my topic will be???

well i think that is it, i hope you have a great week

love

elder meyer

GO HEELS GO AMERICA

pics 

-  us riding up to Ixtagel (a huge mountain that is part of our area)

-  us with an amazing family from Ixtagel,  they have been members of the church for 10 years and have to walk for an hour and a half to get to church, they are always the first ones to show up

-  view from Ixtagel

-  elders from the zone checking out a local market