Merry Christmas

Familia....
MERRY CHRISTMAS Y FELIZ NAVIDAD! How is everyone? So excited for Christmas, right! This season is the best, especially in the mission. It´s hot right now and it´s going to keep getting hotter! Amatitlan is experiencing a ton of sun right now and I just found out that Im going on divisions next wednesday the 29th in LA GOMERA, which is the hottest part of the mission! It will just be for one day, but its a good think i like the hot more than the cold. I laughed at your comments, I promise I will tell you if anything goes wrong or if Im sick or if there are hard days, but honestly I have been telling the truth the whole time! The mission is great and let me tell you some more reasons why.....

This week, we had our ward Christmas party, right? BOY WAS IT A PARTY! We had a ton of people there, even though it was supposed to start at 6, we got there with the most pilas new investigator we found last week at about 605 and only two hermanas were there making the drink for everyone. People started trickling in and we started at 7:40 pm. haha love those guatemaltecos. But seriously it was so fun and so, I dont know how to describe it, because Hermana Marin and I were running around like crazy wrapping presents at the last minute that people brought, unwrapping 150 tamales, helping the primary kids sing, etc... but it was so fun and filled with the Christmas spirit. All I can say is I promise it was nothing like a normal MP 17th ward party. I´ll tell you more about it on Saturday.

Other funny things that happened this week...we were visiting people yesterday with Hermana Rezzio, the grandma who is like our mom that always visits with us, and we go drop a note off to a less active guy who has like three or four dogs. He wasn´t home so i wrote the note and stuck it under the door. Right as I was sticking the note under the door Hermana rezzio was saying, ¨I wonder what happend to Ivan, his dogs are always the only ones here.¨right at this moment as im putting the note under the door, the dog from the inside grabs the note out of my hand and takes it in under the door! I jumped back in shock and then we all just started busting up laughing. Hermana Marin then asks me, ¨Hermana Wetzel, how many of the notes we leave, actually make it to the people?¨I had never thought of that before, but now it makes me wonder. :)

Anyway, life is an adventure! I am so grateful for this Christmas season and the opportunity we have to celebrate the birth of Christ. How lucky are we to have the knowledge that we have a loving Heavenly Father who sent his only perfect son to atone for our sins so that we would be able to pass through this life more easily and be able to return to the presence of God if we repent and try to be better everyday. Christ is our Savior!!! I cant express how grateful I am for the Atonement of him and just how grateful I am for the gospel of Jesus Christ! I know he lives and am so happy to be here in Guatemala celebrating his grand, but almost unnoticed birth in Bethlehem. I love all of you, keep up the Christmas spirit, serve lots and I´ll talk to ya on Saturday! Tay, aims and Ian get your spanish all warmed up!!!!Loooooooove,

Hermana Wetzel

I Love Guate!

Hola! haha can I please just say......I LOVE GUATEMALA!!!! Family, friends and loved ones, life is too great. All the things that happen in one day cant be told or remembered just make life fun. SO much goes on all the time and theres hardly time to breathe! This week, I learned how to plan a wedding in less than ten minutes and how to do it on less then a budget of $12.50 or Q100. ) We had an awesome wedding with the family Aguilar Santos so the dad and daughter could be baptized this Sunday! The wedding was saturday in the afternoon and even though not very many people were there it was still so great and this couple is so happy!

Long story short, the mom of this family is a returned missionary who is sersiously my best friend, shes so cute and has another nine year old daughter who needed to be baptized. Now shes married to this guy who wasnt a member but now, as of yesterday is a member and they already have plans to be sealed in a year! So we had weddings and baptisms to plan and let me just tell you the Lord answers prayers!!! Everything only worked out because the Lord was aware of us and the needs of His children in La familia Aguilar, and cute little Daniel Salguero. He´s another kid we have been teaching who is 8 and his mom has been inactive since last year when their dad passed away. They were part of our Ward mission rescue plan and it really was an amazing experience to see this family reactivated through the efforts of our ward and how the mom changed her whole demeanor and attitude about the church to the point where she wanted her 8 year old son to be baptized. Gorje, the older brother, said he would never step foot again in a Mormon church and he was the one that said the closing prayer at the baptism and was in church this week in a white shirt and tie. This church is so true and the Atonement is soo real.

Another reason why i love guatemala is the fact that we were walking down the street, well not actually down, because down doesnt really exist in La Mariposa, but we were walking and we see this family, so im like lets contact them. We had to think fast because we were getting closer and i was praying that Heavenly Father would give me something to say to catch their attention so they wouldnt just go around us... and guess what pops out of my mouth before I even knew it? I find myself saying to the mom, ¨hey i like your earrings, where did you buy them?¨they were cute big pink heart earrings and the family definitely stopped, but thats not what i was planning on saying to them! she starts telling me that they werent very expensive and that she bought them in the market, but if i want them i can have them! She straight up takes her earrings off and gives them to me!!! Only a guatemalan would do that, such big hearts they have. So i told her thank you and that now we wanted to come give them something too as a family since she had had given us something and shes like, ok come tomorrow at 4! so we are going with them today to give them the gospel in exchange for a pair of earrings. haha The Lord works in mysterious ways, but its whatever works! Love you all like i love this gospel, have agreat week! good luck in finals! jillber, i love you and thanks for the email!!

Love always,

Hermana Erin Jane Wetzel

Still Here!

hola hola! Family, how are you? Greetings from........................................................................................Amatitlan again! Yep, I stayed here again which I am so thrilled about because we have so much going on for the Christmas season Heavenly Father knew that I wouldnt be able to part with these people just yet. But Hermana Rubio and I had a cool experience before we had changes with the Holy Ghost. About a week before changes everyone started asking what we thought would be happening and I always didnt respond just because I felt like I was staying and Hermana Rubio always said with a little hesitancy, I think im the one who will be leaving. So that´s what really happened and we learned and realized that we had both been prepared by Heavenly Father with these feelings. I dont know why I didn´t feel like I wasnt leaving, but it just didnt feel right and Hermana Rubio was the one who had the feelings that she was the one that was going to leave. Everything turned out well in the end and hermana Rubio was tranquila, calm when she left, even though we were so used to being companions and had so much fun together, we knew she had done what she needed to do here and that she would be blessed in her new area...which by the way is the city of Antigua. Yeah, Heavenly Father knows that one wont be happening for me because I may or may not love the market there a little too much, :) But it was a cool experience and I learned a lot about how the Lord communicates with us through the spirit. And to think how it was with Mary when she was prepared by the spirit an angel of the Lord that she would be the mother of our Salvador Jesucristo, that had to have been a pretty amazing experience. But it goes to show that Heavenly Father knows each and everyone of us and He knows when we need to be warned or foretold about some things, and sometimes other things just happen so that we will learn to put our faith and trust in Him to make it through our trials.

But anyway, my new companion is Hermana Marin, from Washington. shes great! bien pilas! as we say here. We have had a great first week together and shes excited to be here in Amatitlan. More details about her will be on the way next week. I hope you all have a great week, thanks for the Love and support you give me, I really appreciate all your love and prayers and know that I couldn´t do it without you! Remember the Christmas spirit with everyone, even a smile can change someones life or day.

We have a lot of big plans to get the inactive members active in this month of december. Our hope is that they will stay active through the new year and make it a goal to come back to church. We have plans to go carolling with the inactives and members to visit our investigators and we want and are going to get everyone involved in the Christmas spirit. We also have ward activities planned to help our investigators get more involved in the church. This week we had a noche de hermanamiento and for the missionary moment shared that we have copies of ¨Joy to the World¨ the movie, and we invited each of the families to think of a name of another family that they could invite over for a noche de hogar to watch this movie. We are going to be present in these noches de hogar with the families and I am so excited to find new families to teach through this manera. The work is going great here, there´s always more that can be done and a ton of work to do, but we are working hard and lovin it. Church is true, Christ is our Savior! Didn´t you all love the Christmas devotional? Love you all!

with love,

Hermana Wetzel

ps have i told you about the cow liver experience when I went on divisions in the coast? i dont think i told you about the great adventures we had on divisions, but hasta luego!!!! love you!!!!!!!

Last Letter in Mariposa

Hey Fam! How goes it! You´re all freezing, sorry! Im here in about 78 degree weather and getting ready for changes this wednesday. La Mariposa has been an awesome area, we will see where I go next or if I stay. Some fun things happened this week. Sorry I dont tell very many funny stories, but most of them are kind of just like, ´i guess you had to be there ´ experiences but I will try to remember more of them to tell you. Something funny happens at least once a day, we are always laughing and enjoying our time walking up and down and up and down the hills of La Mariposa.

Some good news is that Hermana Izabel Arroyo got baptized on Saturday! She is so pilas! We couldnt pass by to bring her to her baptism because she was coming straight from Palin after taking care of her grandkids about a half hour away in bus. So we call her at like 530 when the baptism was supposed to start at 5 to see if everything was ok. she was fine and said she was on her way with La familia Juarez who are members and her neighbors. So that was great and a huge answer to prayer. This is nothing abnormal to start a Guatemalan activity 30 mins or an hour late, and dont worry, there were only three people there at 530 and we finally started at 6 pm. Before the baptism we had an interesting time trying to bake two cakes because no one from our Relief Society could help us, but we didnt have an oven rack. Part of the cake was burning, and it was during lunch and luckily our district leader lives in our area so we had to call them to bring us their oven rack. It was quite the series of events to get this cake together, but everything turned out in the end, thanks to our Heavenly Father. So everything went well with the baptism, man the look on their faces when they come out of the font does not get old! I love being there to hold the towel for them and to just see them beaming! They are just taking the first step to be able enter in God´s kingdom and they have no idea how many blessings they will receive from doing this and being faithful to the end. This gospel is so true, I just love it! Another thing about Izabel, she tells us not to pass by for her on Sunday morning because she is going to go with an inactive member who actually offened her many times and accused her of doing some bad stuff, but she just said ´it doesnt matter and Im going to pass by for her!´ pilas ella, passing by for inactive members on the day of her confirmation.

I got your birthday packages and other things, thanks for sending them! The treats and letters were great, thank you so much!!! We had an awesome opportunity this week to go paint a school! It brought back great memories of Peru! The principal I guess you could call him, of the school isnt a member but he was so grateful for our help and so humble, he lives in the elders area, so I think they are going to go visit him. Guate is great, love this place. La familia Santizo are still progressing we talk to them every week, miss them but they are doing good.

One interesting thing that did happen yesterday, is that Sebastian, the little rebel kid that was running up and down the aisles in the Primary Program, remember him? Hes so fantastic, but we were about ten minutes into our Gospel Doctrine class yesterday and all the sudden, hes eating a marshmellow and just vomits...I know mol will be upset if i give too many details, but you can imagine that it wasnt the most pleasant experience. So hna Jaquelin freaks out and leaves to go get the mop and then the little girl starts bawling her eyes out and yelling for her mom to clean it up in spanish of course, and then sebas throws up again. Poor little guy. He just spent the rest of the class in his underwear eating a sucker. Life is great, the church is true, if it werent, I wouldnt be here! Love you all and hope you have a great week! Tell Rach Larson Happy bday!!!! a christmas package is on the way for all ya´ll that says ´keep´.

love you! adios! Hermana Peach Wetzel

Thanksgiving

Hola! Greetings from Amatitlan! Things are great here in Guatemala, missionary life is the best. I hope everything is going well there and that everyone is enjoying the season of gratitude. We have so much to be grateful for! The Lord is so aware of each one of us and our needs and he always blesses us according to our obedience to his gospel. This Thanksgiving I am so grateful for so many things. First and foremost for my Savior, Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and is the central part to the plan of our Heavenly Father. I am thankful for the grand opportunity that it is to be a member of His true church! There are so many people that don´t have the gospel of Jesus Christ to make them happy in their lives, and for this I am here. I am so grateful to be a representative of Jesus Christ. This time in the mission if short, but jam packed with spiritual, funny, sad, and exciting experiences that I will never forget. This week we celebrated the week of the family with our stake. We started off by having everyone have a family home evening in their own home, focusing on the talk from President Monson on gratitude from last conference. The whole week was centered on being more grateful. The activities were amazing and we had lots of investigators telling us that they loved the spirit of these family activities. The family is really the most important thing we have in the world. Our Heavenly Father wants us to return to Him with our familes to live together for eternity. I know that this gospel is true, I am grateful for the family that I have, my ward family and the support from all of you that I have received. I hope all is well and that we can always have an ´attitude of gratitude´ and look for more ways that we can be grateful! Have a great week, hasta luego! Love all of you and know that this church is true!

With love,
Hermana Wetzel

Temple

Holita familia! como estan?! Ojala que esten bien! people, you all are too kind to think of me and remember me on my birthday. Lets just say that if I were ever going to change religions, not that im thinking about it or anything, but I could never be a Jehovah´s witness, because they dont celebrate birthdays, Christmas or anything! And you all know how much I love celebrating anyones birthday. I feel very spoiled and blessed to know that I have such wonderful family and friends that are at home supporting me. The day was great, it started at 5 am when we had to wake up to get ready to catch the bus at 7, and to bring our investigators too. How cute is this, la familia gonzalez bamaca are a family we are teaching right now and they wanted to come to the temple just to see the outside and be there to feel the spirit. Some people in the family are members and some are not, but one of the daughters said when they got to enter the reception room that she could feel something so special, i dont know how else to describe it but she just said ¨mmm que rico! ¨someone else who can figure out how to translate that can tell you, but some things are just better said in spanish. This family is bien pilas but the only problem is that the dad has to get divorced in the states before he can get married here and then be baptized.

Ummm, what else, so much happened, it was incredible! oh yeah, did I mention that this was a stake temple day? They get on the bus to go to the temple for the whole day, and the members just stay there the whole day doing one session after another, how cool is that! They do it to take advantage of being there because the temple is so far away, but why didnt I ever think of that when we live 15 mins from one temple and we are within 45 mins of 7 or 8 others. Just to spend the whole day in the temple, what a feeling, what a day that would be!

But saben que? Im sorry I just have to share this because you all will laugh that we joke about me always having special priveleges, not special priveleges but sometimes things like this just work out for me, you know what Im talking about. but we got to do initiatory too, even though missionaries dont usually do initiatories, but I thought, it doesnt hurt to ask and we didnt have time for another full session, but the hermana told us no at first but then when I was changing, she came and handed me the clothes and said ¨the temple president gave you permission to do 5 temple names!¨ ha! I took the clothes so fast and it was awesome, incredible, amazing! It just goes to show that Heavenly Father loves us so much, not to mention that those people had been waiting since 1825 for this work to be done and they probably couldnt wait a second longer! I havent had a better birthday than this one. I even saw Hna Noriega! She ran up to me and gave me a huge smile and hug and I was so excited to see her! She is always so cute and nice and tiny! She sends her love. * We had an awesome lesson with hermana Isabel when we got back from the temple. The miracle was that she was home! Supposedly she was supposed to be out of town, but we had a feeling that we should call her to check up on her cuz thats all you can do when they arent at their house and she goes, oh yeah im in my house, come over! We taught her the ten commandments and the importance of the sabbath day especially, and she goes, oh yeah so im going to start buying my bread and tortillas on saturday. ha! those answers are the best. The Lord truly is preparing people to accept his gospel! We also met with our bishop after, and his little daughter vanessa, has the same birthday as me and she is my favorite! they are so cute.

Im sorry I havent sent pictures for awhile, I promise a package will be on the way soon. Love you all, love this work, love that I can actually speak and share the gospel from whats in my heart, love spanish, love Jesus Christ, love this gospel, love all of you and pray for you daily! Have a great week! muah!

Love always,
Hermana Peach Wetzel

Amulek

Hola! Greetings from Amatitlan, Guatemala. Ill tell you something, the weather here now feels like alta in the morning and during the day its like being in lake powell with a long skirt and clothes on! Sorry for the analogy but thats what we´re dealin with here, but I love it. The work is great, my comp is great and sooo much happened this week! First we had an AMAZING conference with Elder Martino last week in Esquintla(the coast). We received some pretty exciting news about our zone and this man is so inspired! I thought we were going to do like practices in front of him in the afternoon, but he taught us all morning and all afternoon, just one thing after another, pulling scriptures out of everywhere, oh man, it was incredible. It was just what I needed because he likened the scriptures unto us as missionaries and the scriptures tell us exactly what we need to do, but muchas veces..many times we have to dig a little deeper. Like who would have thought that when Alma returned to find Amulek waiting for him, that even though he was breaking all the mission rules of staying in a members house for many days, that what he really was doing was teaching and edifying the family of Amulek. We figured that Amulek was like a less active member of the church, but through the visit of Alma, and after a time, the testimony of Amulek astonished the people when he was teaching. It was stuff like that that Elder Martino taught us, that as missionaries we need to have an Amulek to teach with us when we visit our investigators. I hope everyone of you is praying for missionary opportunities so you can be an Amulek in someone elses life and can help the missionaries. I have such a strong testimony of member work, I dont know what I would do here in the little Mariposa without the awesome members. We also talked about miracles in our district meeting today and how really, everything is a miracle in the mission, I have said this before but seriously whenever someone gets baptized, its a miracle. I never knew Satan was so powerful before I had seen the work he has done on some of the people here in Guatemala. But the light of the gospel is always stronger and more powerful than him, we just need to choose which side to be on. But its even a miracle when someone prays! Oh i love it when people pray. This week we found Ester and Sindi and they are evangelical, a mom and a daughter who were interested in Jose smith but said that they had already been baptized. We invited them to pray to know if they should be baptized´ again´ and if the Book of Mormon is true and if Jose Smith was a prophet. The way they thought about it for a minute and said yes after was kind of intense but Im so excited to verify with them tonight if they prayed! We also said a sad goodbye to gregorio our investigator who has to leave and work in the coast for six months. Be grateful for your jobs!
But it sounds like everyone is doing well there, katie, this is scary but i saw that picture of grace in her cupcake outfit and she looks exactly like me!!!! well, i dont know if thats a good thing or a bad thing, but she is getting so big!!!! and ella, as you would say, is a spittin image of you. yikes, give them a squeeze for me! tell gracie that i can feel her prayers and her tears for that matter and to brush up on her spanish from Dora so we can speak in spanish on Christmas! I love you all so much, really, I cant tell you how grateful I am to have friends and family like all of you! Even though Im not perfect and you all give me way too much credit, I am so grateful for your support. Dad did you get my email on your bday? hope so. Read the scriptures everyday and pray to see the miracles in your lives! I love you, ojala que todo este bien! Dan dan gracias cuz for your email, Ill write ya back via carta muy pronto! fam, you´re simply the best! adios!

Hermanita Wetzel, who still thinks I will be 21 for the rest of my life!

Loving Life

Oh Hey!!!! How is everyone? Guate is great, things are just splendid here. I am happy to repòrt that I just love life. thats all. But how are you?mol and jeff i hope your trip was great. Mol, I know exactly what you mean, Im sorry that had to happen with the lady. But thanks to your great example, you dont need to worry! But things are just great here, Im in a new district with a new district leader, Elder Musick from california and my comp is the only Latina! Well, besides me, but I would be chapina as they say here, and she is from El Salvador. But thanks for all your support and love, you guys are the best! The familia Santizo have safely landed in Mixco, officially now. THey came to church on Sunday for the last time here, and are now going to assist their other ward. They were so happy and I was so happy to see them there again! We will miss them dearly, but we always find excuses for them to drive back here, or excuses like, meeting them at the temple!!!! yes! I think this will be the best birthday ever, they dont know we are going as a ward to the temple on my birthday, but I will know that them being in the temple would be the best gift anyone could ever give me, I dont want anything else, so dont send a lot of stuff! I guess you could say that if I were to say something about me that I like for my birthday, it would be that I have recent converts going to the temple...there, I said it, to make you all happy that I said my own comment about me on my bday! haha but thanks for the package, I have been reading the little cards everyday. To give you an update on our other investigators, Gregorio, who has been investigating the church for 8 years now, but is so ready to be baptized, we are just waiting for his divorcement papers so he can then get married to the woman he lives with now, and then get baptized. Noemi, is the mom of hna samayoa, from the pilas family that helped us with the familia santizo. hna samayoa has been praying for 20 years that her mom will accept the gospel. Her mom knows a ton about the church, and actually came to church yesterday! But she has a lot of pent up anger and hatred in her heart. But shes way pilas and I realllly hope she will be baptized soon, even though she tells us, hermanas, we are going to take things slow. la familia gonzalez vamaca came to church yesterday too! Man, there was a really cool series of events that happened with this family that lead to us finally meeting them and putting together who they were. I´ve decided that the life of a missionary is kind of like doing a puzzle. We follow the spirit and the plans in our agendas, and its so cool to see who we were lead to that day, or what people were put in our path, or how this person knows that person, that was an old investigator that lives with an inactive member, or whatever, the Lord is in charge of this work. Sometimes I cant see it until after its happened, but the Lords hand is in every move we make and I love it! The only thing that impedes me from doing the Lords will is, me. I dont like this concept so I am trying to eliminate the natural man completely from my life! Its hard, but anything is possible with the Lord! There are more people I will tell you about next week, i love all the people here in La Mariposa and I am so grateful to be on a mission! love you lots, Id love to hear more of your insights from conference and what talks you liked! love you all like i love this gospel! have a great week, good luck with midterms and know that i will be praying for all of you that are in school!

love always,

Santizo Family Baptism

Dear Family,

That´s what its all about! Im sending all my love and prayers from....La Mariposa again! Im here another change with Hermana Rubio! We are having such an awesome time, and really we had the most incredible experience this weekend because.....ready for this!? The Familia Santizo was baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Friends, lets be honest, this is the best feeling ever, let me just tell you a little bit about how it all went down. how are you all by the way? It was truly a miracle but so many great things happened to make this the happiest, best baptism ever! As you know, they moved to Mixco when they had a fecha for 23 of this month. I always knew they would be baptized, but they surprised me by being so strong. They went the whole week before their baptism without being taught or visited by the members or us! We called them several times during the week to see how they were doing and the bishop had contact with them too, but they were so excited about their baptism and so prepared by the Lord that Satan could do nothing to interfere! Nothing could stop this family. They arrived at the church Saturday all ready and passed their interviews with flying colors, down to the fact that the little boy told elder musick what we do on the sabbath day and why they changed it! I had forgotten that that had been one of the questions the dad had asked us and much less I didnt think Juan Jose, the 9 year old boy soaked all that in too! Another incredible blessing was the fact that the whole family of Hno Santizo came to support them, even though they are all catholic and evangelical. I know they felt something though! I can honestly say that I have never felt the spirit so strongly than when I saw these three amazing brothers and sisters of mine enter the waters of baptism. The whole service was incredible, the talks, the words of the bishop and the actual baptisms!!! Afterwards when we were in the bathroom with Hermana Santizo i asked her how she felt and she goes, ´just so clean! so clean!´she cried after when she gave her short but so heartfelt testimony that with God, anything is possible. This is a choice family, I really dont have anymore words to describe how blessed I feel to have met them. They have the goal now to be sealed in the temple in October 2011! And to top it all off, they drove back on Sunday morning and were in the chapel, seated in the second row, 15 minutes early! The work continues and I know the Lord will continue to bless this family and that he will continue to bless us here in La Mariposa. I wish I could tell you everything but there are no words or time to describe it. Its tough work sometimes to find the lord´s chosen, but i know that they are here waiting for us to find them.

A few other things, mom can you tell the Hales family that Im thinking of them today? Its Madeline´s birthday, i hope they are all doing well, red you too. I just finished reading 3 Nephi, what pivotal doctrine, captivating experiences and incredible promises there are in this book of scripture. I know that Jesus is the Christ and that he came to visit the other children of God here in the America´s. Jesus Christ leads and guides this church and he WILL come again. I only hope and pray that he will receive each one of us and say, ´well done, thou good and faithful servant´. I love you all, life is great, enjoy it! thanks for distributing the letters mol! oh and funny story, im sending you some pictures for halloween of this one house in our area that looks like this guy is ready for halloween all year long, hes a little crazy, way chill and just wants to save the earth- but hes now one of our investigators and came to church yesterday! I am so blessed to be on a mission, Im loving every second of it. hope everything is going well there, katie and Ian im so glad you could relax in hawaii! love you all, the church is true! hasta pronto!

Hermana Erin Jane Wetzel

More about life in Guate

Hola Familia!! How are you! It sounds like everything is going great there, I just love you all so much! Being on a mission just makes me love everyone so much more. It feels like the capcity of my heart is limitless, for all of you and for the people here. The fact that Heavenly Father has entrusted me, throuh his prophet, to serve and help his children here in Guate is a privilege that I dont think I will ever fully comprehend and is something for which i will be eternally grateful.

But you want to know more about my life here....welp this last week Victoria Zacarias was !!(9th Oct and was confirmed on dads bday),we saw the familia santizo twice, we went to antigua , I ate chicken heart and neck, and had probably one of the most fun, most spiritual noche de hermanamiento s ever! So let me just tell you a few things. Vicki is our now convert that had been investigating the church for a year. Shes 16 and just darling. Shes one of our best friends and her baptism was amazing. Shes the second sister to get baptized in her family and now her other little sister who is 13, in one of her prayers the other day said , I hope everything goes well with my sisters baptism and that I can be baptized too. So we are working with her now too! I will send pics of Gabby and Vicki soon. Her smile when she came out of the font...ahhhh, so sweet, she was soooo happy. Her older sister Andrea was a little inactive for awhile, but now they all go to church together and have a lot more strength from each other. This is just another manifestation that the gospel really does bless families.

so update on the familia Santizo...remember how they are so pilas, but they had to move to Mixco, which is in the other mission? pues...they drove 45 mins on Friday and on Sunday to come back here to finish up the last couple of charlas that we had to teach them. It melted my heart when Hna Santizo said to me, no Hermana Wetzel we will drive over there to have the lesson cuz we want to see you too, and it would be better than having the lesson over the phone! so the familia samayoa let us have the lesson in their house and it was great. We talked about 10 commandments and keeping the sabbath day holy, they loved it! The dad was asking tons of questions about what they should and shouldnt do on Sunday and everything. He has done a 360! He is totally the head of this family now and knows that its something that he wants for his family. And then yesterday, they came back to go to our ward here in Amatitlan! They came to all three hours and then we ate lunch and taught them the last lesson with the fam. samayoa and now they are ready! they were ready a long time ago, but we have seen so many miracles by the hand of the Lord in our one month of knowing this family. Yesterday when talking about the gospel of Jesucristo, I asked hno santizo what his goal in life was and he goes: Well obviously now its to live with our Father in Heaven again and we need to be baptized and be faithful in this life in order to do that.....umm hello i promise not every investigator says that! Im sorry i cant do it justice in describing the way this family is and how much i love them. Hna Santizo says to me yesterday, and Hna wetzel, what exactly is it that we need to do to be sealed in the temple! ah! so whoever wants to come back with me for their sealing is more than welcome :) love them.

About the chicken heart and neck...i dont want to talk about it much but lets just say thats been my least favorite dish so far, i love all the rest of the food here, the beans the tortillas, the platanos, salads, desserts...its so yummy. And about Antigua...I love that place! We had a blast hiking to the Cross and looking out over all of Antigua, its gorgeous! Its a good thing Im not serving in the area of Antigua because Heavenly Father knows my weakness of shopping, but you all have way cool Christmas presents! And could you please tell teh COndies thanks for their package and letters!

ps we also had zone conference which was amazing, we only have z.c. every three months now, but it was something i needed a lot and i learned so much, awesome ideas to improve my teaching and just everything! IT was also the Primary Program yesterday, and while it wasnt quite as exciting as those of the MP 17, it was quite interesting because one of our other investigators brought her two kids for the first time......and they were, whats the word in english im looking for...tremendous? I dont know, but just running up and down from the stage screaming, crying and yelling mommmy mommy look at me! It kind of reminded me of the scene from Little Rascals where the dance teacher is so mad at the little rascals who arent supposed to be dancing on the stage, nara you will know what im talking about, but it was kind of like that and the mom could not control them, but it was funny too. Life is just great, you live it, love it and learn from it. We have changes tomorrow, we will see what happens. Mom, thanks for the birthday package, i didnt know I wasnt supposed to open it, oops! but i havent opened all the things inside, i promise I will wait. And katie I also got a special package from you, thank you so much! you know how much i love all that stuff, thank you so much! love you all so much, pray fo you daily, have a great week!

Hermana Wetzel

Emotion

Querida Familia,

Whats up!? We are just here workin away, loving life! But que emocion this week! Thats to say I think I have felt every emotion in the book...happy, sad, mad, mislead, joyful, love- just everything! Pero, asi es la mision, thats the mission for ya! I will try to explain. So you all remember the Familia Santizo, they were a reference from the Familia Samayoa. WE were going to be with them from start to finish...they were our golden of all golden families, they loved us, we loved them, they were so cute about the word of wisdom when we taught them about coffee and everything, the mom goes..sisters, sisters, this is a process, i have my coke everyday in the morning and my husband too has to drink his coffee at 4 in the morning to get going for work! we told her that yes, it was a process. Hermana Santizo dropped her coke and coffee habit in less than a week after she decided to only buy the ¨small¨bag of coffee at the store instead of the big one to last for a long time. I dont know, maybe you had to be there, but they are just the best! We also taught them the plan of salvation and the dad was so curious about the kingdoms of glory. he has never heard of anything but heaven or hell. we prepared a way pilas lesson for them about the kingdoms of glory and i think like five times in this lesson, he told us, ¨yeah, i get it, yeah we need to be baptized¨ so that was all the joy and love and happiness that we felt. Then it was Thursday...we arrived at thier house to teach them about keeping the sabbath day holy, everything´s fine....when the dad wlked in right after we had gotten there and announced that they had just sold their house!!!!! we knew they were trying to sell their house, but thought that they would be leaving in december! so now we were depressed but happy for them that they would now have money to pay for some other things that they needed...ah what a shell shocker. but life is good again, we helped them pack a little bit friday and saturday and now they are gone! but we are going to keep having lessons with them over the phone and they told us on friday night in a noche de hogar with the familia samayoa that they want the dad samayoa to baptize them and that they want to come back here to be baptized!!!!!! ahhh! i have never wanted anything so bad in my life than for this family to be baptized so they can be together forever, they deserve it so much!! they have been through a lot but are so ready and so if you cuold keep them in your prayers that would be great!!!!!!!! lov eyou all, hope you have a great week!!

love ya!

hermana wetzel

Conference

hola! how is everyone! I´m sure everyone is doing well, because we had conference! Wasn´t it just amazing! there is so much I want to tell you that I learned and I am so excited to hear all your insights and talks you liked. Real quick, I just want to say that I loved President Monson´s talk on gratitude. this talk was a direct answer to my prayers. I also had some other specific questions that were answered through the talks of the servants of the Lord. Oh man i just loved everything! And I was praying that there would be at least one talk that would be especially helpful to our investgators and there were like three! they were all good, but for people who have questions about the book of mormon- sorry i would capitalize all the important things but this keyboard doesnt have the button- who are wondering if jose smith was a prophet of god, oh my gosh all of it! I especially loved elder´s bednar, Jay E. Jensen and Larry R. Lawrence, his talk was made for one of our struggling moms here in the Mariposa, she received so much comfort and strength. Our investigators loved conference too! It was so fun to work so hard to get them to come to conference, I wish it was conference every week because the prophet is a way better teacher than me, but seriously I was so grateful to have them, our investigators feel the spirit testify to them that god has called a prophet again today to lead and guide us. One thing on my mission that i am constantly reminded of and that I have learned so much, is that this gospel just makes sense! god´s plan for us is perfect, every part of it. We needed a Savior to save us from the Fall of Adam and our own sins. Christ lives to bring us safely there again. the prophets and apostles that spoke in conference have been called by god and i testify of their validity! I love being a missionary, time flies by way too fast, we need to be grateful for all the moments we are given and that we have the agency to choose what to do with our moments! Always make good choices and always spend your moments doing what Christ would do and you will be happy! ps how funny was Elder gong´s talk?! And President monson´s suit on sunday was fantastic! another highlight of the weekend was when hermana Santizo told us that she knows president monson is a man of god. wow!!!!! love you all so much! birthday shout out to dad, love you dad! thanks for all your love and support, you´re in my prayers! hasta pronto.....

hermana erin jane wetzel

Miracles

familia!!!!!!!!!!!! hola and how are you! things are great her in guate! i wake up everyday so grateful to be here in this choice place with people that i love! I am glad to hear everything is going well there! A few big, big miracles happened this week, miracles happen everyday, but i have never witnessed so many big things in less than 24 hours! First of all, yes Nar, i just said that, we went to the womens conference on Saturday. Our investigator that was going to come told us that afternoon that she wasnt going to be able to come anymore,and we literally had 20 minutes to find someone else that could come with us...at the same time my companion and i both literally said, who´s heart has been prepared by the Lord, that would be able to come with us to the conf. with 20 mins notice? ...ELI!!!!!!! We both thought of her name and went straight to her house , to find her sitting in her living room, and she came!!!!!!!!!!! We chatted for a few minutes and waited for her son to change so he could come with us. A bunch of other amazing things happened, that shouldnt have happened, like getting the right buses and everything, but she ended up really liking the conference and was happy that we invited her. (ps what did you all do for the womens conf? I hope you had a fun girls night out!) then on Sunday, more miracles. Supposedly theres another hurricane coming and so its been raining a lot. WE all know what the rain means, nobody leaves their house. But, we knew how important it was for hna santizo to come to church and how excited she was to come, that the rain had to stop. We said one final prayer in the street to ask that the rain would stop long enough for us to get to the church! Really, within 30 seconds of our prayer, it wasnt even drizzzling. Other miracle, na santizo was waiting for us, all ready to go with her 2 kids! we were so excited!!!!!! so she came with us and loved church. her husband hadnt come back from work yet, because he works really far away, but we ended up having a way pilas visit with the whole family that night with our bishop. he welcomed them to the ward and they were very accepting of the whole lesson. Love this gospel, love all of you! Adios! ENJOy CONFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! im excited to hear all your insights! bring a nonmember friend to conf! love you!

hermanita wetzel

La Mariposa

hola! hola! hola! hi fam! how are you? Dad and katie thanks for the emails, ill try and write back soon, but theres a package of letters coming soon! Some exciting things have been happening here in La Mariposa, Im so grateful for the help of the Lord in our lives everyday. Today in district meeting we had a cool lesson on how we need to let the spirit do more of the teaching and that its ok for it to be silent for a minute or two or whatever to let them feel the spirit more, it was awesome. Im glad to hear everyone is doing well, Im doing great. Loving life, loving spanish and the people here! Sometimes when I listen to peoples hardships and problems I cant imagine how they have lived their lives without the gospel! The hardest part is the fact that sometimes we cant help them with their problems. FOr example, Jackelin Rodriguez is a new investigator we found this week, so pilas...but not married, has three kids and her husband is a drunk, but he still comes home at the end of the day. They have nothing, aboslutely nothing in their house and she doesnt have the money to go to nicaragua, where shes from, to get her papers to get legally married to then later be baptized. But we know that nothing is impossible for the Lord and she paid her tithing last week ;) I was so happy and she was too! The Lord provides a way, siempre! We are still loving and working with the Familia Santizo, so pilas ellos. Sorry this is short, but i promise real letters are on their way! Tay, how is gmat studying going... ojala que estes hechando fuego!!!!!! love yall so much, this is the true church of Christ and we are so lucky to be members of it and to have the lasting happiness and all the blessings that the gospel brings!! muah!
haha katie, remember this, GOODNIGHT EVERYONE, LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! still true, picture me saying that every night!

HERMANA WETZEL

More on New Area

hola familia!!!!!! how are you!!!?? alegran, i never thought i would love an area like i loved frutal, but i have learned that there are millions of pilas people everywhere we go!! We have met with almost all of the members and they have been giving us references and showing us the area and everything! We had the coolest lesson with the familia SAntizo yesterday, who were actually a reference like 4 months ago, but the elders never went to visit them! i do not know why, but the Lord has his hand in everything and this family has definitely been prepared. ill tell you about it in a minutes. We found three families this week that are all very positive. We found another woman, Ely, who has two sons, but her husband just passed away six months ago. She was a reference from our bishop and when we went to her house she kind of gave us the cold shoulder because it seemed like she didnt want to talk to anybody and hadnt talked to anybody in a very long time. But we chatted with her son outside for a minute and then we asked him if we could go inside and visit with him and his mom. He said yes and when we me Ely and started talking with her, she started crying, telling us her story how her first husband passed away ten years ago. And now her second husband, just passed away, six months ago. We talked to her about erternal families and how the Atonement of Jesus Christ will heal her feelings of pain and feeling like God has forgotten her. She was very receptive after that and now she trusts us and we are going to visit her again this week on wednesday. oh and to make things worse, she went from living on the top of the hill in a nice house, to now having the family of her husband take away everything and she lives in this little dumpy house with rats running around. so sad. The field really is white already to harvest and I have seen the Lords hand in every visit we have made this week. The Lord loves his children and is more aware of their needs than we are as missionaries, but as an instrument in the Lords hands, we are helping his children receive the message that Jesus Christ himself would teach them if he were present. For this we have the Holy Ghost and I am so grateful to have a member of the Godhead with me at all times.


The Familia Santizo is also a bien pilas family! The dad, the mom and the two children sat and listened yesterday when we taught them in their house with the family Samayoa. It was so great to have to Family Samayoa there with us, they are both returned missionaries and were a big srength in the lesson. I cant tell you how much my heart was full of love for this family, they are so awesome. we just need to pray for them that the dad will be able to find a job here so they dont have to sell their house and move somewhere else. We have a NDH planned with them for next Sunday with the familia Samayoa.so pilas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

welp, hope all is well, love you all, god can and will always work miracles, alma 23:6 and mosiah 8:18. mol an elder told me i have two packages in the office, i havent gotten them yet but at least they are in guate. thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! did you get the stuff from elder beck? i hope you guys went and got it from him and he didnt have to bring it to you. love you and thanks for everything!!

hermana wetzel

New Area

Querida Familia,

Greetings from Amatitlan! Family, I finally got that change call...Im in my second area now! Im so lucky as a newbie to be able to have spent 4 months in my first area. You all know how in love I am with the people in Frutal 2, it ripped my little heart out to say goodbye, to the people such as Guisela and her daughters, Jenny and Malu (we took some hilarious pictures with them the night before i left that i will try to send soon), Rosita and Manuel and Fatima and Gloria...oh my gosh Rosita could hardly talk to us because she was crying so hard, but she said the cutest thing, she goes ¨Hermanas, you have to know that i am never, never going to stop going to church, i will always have my faith in Christ¨That made everything ok. She is my favorite! have I sent pictures of her yet? And now, Im here in Zona Amatitlan, its not by the famous lake, this is different. But its a cool area. Hna Rubio is my companion from El Salvador! Shes 21 too and we are having fun! Things are very different here than in Frutal but we are getting adjusted but its great to be here! Im so thankful for the time I got to spend in Frutal, there are so many choice people there who are going to be baptized soon! And now I am grateful for the opportunity to be here in La Mariposa. La Mariposa is the name of the colony we live in and the name of our ward. Its a huge colony and we have a lot of work to do. In just these two days, we have received over 15 names of inactive families and 2 new references of people to teach! We had changes Monday and pday yesterday, so thats why im writing today, but next monday i will write again like normal. We met our bishop and he is wonderful. He wants to work side by side with us and gave us some great tips and ways to work in the area. We are going to focus on reactivation because their asitencia in sacrament meeting has been dropping and he promised us that if we will work with the members, especially the menos activos, we will find the people who are searching for the gospel through them. I believe this and so we are going to be working very diligently with the members here. There are some bien bien pilas familias that live here. We are very grateful for the help of the Familia Bonilla, with whom we had a noche de hogar our first night here and they have been helping us get things going. Hna bonilla gives us food from her little restaurant all the time, lunch and dinner! The members have fed us a lot but luckily there are tons of hills here and its hot, hot hot with jut a little bit of rain in the afternoon. We had to spend most of Pday cleaning the house yesterday...it was disgusting, sorry to be frank but we used 4 bags of cloro and then some! I think the elders hadnt cleaned the bathroom once and there were some strange things we found in the house...who knows, Elders are weird. But we are glad the members are accepting of us as hermanas. Ill give ya more details on the members and stuff next week as we get to know more people this week! I have learned that while change is hard sometimes, the Lord always provides. He gives us new experiences to learn from while getting to keep the great memories of great days and times gone by.

Love you all, not much time! adios the lord loves all of us, prayfor you lots! muah!

hermana wetzel

Hola

Hola!!!!! I hope everyone is doing well! Bear Lake sounded fun! Im glad you could all relax before school, you all have been so busy since May! I cant believe the summer is over, I didnt even feel it pass by! Planning last Thursday for week six was crazy!!! This has seemed like a change that hasn´t been long enough! We have had so much success and have been blessed so much! Not to mention how much fun I have had with Hermana Moeai and Hermana Ramos. We are more like sisters than we are companions, sooo fun. I have been so lucky to have such awesome companions in the mission, my first two changes weren´t long enough either!

So heres whats been going on in Frutal 2....We had another awesome lesson with our investigator Luizirene this last Friday. She is so awesome! We found her just contacting in the street one Sunday afternoon and she accepted us to come to her house the next week. She is Evangelical but loves what we are teaching her and has a testimony that Jose Smith really was a prophet. She has always thought there was something missing in the other churches she has gone to. So now, we are just working on trying to have her come to church and talk to her family about what she is learning. But she is so pilas! She has helped build my testimony of why it is important to talk to everyone in the street, because we never know who will accept us and who won´t. It has been a wonderful learning experience for me. Someone asked me what the challenges are in this area...there are a few, like meeting with people more than once a week because everybody works so much, we end up having to drop in a lot on people to visit them...and yes tay, getting people to come to church is quite the experience! Some of the excuses they have just kill me! Its kind of funny sometimes, but we still move forward, praying for them to come the next week so they can experience the blessings and joy of going to church! Fatima is so ready to be baptized! Fatima is 34 and has been through a ton in her life, but she is like one of our only steady book of mormon readers, Rm´s you know how that goes haha, as much as we want them to read and have awesome experiences with the Book of Mormon, everyone has their free will. but she always reads and has great questions! Her little boy Javier is the dang cutest thing I have ever seen, besides Grace and Ella of course, but he always is smiling and likes to lick the food hes eating first and then come shove it in our mouths during a lesson haha. I think its safe to say now that im pretty much over being a germaphobe friends! I love guate. Oh! and if im still in this area this next change we are going to plan a wedding for the Familia Divas so they can get married first and then baptized with their 4 kids! We taught them lesson 2 last week about the Plan of Salvation with the little figuritas I have....(gracias a Lety!!!!) and they absolutely loved it. This Familia Divas was a reference from the other familia Divas in our ward, and the investigating familia Divas told the other familia divas, who then told us, that they loved the way we taught the plan of salvacion and it all made sense now and that yes, they know they need this gospel to be a family forever. This is huge! They are from a pueblo in the coast, and the people here that are from pueblos are very reserved and quiet for the most part. So for them to express this much emotion is fantastic! We love them and I really hope Im here next change to help them with the wedding and see their baptism! But the Lord is in charge and I´ll go where he wants me to go. Hna Ramos is convinced Im going to the mountains, but we will see this monday when we have changes! I want to leave you with some scriptures I found this morning in my personal study...I was reading in Hel 3 thismorning and came across the phrase ´the word of god is quick and powerful ´. i was curious as to the meaning of quick and powerful and i found more scriptures that say this phrase and the one i love is in Hebrews 4 12 and in d and c 27: 1. Sorry this is spastic, but maybe you can share more of your thoughts with me, but the thing that I could relate it to right now is that the word of God will be quick and powerful to the hearts of the people that are ready to receive the gospel. Thats what we are praying for everyday for our investigators! There are a ton of other ways to look at this, but i dont have time to explain! I love the scriptures and I am grateful for the relief and promise that Hel 3:27-30 gives us. Love you all so much, thank you for your letters, prayers and support!! Spiderman, Sarah Mabey, Rach, Whit and Nana I received your letters, ill write ya soon! have a great week and good luck starting school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! muah, hasta luego!

Hermana Wetzel

Hermano Reyes Green

Dear Fam,

Hola and Aloha! ha how are you!? Oh my gosh I have so much to tell you! I hope everyone is doing so well and Katie, wow I am so happy that Ellita is ok! I have been praying very hard for her health, I know everything will be ok. THanks for your faith and positive attitude. THe Lord definitely takes care of us. First of all, thank you all so much for your support and love, and second of all....guess who came to church this last Sunday!!!!!!!!????? Hermano Reyes Green!!! You dont know who that is, and sorry to give away the story, but you all know me, surprises first :) But seriously I have never felt such a rush of joy, excitement, wanted to cry, my companions and I did cry, gratitude and happiness all in the same moment. So remember last week how we had a crazy pday and i didnt write very much, well right after that we had a noche de hogar with the familia Reyes. They were supposed to bring another family over that wants to investigate the church. But when we got there, this other family couldnt come, we were kind of bummed because we are always looking for new families to teach, but still were excited to have this noche de hogar with the familia Reyes because the dad is inactive. The mom just started right off by saying right in front of her husband, ´hes inactive and has been for 7 years, we really want him to start coming to church again´. just kind of blunt like that and the dad was fine with it, he told us it was true and that he hadnt been to church since his daughter passed away 7 years ago. What a tragedy! We had a noche de hogar that I will never forget. The spirit was so incredibly strong! We watched FInding Faith in Christ and afterward had an incredible discussion about what it means to let the Atonement work in our lives. I told him something that I remember Michal Hales telling us when Madeline passed away, that we all need to live in a way, here, that will allow us to be with Madeline and our Heavenly Father again. It doesnt make sense to ever be angry with God or to turn away from him, He only wants to help us. Wow, it was awesome. We had hopes and invited him to come back to church this Sunday, but ill be honest, I was a person with little faith because I figured it would have taken someone with so much time away from the church a little while to come back. But this just goes to show, that nothing is impossible with the Lord. He knew that the father of this family needed the noche de hogar more than the other family. He knows! Heavenly Father just knows whats best. And to see him walk in to Sacrament Meeting late was indescribable, I couldnt help the tears, none of us could believe it. This is my true testimony that the Atonement is real. Jesus Christ suffered for our pains, afflictions, sad moments, all of it. Sometimes we are the only ones that are stopping ourselves from receiving the blessings of the healing power of the Atonement. Jesucristo is waiting for us to draw near unto him, so he can draw near unto us. If you just picture what thats like, to see the Savior of the world with outstretched arms, he will receive us like it says in Alma 5 33. I love it!

Also, this week was so fun because our stake is having a soccer tournament and we have been bringing our investigators to play and watch. They are so fun and you would not believe the number of people that come! Rosita, one my most favorite hermanas in the ward is selling her pupusas there, comida de Salvador- y todo! its so muuuuuuuch fun! And Manuelito, who was baptized two months ago is the star of the Primary! Everyone calls him Messi 2 for those of you that know who Messi it. Oh and ps blessings received this week in the guat city central mission...one of my friends, who was my friend before the mission, Elder Crosby got electricuted! Its not an exclamation thing, just saying that he straight up got electricuted during a rain storm and had he not had his garments, he would have died. THe Doctor told him how lucky he was that the electricity jumped from the left side of his body, skipping over his heart and out his feet! That probably doesnt make any sense and i dont have much time to write, but Im so glad hes ok and that we have our endowments to protect us! Hna Ramos and I talked a lot about how real the power of the temple blessings are! Love you all, have a great week! Oh and remind me to tell you about having 4 hermanas i n our area this week, it was fantastic! Adios! And Luizirene! love this work, love all of you!

Con amor,
Hermana Wetzel

P.S. oh and hna brown, remember when we tried to break a hundred qs by buying matches? haha 25 centavos, kills me! but sad day, we finished those matches and it made me think of that day when we were like, umm yeah, we need to buy something bigger than that! so well take ummm....thirty of those? love you! im so glad you talked to the fam! way to go! a letter is on the way, next week ill send it with all the details! manueltio y todos say hi!

Quick

Hey family!!! wow sounds like everyone is great, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO NELL!! I hope you had a great birthday!!! love you girl! im going to write everyone back as soon as we have a normal pday!!! Sorry, we never have much time to write letters, we always have an activity with the zone, or someone has to go to the capital or something! Today was no exception haha cuz we had a big American lunch in the church with the elders cooking steak and us three hermanas cooking funeral potatoes, guatemalan style cuz i didnt have a recipe haha, and salad! We had so much fun just us three in the kitchen cooking for 19 elders. We had to guess all the ingredients and amounts, but thanks to great training in the kitchen Mol, they turned out great and all the elders came back for more. How were the girls bday parties!? love you all so much, glad aimee andnara loved guate, i cant wait to hear about your stories, write me soon!!!!!!! sorry there is no time, we have to go get to work! ill write more next week but thanks again keep the faith! muah!

hna wetzel

Some funny stories too...

Hola! Thanks for your support and love, how is everyone? Guatemala is great and Im lovin life! haha theres a few things I have to say and thats first, Hna Brown if you are reading this, we totally saw the red shorts lady and no one was there to laugh with me! The red shorts lady is this woman in our area who is always walking around with these really tight red spandex shorts on and she is fantastic. We also have sung himno 100 three times in the last week, you know how much i love it....not ;) I love all the hymns, this one just happens to be the tune of Go Tell Aunt Rhody, Mol, so thats why I think its funny. Jorge Juarez sends his saludos, we saw him in the white van and in front of his house the other day. oh gol hahahaha. Jorge Juarez is fantastic too, hes an inactive member thats in our ward, and he always is driving this little white van of children around and always honks and waves at us with his funny little wave and yells, ´heeeeermanas!!!!!!!!´. he almost crashed one time when he was waving at us, oh man. Nery, one of our investigators is now coming to church to play the piano for us since Hna Brown left. He says his time has passed to wear ties, so he just comes dressed in whatever, but we are hoping that one day, somehow, his heart will soften and we figure being in Sacrament meeting is better than no church at all. Hna Ramos, Hermana Moeai and I are working hard and having a ton of fun. My spanish has picked up a lot because Hna Ramos speaks hardly any english(but it is so fun to teach her new english phrases haha she has the cutest english accent) and I only speak english when Hermana Moeai doesnt understand something. She knows a ton though! So things with the comps are great. We had a funny experience on Sunday, we had a little bit of time before one of our citas and so we decided to contact this house. Its an orange house on the right side of the park...haha We are technically not allowed to knock doors in our area, but I had a feeling we should go to this one house...but we have to come up with ways to get around doing it, and so we decided to toke this door and ask for the familia gomez. A 16 year old girl answered and said, no they dont live here, we are the familia ramirez. what address are you looking for? Um....the orange house on the right side of the park???!! haha she totally accepted a return appointment with her family for this week. woops, i know that sounds bad, but we´re trying here! One of the desafios, or problems in our area is that we cant knock doors and so we just have the liberty to think of ways to get around it. My companion Hna Moeai thought that was pretty great. Also, we had an incredible noche de hogar with the Familia Hernandez, hermano hernandez is the teacher in Young Mens of Christian, so we brought Christian too, and a less active family, Familia Pritz and we had it in the house of President Poncio. Pres Poncio gave an awesome lesson on the Priesthood. It was awesome!! >The spirit was so strong and I was just looking around the room in awe at the goodness of these people that i love so much. Even though I cant communicate very well with them sometimes, I can still feel their spirits and they are incredible.We always talk about them having to come visit me in Salt Lake someday, so hopefully we´ll have a full house of Guatemalans one day! I love them soooo much. Fatima, who is the friend of Gloria and also the techinical daughter in law of Rosita, even though shes not married to Rositas son, she has a little baby, Javier who is soooo stinkin cute...has a fecha! Shes wanted to be baptized for a long time and so we extended the baptismal commitment and she was shaking her head yes before I even finished saying it! Shes really quiet, but so cute and nice. Satan has been working hard on her, Hermana Brown, can you give satanas a kick in the pants please?!! haha sorry, inside joke. We started teaching the Familia Lizama again, they agreed to read the book of mormon with the ward before Christmas! We have been visiting a lot of families in the ward, menos activos, and telling all our investigators to read the Book of Mormon as a family before Christmas! Its a ward goal we have, just like President Hinckley told us to do a few years back. I love the Book of Mormon and I want everyone to Love the Book of Mormon too! We think this is a really good way to help the families to be more unified and a good missionary opportunity for everyone in the ward to tell their friends about the book of mormon and how we are reading it with a goal to finish it before la navidad. Even though I probably wont be here in December , Im still so excited for our ward to do this. I found a cool scripture this morning, its Alma 53 vs 11, 13-15. In vs 11 the anti nephi lehis are remembering when they made their oath not to take up arms...and then in 13-15, i love how they talk about covenant making and how they chose to keep their covenants even though they were facing war with the Lamanites and could lose their lives. This shows us that regardless of the circumstance, we need to stay true to our covenants. It is hard sometimes, but the Lord always will provide a way for us to accomplish our task as it says in 1 ne 3 vs 7, and also he has promised us the blessings in d and c 82 10 that he is bound when we do what he says, but when we dont do what he says, or what we have covenanted, we have no promise of being blessed. I always tell my investigators that i like blessings so it makes it a little easier to follow the commandments of God because i know we will always be blessed for it, and they will and you all will too!. The Lord always provides a way, testify of that!!! Thanks for your prayers, love and support! muah!!! oh ps we went on the tres cerras hike again, the one i sent pictures of, and we got soaked to the bone but it was so fun and a good way to get to know the new district! adios!!!

Love you all!
Hermana Wetze

Success!

Hola! Como estan? Frutal 2 is thriving. Thanks for the emails and everything! I feel good about the work we are doing, but there is always more to be done and I know we can always improve in our efforts. But having Hna Ramos here is amazing! She is an incredible missionary and I have learned so much from her. I am also learning a lot from Hna Moeai, she is great too! This week we had the baptism of Christian Castro, he is a 13 year old varon and is so pilas! he really has a spirit of gold, already talking about where he wants to go on his mission, asking questions about the temple because he got to go see the temple with some members in the ward. And wow we worked so hard to have him be baptized. He has been through so much with his family, his grandma really isnt that good of an influence, and just one thing after another...but we arrived to pick him up for church after 40 minutes of waiting and trying to find a taxi or bus!! There were just randomly no buses, of course that would happen on this particular morning. It was nuts, Satan was really working hard on all of us, but he was baptized right after the meetings. I have all the faith in the world in him, after having been through a lot, that he will be one of those people that turns their life around and will give his future family a better life than he had. We´re still working with Rosa Liliana who is surrounded by family members in the gospel and has a testimony, just is a very nervous person and has a really hard time making decisions and also has a heart condition that makes it hard to come to church sometimes, but she is so pilas! And guess what!!!! Emiliana and Pedro came to church!!!!!!!!!! you have no idea how huge this is. Emiliana is an inactive grandma and her son Pedro, who baptized her nonetheless, havent been coming to church since December. But, with this awesome Plan Proceso Misional in the ward, we have a good active family assigned to one inactive family to have a noche de hogar with them every week. It´s an awesome plan and theres more to it, but essentially, we have been having these FHE´s con Emiliana and the Familia Gomez for four weeks! We have repassed the lessons with Emiliana and she is always bien positiva during the lessons, but then on Sunday she has an exucse that she cant come. But this last week we decided to teach about, whats dia de reposo in English? anyway, sorry i cant remember right now! but the importance of Sunday and she loved it and then guess who walks into Sacrament meeting...both of them!!! Oh man that was an awesome feeling and an answer to many, many prayers. Then there was this other hermana, Anita, who just decided to show up at church because she found a Book of Mormon in her daughter´s house and started reading it and loved the message in it about Jesus Christ. So now we´re going to start teaching her this week! Keep praying that we´ll find the chosen people, love you all!
This week in PME and my scripture study I learned a lot about tithing. We have taught quite a few lessons about tithing last week, so I decided to study it more. We are so blessed to be able to pay tithing. We are blessed a hundred and ten times the amount we are asked to sacrifice, and for that, it shows that God is such a merciful God. He asks so little and we receive so much. In the mission we have a ´reserve fund´ that Pres. Baldwin has been inspired to implement, that every missionary puts 10 percent of our asignacion in this reserve fund. It serves two purposes, it prepares us and helps us be in the habit of paying tithing for the rest of our lives and also we have money on hand if we need to take an emergency trip to the capital or something like that. I really like it. President is pretty strict but very nice and Hna Baldwin is a gem, love her!
Mol, thanks for the packages! I also got the Ensign! I love conference and I cant believe we´re only three months away from hearing the prophets again! We´re going to start inviting the world to come see conference because in Guatemala time, sometimes three months isnt enough time for them to prepare and remember to come!!! haha love these people, they run on warner standard time most of the time. We were also busy this week with baby showers and teaching sunday school, helping our neighbors move(yes im so sad, ericka, my favorite little girl and her family moved mas arriba en Fuentes, where we live, but now i wont get to see her everyday!) and so much more, the life of a missionary is so great! Remember to invite everyone you know to ward activities, parties etc. Even having an investigator come to a baby shower in the ward is something that gives them a chance to meet the members and have a positive uplifting experience! muah! love you alllllll soooooo much! you´re in my prayers...have an awesome week!
Hermana Wetzel

Frutal 2

Hola! Greetings from Frutal 2 again! yay! we just had changes and I am here again with Hermana Ramos and Hna Moaei. Hna Ramos is from Guate and Hna Moaei is from Hawaii. Hna Ramos cooked us the best guatemalteca meal last night with eggs and salsa, beans, totillas and fried platanos (they are kind of like huge bananas) soooo yummy. Thats like a typical guatemalan meal. They are both awesome. Trios are way fun too! I was sad to see Hermana Brown go, but I had to face the fact that she had to leave. I think she will be calling you mom, on your cell. Shes also sending some letters for me from AZ. I love my area. I for sure thought I would be out after one change but now to have three changes here is great! i love the people here and Im just loving life. Tell Dan Johnson congrats and that he has to work there for at least another year so I can come work there with him! I have so much to tell you and catch up on, we went on divisions two weeks ago and had a blast with two gringitas(Hna Ralphs and I) and Hermana Guaranda from Ecuador. Divisions are always a blast. At ZOne conference we heard about a bunch of new changes the brethren are wanting to make in the mission field and they are going to make us better teachers! so excited! also great news, new mission rule...we dont have to wear nylons anymore!!! wahoo! thats a relief. Its still really hot some days and then it rains in the afternoon and night. im obsessed with the rain here! Guate is really such a great place to be. We also went on a beautiful hike that overlooks Lake Amiticlan and it was incredible. We went as a district and had a really fun time. We also went to Esquintla, another area of the mission to visit Hna Browns old area. When you kill someone in the mission, every pday is a huge activity like temple, old areas, etc. but thats a little bit of catch up. This week we have a ton going on, i love being busy all the time. Tell everyone getting married congrats for me, mom i got your letter with those pictures in it, thank you! I hope everyone is doing well there....you are in my prayers! This gospel is true and the principles are everlasting. Jesus Christ awaits us to come unto him. There is so much work to do here, i love hearing about your stories of working with the missionaries, keep it up! Dad, you could also tell the mission preppers that it would be awesome to go out with the missionaries to a few lessons! Love you all! Hasta Pronto, Hermana Wetzel

Doing Great

Hola, it´s me, Hermana Wetzel! Thank you so much for your emails and letters! Its great to have such a strong support system, you all are the best! Mol, I couldnt agree more, I have to pinch myself sometimes too that I´m actually a missionary!! I love it but its so crazy! I was actually thinking this week that it feels so weird because Guatemala is my home now and I wake up and dont feel like im in a foreign country anymore. We still see weird things everyday but Im used to it all and I loveeeee everything here! We rode a tuc-tuc to our district meeting this morning, i will let you all try and figure out what that one is. haha it was a blast. Things are going well here, mol thanks for asking aout Gloria, she is continuing to progress! Right now she is quitting her job so she doesnt have to work on sunday and so she can spend more time at home with her kids. so pilas! And guess what Jenny told us this week, she wants to have the missionaries go teach her husband and son who live in virginia so they can be learning at the same time she is! I am so happy she is less confused now and not attending quite so many churches. this was great news, and she even wants malu, her daughter, who is 16 today to start going to seminary at 430 am everyday of the week! They are awesome. Church was incredible yesterday, it is every week, but i especially loved our lessons on fasting in s.s. and the priesthood, in r.s. i have been thinking that Jenny needs to know more about the Priesthood, and whabam! Heavenly Father answered that prayer! Everyday, I am amazed at how well our Heavenly Father knows his children. Also, in sacrament meeting a lady gave a talk about the importance of service and how even smiling at someone can be a form of service. I was also thinking that one smile can change your day and one smile can definitely change the world because if we are smiling and we pass it on, then someone else will be happier and they smile back so the world is definitely a better place with smiles! Annnnd, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ, we have every reason to be smiling because we have been blessed with the knowledge of knowing that Jesucristo is our Savior and that we are each children of God with a divine purpose in this world and that one day we will be able to live with our families forever. Thats a struggle to say those words in English! haha yo se que Jeuscristo vive y El es nuestro salvador! Estoy muy agradecida por el amor de nuestro Padre Celestial. Les amo mucho!!!!!! Hasta luego....
Hermana Peach Wetzel

Antigua

Dear Family and friends,
Antigua!Antigua! Antigua! It was awesome!! Antigua was beautiful and so enchanting. I may or may not have bought a little too much stuff at the markets, but still it was a blast. I will try and send some pictures soon. We crammed our whole zone into a microbus,like a combe tay and sar, i think we had 17 missionaries in there. Everyone needs to go to Antigua! But how are you! I hope everyone had a great 4th of July, it sounded fun with all the parades and stuff! Things here in Guate are great, we have had a ton of rain! Yesterday was a crazy rain day, but we still got a lot of work done! Im so happy Dan Johnson and Sister Condie are home! i cant believe it! Please tell both of them hello and welcome home for me!
I cant believe Ella says that much, Katie that is so funny about her prayers and how Grace gets jealous when Ella prays a lot. Too cute. How did your conference go? And Tay and Aims, how is married life! You are gonna love Guate. You will know who you are when you read this and what the significance of the statement, I ate my first hot dog this week, means. But yes, i made it this long on my mission in Guatemala without eating a hot dog. Probably because we have a really good cocinera, but still, that should make you laugh(spork). Things on the Guatemalan front are great, thank you for the packages, everyone. I received some dear elders last week mol, but not those letters you talked about. But thank you too for the one from the family reunion, i cant believe im one of those missionaries that gets written to from the warner family reunions! crazy! but i love it. Mission life is great, we have zone conference again this week on saturday. We found 2 awesome families this week, our investigators are doing great! Sorry I gotta go, but I hope all is well! Love you all, you´re in my prayers! Happy Birthday Sarah Mabey too! love ya!

Love,
Hermana Wetzel

Greetings

hi fam!!!! how is everyone!!! thanks for doing the recipe book, mol! if you could include pot roast that would be great
because one of our investigators wants the recipe for pot roast and gravy with potatoes american style haha. dad, yes the volcano ash was crazy. Nothing has happened with the volcanoes since that eruption, luckily. But whats with all the natural disasters in the states! sorry question mark doesnt work again, but is everyone ok there! Mol thanks for sending the package, i got it! and daddy i got yours, with the ipod. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much for taking care of me, everything was great and the music is perfect. the bug spray will help a llot with the mosquitoes, thanks. mol i havent gotten the one that is sounds like you sent, but maybe this week at interviews I will get it. Wow, so much business. Everyone has wuestions and i will try to answer them! Things are still going great here in Frutal II. My comps are great and the spanish is coming along. Im starting to be able to have the conversations i want with people instead of the forced ones where i only know a certain amount of questions!! So thats exciting. We found a way pilas family this week and had the baptism of manuel!!!! he is 9, the grandson of Hna Rosita, who is the most pilas recent convert. manuel is the stinikin cutest thing ever and loves futbol, so we{re bffs. his mom gloria came, which was so great cuz we are also teaching her but shes just progressing a little slower than her son. but hopefully she will be baptized soon. We are going to ANTIGUA tomorrow for pday!!!!!!! I cant wait! Ill tell you all about how it goes next week. Katie, ella and grace kill me, give them a big squeeze for me! that is so funny about their prayers!!! thanks for doing all the work for me katie, glad your conference went well! I got a bunch of letters from you all this last week, so thank you! sorry this is short, love you all so much! keep the faith, mol thanks for taking care of the missionaries there, im being blessed for it too! muah! Im so grateful families are eternal and that Heavenly Father loves us so much that he wants each and every one of his children to return and live with him. Hasta luego! red i received the calendar, muchisimas gracias! letters are coming soon. xoxoxo!
Hermana Wetzel

Hola! Greetings from Guate! How is everyone! Last week was an awesome week, a hot week, but still great. It was only sun for three days straight and then finally on Saturday it rained. Im obsessed with the rain here, its so fun. But its also a bit of a struggle because sometimes people dont want to leave their houses, even to come to church when its raining. But we have been making progress with our investigators and this last week we found the cutest couple, Rosa Liliana and Alberto who live in our colonia, the gated/guarded community we live in. Guatemala gated community and what you{re thinking of in the u.s. are very different, I promise! haha but we live in a safe area and have tons of work to do here. The Trio is going well! Its fun to teach with three because everyone has different ideas and adds different things to the lesson. haha I forgot to tell you this last week, but when we had the 'mini mission' a week or so ago, we had this 17 year old girl who wants to go on a mission with us and we had plans to go teach this guy who approached us in the street and asked us to come help his family and him. So we go to their house and its like 730 on a friday night, and the mom, shes like 57, tells us shes getting ready for church. we were like oh thats nice, preparing early, its whatever. So I start talking about the book of mormon and within 20 seconds of me starting to testify, this one guy who was also there listening just goes off about the book of mormon and how the mormons wouldnt let him in the temple and all this stuff. It wasnt really in a mean way, he was just very contradictory and saying all this crazy stuff. We knew we needed to leave and so we just stopped talking and asked if we could leave them with a prayer and the guy who had been talking the whole time informed us that he was an Evangelical Pastor and that he would offer the prayer. So we found ourselves in the middle of a hallelujah, si SeNor prayer that was nuts! Of course we were respectful and left gracefully, but the three of us, with our little mini missionary were all very happy to agree that we would never be going back to that house. Maybe you had to be there, but it was quite interesting and eye opening to see how other religions do things! haha and we came to find out that the mom was preparing for church that night! they were about to start church from 8-10 on a friday night in her house and they were so confused as to why we couldnt stay and join them. so that was interesting. But I love being here, mission life is hard but great. The Lord blesses us everyday with protection, energy and people to teach and so much more. sorry the question mark doesnt work. Im so happy you got to see sister U! I cant believe it! My mission prep teacher was her mission president too. Im sorry to hear about Nanas leg, tell her hi and love you for me. I cant believe Sister Condie is coming home so soon! I sent a letter through nana for brookie, so i dont know if she got that, but if someone could check that would be great. is dan johnson home!!! i sent him a letter in peru too from the ccm, but i dont know if he received that one either. Katie another package is on its way, i think i addressed it to nara this time, but there are some pics from the volcano and everything if you want to put those on the blog. and tell gracie thanks for her prayers! i love hearing what she says!!! i bet she is crazy about her princess fishing pole. Thank you so much for your letters, love and support!!! Love you all! I pray for you everyday. Read Alma 5 14.15. can you find Jesus Christ in your countenance! Love ya!
Hermanita Wetzel

ps eat some 4th of July pancakes for me at the breakfast!!!! love ya!!!

Doing Great!

Hola familia! Como estan! Dad and Ian, I hope you had a great fathers day! Things are going well in Frutal 2! We have two fechas,one for this Sunday and next Saturday. We had an awesome ward activity for food storage last saturday, and three of our investigators walked away with bags full of rice, beans and sugar. We had about 7 investigators there which was a miracle. Four of our investigators were there before any of the members! This week we are going to focus on putting fechas with one family, La Familia Lizama, but the dad is the most positive out of all of them so hopefully he can help the rest of his family get on board for baptism. We keep trying to find new families by talking to the families we see in the street, asking for references and knocking on a few doors. We dont have to tract very much, which is really nice. This week has been great with Hermana Ralphs, from kaysville-no she doesnt know the Hendersons- with us. She is a great missionary, follows all the rules and is trying to learn spanish. Hna Brown and I are trying to work on getting her to smile a little bit more :) My spanish is coming along a little bit better now, thanks so much for all your advice, love and support. Lets see...welp about the culture...we eat tortillas, a lot! they are these really good little corn tortillas that are made fresh everyday. We have a cocinera that we eat with three times a week and she always gives us tortillas. Everyone blasts reggaeton music here which is hilarious. There are some women in the traditional Guatemalan dress, like colorful skirts and flowery blouses, but most of the people here in the capital are just guatemaltecos. My house is still infested with daddy long legs and cockroaches, but oh well. This place is just awesome though. We have plans to go to Antigua and on another cool hike around here soon on the next couple of p-days. Im way excited. And yes, Hermana Brown and I laugh everyday. We have to laugh sometimes to keep from crying haha we have a ton of fun together and we both love to work hard, so its a blast. She really pushes me. I think thats all for this week, I love this work and know that this is the work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I hope you all are being nice to the missionaries at home, they need your love and support! I shared that scripture with nara i think, but theres one in d and c that says if you help the missionaries, you wont lose your reward or you will be blessed or something like that. haha. love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh and can you please tell nana happy birthday for me from yesterday, i sent her a postcard but it wont get there intime i dont think. and you might want to give her my new address of the central mission, she is still sending my letters to the CCM. oh aha and this last week when we had changes, we were all pretty sure i was going to leave, including our ward mission leader. so he made me the nicest card, like put together quotes and even took the time to find a large picture of a mosquito and the back page of the note with the mosquito said, we wont forget you hermana wetzel! haha from the zancudos. so funny and cute. oh he said that becuase the mosquitoes love my blood!! we have an inside joke that the zancudos love my new blood and so he has a bottle of oFF! bug spray at his house for me to use every time we go. hope all is well with everyone! love you!!!!!

hermana wetzel

haha hi family! im not going to kill hermana brown cuz im mad, but she is going home after this transfer, and so they say i am going to be killing her on the mission. haha which means that changes came and went and the new mission came and went and I get to stay here in my area with Hermana Brown! Im also in a trio....of three gringas! We are quite the sight and im sure this will never happen again on my mission. Especially because right now there are only 16 hermanas in the mission! and guesss what, sad news, Hermana Willimas got transferred to the new mission! i almost cried when she told me, but we know that it is for a reason and she will be great in the new mission. Its a great time to be in Guatemala, i love it here. Sorry I dont have much time to write, some of you have asked about the culture here, its awesome! i will write more details next week. Cristian is getting baptized next Saturday and we are hoping to put fechas with helen, gloria and manuel this week! Hermana Ralphs from kaysville is my new companion and she will be the next mission nurse! thats my second nurse companion! shes really cute, but pretty shy too, we like having her with us! love you all like i love being on a mission, next week will be longer i promise. the work is great in guate! love you all! thanks for your prayers and support! and mol i just got your package, thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! love you so much!

hna wetzel

Campo Week Six: I'm Fine

Dear Family,

oh hey! Sorry for all the stuff you´ve probably been hearing on the news, you probably know more than I do about the volvano. But right now the city is pretty calm and there is still a lot of ash in the streets. its a good thing I have my jelly shoes cuz we get rocks in our shoes everywhere we go, but we wear our jelly´s in the rain ;) They´ve been saying something about there being another eruption, but there hasnt been one yet. Thank you for all your prayers and concern. We did find out this week that the rain storm i told you about last week....yeah that was a hurricane. we were shoveling water at Lubia and Ciriaco´s house during the middle of the hurricane. great times, I love my life. The only repercussions we have felt from the volcano so far is that some of our investigators havent been home as much depending on their work. The night we set a baptismal date with Noelia, she said she would pray about it and we would return the next day. Well, since that day we havent been able to teach her because she goes to work at like 7 in the morning and gets back at like 10 at night cuz she works somewhere in the capital that is dealing with all the volcano stuff. But we are still praying for her and visiting her family and we have other new investigators from when we did service last week, so the Lord is mindful of us. But we had two other awesome experiences, both with 2 little boys. One, Manuel, the grandson of Hermana Rosita, who is the coolest recent convert ever. Manuel is ten and we taught him 3 Ne 17 when Christ visits and blesses the little children and after he read that he goes, I want to be baptized! It was so cute and so cool. We are teaching his mom Gloria right now too, and his sister and Rosita just keeps bringing over more and more grandkids, her other daughter, random friends she meets because she wants them all to be a part of the gospel with her! she is so pilas and so we´re hoping to have gloria, manuel and helen be baptized soon, all together. Presidente Baldwin is really having us focus on finding families to teach. This is a great family whose dad unfortunately was involved in a gang accident and passed away about a year ago. but they are so great. oh and the other story is that this other 11 year old boy who is a friend of some of the other members in our ward, came to church yesterday and announced he wants to be baptized. its amazing how great this ward is and how heavenly father communicates with his children, especially the younger ones. other news is that we find out this wednesday if we stay here or go to the Quetzaltenango mission or the new mission they are starting this July. our mission is supplying 54 missionaries.
This week we had an awesome zone conference. I got to see Hermana Williams which I was so stoked about, we have so much fun together and she has been having a hard time with her comp and so it was so ooooo good to see her and be able to talk to her! haha and get this. So at zone conference there are always a few short talks given by the missionaries and all the newbies and the missionaries leaving this change bear their testimonies. Guess who got to do both......me! I was shocked when the zone leader read my name and only one other elder´s name to give talks. And then like an hour later I had to bear my testimony. It was fine though, my talk only had to be three minutes and i´m comfortable now bearing my testimony in spanish, but it was just funny. Hermana Brown, my comp was just smiling at me the whole time from the audience which gave me a lot of strength and afterwards she said, hermana I understood everything you said, you did it perfectly! I dont tell you that to boast, i was just happy people can actually understand me, especially when most of the other faces in the audience were telling me otherwise ;) It was a good experience for me though. We learned a ton about our purpose as missionaries at the conference and really focused on how we can better invite others unto Christ. The mission is so amazing, its so different than I expected, but so much better too. Thanks for all of your support and love!!! I can feel it everyday and I am praying for you all as well. If you have the chance, read Jacob chapters 1-4. There is so much good stuff in there! Sorry I dont have time to explain more, but I really love what Jacob is teaching to his people. I love being able to study the scriptures and gospel everyday for hours! I love it here in Guatemala. The spanish is coming along, hermana brown and i are doing great and i killed a cockroach the size of my thumb that was headed for my bed. haha. Adios! love you all! until next week, hermana wetzel

Campo Week Five

well hello familia!!!!!!!!!!! gracias for all of your awesome messages, i had one from every single one of you, thats fantastic! haha my zone leader prayed this morning that if our families hadnt written us yet that they would be inspired to write us right now before we had internet, it was hilarious. you guys are the best! i am so happy every one is doing so well, it makes me so happy that i have been blessed with such an incredible family. it sounds like the reunion went well, way to go everyone having a wedding one day and then the reunion the next week! i wrote dan johnson a letter about a month ago, hopefully he will get it before he comes home. thats great they are going to pick him up. the Lord works in mysterious ways because i went on divisions last week with hermana rabanales in villa canales and her sister is serving in dan{s mission! small world. but the mission is great. i dont have time right now to respond to all of your stories, i will write a letter tomorrow but i wanted to give you an update on things here. last week was great, everything was fine, normal, we taught a way pilas lesson to our neighbors and had the ward family history guy come and help us teach on monday, and then on thursday it was great because we just passed by one of our investigators housese to see how their reading was goin g in the ldm, and we ended up staying and teaching them a lesson! they are so awesome, we just need the mom to stop workin gon sundays so she can come to church. but while we were teaching, it started raining.....RAINING ROCKS. haha it was insane! there had been a tiny earthquake that day that lasted about ten seconds and apparently that was when the volcano erupted. so we ran home, luckily we had our umbrellas cuz we were getting pelted left and right, but we made it home. there were so many rocks, well i think its volcanic ash...anyway, we were leaving footprints in it there was so much. and then in the morning.....there was like 4-5 inches on everybodys roof and in the streets! that is a ton of ash and it covered all of guatemala city. so friday we spent the entire day cleaning and doing service for our neighbors. it was good though cuz we got to meet some of our other neighbors and we now have a new cocinera, someone to cook for us twice a week, and we have citas with two other families on our street to come visit them! haha get this, then on saturday it straight rained for 24 hours. its didnt stop once and during the worst part of the storm we were at an investigators house who actually lives in a literal shack on the top of someones roof, who had tons of water coming into their house because their walls were made of cardboard. it seemed hopeless because the rain just kept dumping, but i think we did some good for these people and they appreciated our help. its amazing how some people live down here, be grateful for everything we have been blessed with! I feel very blessed to even have gone home to the house we live in here in Fuentes. and then on sunday church was cancelled and there was a ton more work to be done, so it didnt really feel like a sunday, but lets be honest, missionary sundays are not like sundays at home, but i love it. sundays are always so busy and we get a lot done cuz people are home and with their familias. i love you guys, i have to go, but keep the faith, im fine, loving life and we have zone conference this week, i sent a package to the house so hopefully you will get it soon. muchisimas gracias for all your love and support! I love the thought that comes from somethin we sang at the mtc - we are now the lords missionaries, to bring the world his truth. its so awesome that i am now a missionary for the Lord and I am now happy. i got sister rowes address, so thank you. have a wonderful week everybody! love you so much! adios!

hermana wetzel