Campo Week Four

hola!! im so glad to hear everyone is still alive and well and made it through the wedding! it sounds like there were some crazy times and some miracles, hooray! you all were definitely in my prayers. haha and i definitely received the wedding announcement after the ceremony had happened cuz we had our interviews that morning but didnt get done until around 1130! but i was praying for all of you none the less and im so happy everything went well. thats so cool president wirthlin got to seal you guys! Im working a hand written letter that i will send soon with more questions and details. sorry for the confusion about email days, today is monday and that is my email day. we have district meeting in the morning and then come and email as a district after, but p-day is tuesday. so look for emails on mondays now. the only time its different is when we have a newbie meeting in the capital.
anyway, it has been another great, exciting week in guate! mol you got that package really fast, and nara i hope you enjoyed the bueno bars! katie, i got your package thank you so much! you remembered all my fav treats! love you! As far as adventures for this week go...we still have a lot of great investigators that hopefully will be baptized soon. I still cant speak spanish and im trying my hardest not to just be a bump on a log during the lessons, although thats what i feel like sometimes. People just talk to fast here!!!!! but life is great. My spiritual thought this week comes from Mosiah 2 21-22. I love the part in verse 21 that says the Lord preserves us from day to day by lending us breath ( and who knows in how many countless other ways) and then in 22 it says all that he requires is for us to keep his commandments. The Lord is so merciful and i am so grateful for all the seen and unseen ways He blesses me everyday. I hope you all are looking for the tender mercies daily! I promise, if you look for them, they are there. This gospel is so true!!! love it and i love all of you, thanks so much for all your love, support and letters! muah!

Hermana Wetzel

Campo Week Three

Hola!!! greetings from Frutal 2, the best area ever. I love life! but this week was another great one, some funny stuff happened. we have 8 new investigators and a way pilas family. four of the girls living in the house are praying to know if the plan of salvation is true and about a baptismal date on june 6! we just met them last night and they were sooooo positive! ill keep ya posted on them. oh and a few things to note, the rainy season has officially started!!!!!!!!!!!!! i wish i could send you a video of the rain, its awesome! we run in it from appt to appt and it is so fun. but its rains like clockwork everyday right around 2 or 230. but a cool story from last saturday was that our next door neighbors, who are so pilas, a family of 5, said they would come to our mothers day activity if it didnt rain. so what did I do? I prayed all the way to the church that it wouldnt rain. i knew they wouldnt come even if it looked like it would rain so i prayed that the clouds would roll away.......and they did!!!!!!!!!!!! it never rained and didnt even look like it was going to from 4-9 at night! this story is kind of anticlimatic because the family didnt end up coming which was a bummer, but still at least i know Heavenly Father answers prayers. next thing, i straight up washed all my garments in a cement tub with those little rickety things to scrub them on. nara, it reminded me of beverly hillbillies, dont know why. haha but it did. but anyway, it was so funny and you all know me well and can laugh with me when i say, ive never been so grateful for what washing machines do, somebody please go give a washer a big hug for me!haha jk im livin the life, its hilarious. i kill about 50 bugs a day in our apt which is nice, but the greatest news is, I HAVE HOT WATER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I took my first hot shower this morning and it was glorious. cold water was nice and all, i tried to love it, i really did (not, but thats the happy and postive missionary attitude we´re supposed to have lol) but the lady who we rent our house from came over to look at it and she flipped a switch in the kitchen and said, there ya go! i was in shock that we could have had hot water this whole time. but oh well, the lessons we learn. im just grateful to actually have running water!but yeah, thats the guatemalan front. oh, one more thing, crossing the street is too great, we cross with a prayer and me saying ´are you serious!´ when my comp pulls me across inbetween two huge trucks and speeding cars. i dont tell you this to scare you, only to let you know that im having a great time, loving this new culture and am so happy to be a missionary of the Lord. Theres no greater feeling than walking away from a lesson knowing that the people you taught felt the spirit and want to know more about the gospel. The gospel is the only thing that can truly bring us happiness in this life and in the next! love you all! good luck with the wedding! know that i will be there in spirit and praying for you!!!! adios!
Hermana Wetzel

Campo Week Two

Hola! Long time no talk! haha jk it was soooooo fun to talk to everyone on Monday! Everyone sounds so good and I am so happy to hear all the wedding plans are coming together! Thank you again for the packages, you sent all my favorite treats! But lets see, something that has happened since Monday is...last night we taught the most pilas lesson! (pilas is a chapin word used here in guate for like the coolest, best, tight....but its not slang, and a chapina is a person from guatemala) Hno Gramajo is this guy in our ward who is the ward mission leader and he loves to give us references of all his friends, its awesome! And last night we taught one of his references, Carlos. Carlos is probably dads age, although not quite the lean, mean fightin machine dad is, but he was so into the gospel! Hermana Baldwin gave us a picture the other day at our meeting of people helping each other pull others up a mountain out of a dark cave and it gets lighter as the people get to the top in the picture. This man reminded me of that picture because hermana baldwin said we would be helping pull people out of the darkness and into the light of the gospel. I felt like thats what the spirit of our lesson was doing yesterday. the spirit was so strong! he was asking so many questions and you could just see the light in his face increase whenever we taught him a new principál, he just ate it up. This guy pratctically taught the whole lesson! He just kept asking question after question about the plan of salvation and because of all his questions we basically taught most of the gospel. He wondered about temples and why we are the only church that has temples, what baptism in our church means, baptism of children and we got through the entire plan of salvation with him and read scripture after scripture with him in the Book of Mormon. He even asked us how much a book of mormon would cost him before we could offer him one. Of course we said it was a gift and he couldnt wait to start reading it. Tay, I took your advice and I tried to give him specific chapters and I think the ones I gave him will really help him because he asked a lot about the baptism of children. The spirit was so strong and even though I didnt understand the entire lesson, I could feel his spirit and the Holy Ghost testifying of what we were saying. My spanish is coming along, I understand more each day and im getting especially good at understanding gringos accents because they talk slower ;) aka my zone leaders elder beck and lindsley and my district leader elder erkenbrack who gave our lesson in district meeting today. anyway, this gospel is so true. we are sooooo blessed to have the book of mormon, i hope everyone is reading and STUDYING it everyday. The principles therein are incredible. My day isnt the same when we dont get to study the book of mormon for an hour every morning. que mas, i just love being a missionary! i love all of you so much and i pray for everyone everyday! The Lord loves each one us, I know this is true with all my heart. have a great week! looooves! hermana wetzel

Campo Week One

Holita family!!!!!! Estoy aqui!!!!!! I made it, haha and guess what! all we had to do was walk across the street yesterday to get to Pres Baldwins house haha. Heavenly Father certainly sent me to the right mission for many reasons, but one of them made themselves manifest today when I had 4 suitcases that barely closed plus another bag to hold my pillow and other accessories...lets just say these would not have flown, literally if i had to go to another mission! haha anyway but right now i am in my first area, in the villa nueva stake in El Frutal 2. Its so fun. my new companion is Hna Brown from arizona. i love her! she is a great missionary, she is willing to help me with my spanish which is a blessing but at least we can communicate in english if needs be. what else do you want to know! ah there is so much to tell. thanks for your emails. i will tell you about one of the experiencies i had last night. When I got to our area we dove right in and started visiting people. I am so happy for the investigators we have, hopefully we can get Noelia and her family to come to church this sunday so they can feel the spirit more and not be influenced as much by her Catholic sister. I had a really neat experience last night in their humble home. I was sitting watching Hna Brown help one of Noelias sons with his homework. I noticed one of her handicapped daughters was just sitting on the couch staring at nothing. I felt like I should go talk to her but I was unsure what to say and worried that she wouldnt understand me. But i went to talk to her anyway and asked her if she would like to read from the Book of Mormon with me, she said yes! I was so excited because this way I could let the scriptures do the talking and I wouldnt have to say much. We started reading in 2 Ne 31 and by the time we were in Jacob 1, her mother, Noelia had joined us and we each took a turn reading a verse out loud. I tried to bear my testimony about baptism and did my best to explain what was going in those chapters. I think they could feel the spirit, I know I could. Noelia looked touched and we committed them to finish reading the book of Jacob as a family before we return to visit them again tomorrow. They said they would do that and we ended with a prayer. This experience touched me because it strengthened my testimony that it doesnt matter what I say, the spirit does the teaching. I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon and what it teaches us. Estoy muy agradecida a ser una misionera! oh and this serves me right, but ya know the costco size bottles of shampoo that i brought? yeah guess where that ended up...alllllllllll over my suitcase with all my clothes in it! it was terrible. i walked into our house last night and smelled something really good and couldnt figure out what it was...but then i almost slipped on something and i looked down and saw yellow ooze coming from my bag....no bueno. so it was a mess to clean up and even more of a surprise when i found out... guess where we wash our clothes...in a rock sink rub thing. it was hilarious. so, i live in a house that has baby cockroaches everywhere, i wash my clothes in a tub outside and my shampoo is bubbling at the bottom of my suitcase, but i am happy!!! i love it here and yes i know this is going to be the adventure of a lifetime. miss you all, i pray for you everyday. i will tell you more details on monday when i talk to you on the phone! monday is mothers day here, so i will probably call you sat or sun to set up a time for monday. please answer the phone! love you all, hope he wedding plans are coming along! mol, did you get the packages i sent you? love yall so much! i dont know how much time i wil have to talk, sorry. presdidente and hna baldwin are the nicest. and ps im glad all the missionaries here love to tell me about mailboxes....you know who you are when you read this :) todos los misioneros dicen hola! hasta luego! write me soon! love, hermana wetzel