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