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
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
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
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
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
Monday, October 4, 2010
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
hermana erin jane wetzel
Sunday, October 3, 2010
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
hermanita wetzel
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