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

Last week in MTC

hola!! guess what! i leave this tuesday for the field!!! so probably dont send anything else to the ccm, just send it to the mission home which you shoul dhave the address or just look online. but its crazy, i have loved the ccm but am so excited to get out into the field, and as you all know, i will be having hermana withdrawals when i have to leave hermana mellor, williams and garcia. love them but am so excited to meet my new companion. we got to go out to the plaza this week again, and lo and behold, i was the sr companion who is supposed to know spanish! all the new north americans get to go with a latin comp but this time i was the ´latin´and i was with hna peterson from missouri. we had a blast. people here are so nice and even though we dont speak very well, the spirit touches people and they are willing to listen. one guy yesterday told me that there was something different in my eyes and that even though he had rejected the bom from his freinds before, today was a special day and he wanted to accept our book. i told him it was the light of christ and that he cuold feel that way everyday if he would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. he cant wait for the missionaries to come over. so fun. Guate is great, we get to go to the temple again today and we are just surrounded by the spirit all the time, watching talks by the prophets, going to devotionals and we sing all the time! my comps and i did a special musical number for the devo last night, it only works in spanish, but we sang joseph smiths firtst prayer to the tune of come thout fount, acaapella, its really cool how it works out. sorry i dont have much time, ill email you next week from the field though! love you all, thanks for your support! muah!

Guate MTC Week Three

hola!!! guate just keeps getting better and better! i love it here! we had a few huge rainstorms this week that were amazing! we dont leave the ccm very often, but yesterday we were walking to our investigator appt at the casa cre, where we teach our teachers for practice and our teacher asked us to contact the temple guard who isnt a member! we did and he wants us to bring him a bom today! im so escited to talk to him more. also, this week i had a great inspiration, get this: Heavenly Father has been teaching me ´the power of an hour´. we really can get so much done in an hour or even a half an hour if we set our minds to it and ask heavenly father to help us accomplish the task. it really is amazing, you should try it! also, funny things happen everyday, we have the cutest latina sisters here right now that help us with our spanish and its way fun to laugh with them when i say stuff like ´tengo mucho hombre´ instead of hambre, for i am hungry, you spanish speakers will appreciate that. life is great, i love this gospel and i am so grateful for the opportunity to serve! i love all of you! thank you so much for your support! buena suerte on finals for those of you who have them this week and next! we´re off to the temple now...going through the veil in spanish! haha love it. oh and soccer is so much fun, we play every morning, well i play every morn for gym with all the latin elders, its a balst. love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guate Week Two

hola familia! how are you all! i hope everyone is doing fabulous! whoa, i{ve been here for more than a week and what an adventure it has been. i love it down here and there is so much to tell you, so im just going to start!
The best part of the day was this huge market we went to! we spent a couple hours there and contacted three people too! hermana mellor, who is my comp again, i dont know if i told you, but i guess she felt the spirit tell her to talk to the guy who i wouldnt buy peanuts from because he wouldnt give me a good price! so i had just walked away, and hermana goes and hands him a book of mormon. the other three hermanas had just walked away and so i was left to interpret the spanish for them. haha it was funny but the guy listened to us and his parents were right there selling fruit and so he said the missionaries could come over and teach his family! I am starting to understand more spanish and it was a miracle i understood him, it was so awesome!
we contacted the lady we all bought matching guate skirts from, and then this other guy walked up to us and saw we were missionaries,he told us he was a member living in cali and he wanted us to come teach his family that lived in guate too! way cool. the market was nuts guys, way more insane than the ones in cusco! and ps we ate lunch at wendys-that was fun ordering in spanish.....hahaha but anyway, we are the only five missionaries at the whole ccm because everyone else left yesterday and the other miss. dont get here until tomorrow, so basically we got the special treatment yesterday, the caterer even forgot to bring dinner ( i love latin culture) and so presidente said no problem, welp sisters-look slike we are going out to dinner! so he took us to a guatemalan steak house. being a missionary is the best! i wish i could tell you all the details of everyday life, but i will tell you more on mothers day i guess. haha we are about to go buy stuff from a lady who sells stuff from the back of her green car on the side of the ccm, carro verde haha its great.
but guess what?we got to go to wal mart yesterday! it was so fun. hna steimle took us yesterday, mol you would love her. they are from pasadina, cali. i havent had any migraines this week! wahoo!
yesterday we went with hermana steimle, the ccm presidents wife and president to a guatemalan map so we knew where we were and where we would be going, and then we saw this cute orphanage next to a new dentist office they are building for the orphanage and missionaries, so cool! i love you all and know this gospel is true. i{ve been studying a lot in the book of mormon how many promises there are that god gives us if we follow his commandments, you should look for them, its a fun study. love you all! hers my testimony, part of it, in spanish! La Expiacion de Jesucristo es muy impotante in nuestras vidas. yo se que Jesucristo murio por mi pecados y su pecados y todos los pecados del mundo.depues tres dias, Jesucristo resucito . estoy muy agredecido por el amor que Jesucristo y Dios tienen por mi.Yo se que Jesucristo vive! Digo estas cosas en el nombre de Jesucristo, amen. xoxoxxo!