Three weeks to go!

Hey family!    I hope everything is going great.  Things in Guatemala are fantastic.  Sounds like you guys are also doing great.  Congratulations James on the SSI.  That will be a great help.  It stinks that little Noah has to get surgery.  I´ll be praying for him and hope everything goes well.  So when are you guys headed off to Hawaii?  I might be jealous if it werent for the fact thar there are palm trees everywhere here and its blisteringly hot.  And we´re at 5000 feet.  Its gonna be really hot in the Petén Jungle.  Oh well, I´m excited.  =)  Well, lots has happened this week.  The old group of North Americans and all the Latinos left for the feild so right now there are only 10 missionaries coming.  That's ok though because we´re getting about 50 more tomorrow.  Oh ya, I´m one of the new assistants to the President of the CCM.  My companion isn't here yet but his name is Elder Ramirez from Guatemala.  Hopefullly I can do well in this assignment.  I´m grateful for the oppurtunity to serve.  I´m really excited to be in an all Latino district for the next three weeks.  These last three weeks havent been as fast in the language as I may have liked.  Oh well, I´ve learned a lot from the experience.  But now I'll be the only gringo in a 12 person district.  Pretty exciting!  I´m getting really excited to go out into the field.  Today we took a field trip to the Market, to this cool relief map of Guatemala, and then to the mall.  Not a big fan of the mall but I did get a whopper out of it.  I was pretty sad though when I saw dominos and I had already eaten.  I love dominos.  Oh well, the whopper was good.  =) The market was pretty fun.  Didn't buy too much but it was fun to barter a few things.  I got myself a nice man purse, a soccer jersey, and a cheapy decoy wallet, all for around 15 bucks, well, 125 quetz.  Things are all lined up for Elder Carr to bring me a credit card from the MTC tomorrow.  Thank you so much for getting all that taken care of for me so I didn´t even have to worry about it.  Other missionaries aren´t quite so lucky to have parents that are as on the ball as you.  Thanks a bunch for all you do for me.  I´ve really enjoyed this time in the CCM.  I think this time has really prepared me for the field.  I feel so much more confidence teaching now because of the amount of oppurtunities to teach that we have.  We usually teach about twice a day here where as in Provo it was about twice a week.  My companion Elder Horned has grown so much in the past 3 weeks.  I´m really glad I could be a part in helping him out with his learning.  He came to the CCM and couldnt speak at all.  Now he can teach a lesson with great power in Spanish.  The Lord does great things if you trust in Him.  I love being so close to the Lord and feel so much closer to Him than I ever have before.  I love having so much time to study the scriptures and other gospel materials.  One of our teachers challenged us to finish the Book of Mormon by the time we left here.  I´m about half way through and really loving it.  One thing I particularly love is how simple the gospel is while at the same time being so powerful.  One thing I´m really excited for is to bring that simplicity into the lives of my investigators.  Oh by the way mom, I leave 3 weeks from today.  Three weeks I´ll know where I´ll be staying in Guatemala.  It´s so awesome here.  I´m so glad I can be serving these two years.  There´s nothing I´d rather be doing.  I love you all.  Have a good week.  If youre going to hawaii, have fun!  Talk to you later.   -Elder Lloyd