Race Day!

Hey guys,

Well, another good week.  Things are going well here in Coban 3rd ward.  The work was a little bit hard, but we got to see some great things happen.  Let's see if I can sum it all up.  

We started out the week having to send a sister missionary home.  That was sad.  Her name was Hermana Portillo.  She was a super good missionary, but in Polochic she had some ankel troubles that she never took care of.  It cured a little bit, but never got completely better.  She was stepping out of a bus one day when she felt a rip in her leg. Turns out her calf muscle and tendons in her ankle ripped.  She couldn't even walk.  We had to buy tickets for her and her companion to go to the capital and get it checked out.  I guess it was so bad that they had to send her home.  We then had the task of going over to their house and packing all there bags and emptying their house.  That was fun... That took awhile and then we had to send all their suitcases down to the capital on the bus.  So that was sad, but hopefully she gets better at home.  It'll be a little hard because that closes an area in our zone.  

This week we had a lot of people come from the capital or Polochic to Coban.  That's fine but nobody told us about any of it.  Haha.  We would be in lessons and we would get a call, Hey, we're here, where do we go?  We had no idea they were coming so we would have to go and arrange things for them, including cooking food.  Haha.  Yesterday after church just as we were about to head out to work, 2 elders called us and said, Hey, we're here for our patriarchal blessings.  Did you call the Stake Patriarch?  We hadn't heard anything about that.  But we got it worked out, then did divisions with them, cooked them food, and they slept in our house last night.  That's part of the joy of being Zone Leader in Coban.  

We found a super awesome family this week.  They are the Gomez family, family members of the Paiz Gomez family I had mentioned last week.  We went up to their house after a really hard, disappointing day of work, full of rejection, and to our surprise, they let us in.  There were 10 people and they all loved the lesson.  They all said they were going to go to church and read to book of Mormon.  We were really excited.  The only problem was that this weekend in Coban there was a huuuuuuuge half marathon.  The whole city shut down to drink and party for 3 days.  It was horrible.  It was impossible to try to get new investigators to church.  We went to go get them yesterday and they were all ready to go.  We were super excited.  Well, there's a couple of words in Spanish that investigators say here, "fijense que",  that if said, it means, everything I am about to say is a lie.  Haha.  So they told us that they already had a commitment and would have to wait until next week.  We then saw them going down the hill from their house to go watch the race.  Oh well.  We still had a few investigators there.  The attendance in all of our wards in the zone of Coban went down about 40 to 50 percent.  Oh well, there's next week.  

The Lopez family is doing absolutely great.  They are loving the church and definitely know that it is true.  They are sure for baptism and have no problems with the commandments.  Tonight we are going over to a family home evening with a family in the ward that invited the Lopez family over for dinner and an activity.  That's definitely the first time that has happened in my mission.  I'm excited.  They'll be good for the 10th of June for their baptism.  The ward is really helping them out.  They are all visiting them and doing their part.  Awesome!

We have interviews with President Watts and some training by the Assistants tomorrow.  That should be fun.  It's always nice to be able to have a good talk with President.  He does a really good job of helping you see the vission of the mission and helping you succeed.  It should be a good thing for the zone.

Well, I love you guys.  Here is a picture of my zone, Zona Coban.  They are a bunch of great missionaries.  Also my comp with me on the teeter totter.  The work is great here and we love it!  Have a great week.  Love you all.  Letters are welcome.

Elder Lloyd