Chicken Enchiladas!

Hey guys,

Well, this week was one of the best. It went by really fast and was full of a lot of things, but it brought some of the greatest joys of my mission.  Man, they've got Toy Story 3 playing here in the internet place.  That's tempting.  Well, here we go. 

The week started out with a rushed trip to the capital to Zone Leader concilio.  When I was writing my short little letter to you guys last Monday and sent it, we had 10 minutes until our bus left.  We sprinted to the bus station and got there right as the bus was pulling out.  That would have been bad to miss.  It was a fun ride because we had all of the Zone leaders together from outside of the capital in the same bus going down at the same time.  I love those Elders.  They really are some great guys.  Then, concilio was really good as always.  I gave a talk with my companion for 15 minutes.  That was the second time I've had to talk as a zone leader in those meetings.  It turned out really well.  We spoke on how to put and hold baptismal dates with investigators and then help the zone to do the same.  Anyways, that was all good, but the important part of the day was that I got to eat mom's chicken enchiladas.  Oh my goo'ness, oh.... my goo'ness.  It was so good.  The only thing that Hna Watts couldn't find were the little canned green chilies, but it was great.  We also had a really good lemon cream dessert.  Those are good days.  I had thirds on everything.  Oh, by the way, the picture I sent of the Elder in the Brown suit is Elder Nelson, our Assistant to the President.  He was in Coban before I came here.  He has a special place in his heart for Coban because he knows how great it is. 

Anyways, that was a good day but we got on the bus at 5pm and headed for Coban.  Around 9pm and about an hour and a half away from Coban, the transmission of the bus se fregó and we were stuck in the middle of the wilderness.  We had 8 Elders on the bus and had to get out in our suits and with our suitcases and everything and hitchhike.  Luckily we had some really nice guy give us a ride to Salama, a completely different zone in our mission, and we stayed the night with the zone leaders there.  That was fun.  I wasn't expecting to get to know that part of Guatemala.  Plus it's also always fun to get a nighttime hitchhike through the jungle.  It was beautiful. 

As for the work, we didn't get too much headway with our baptisms and interviews and concilio.  We are still working with familia Gomez to try to put a baptismal date with them.  If you guys can include them in your prayers, that would help a lot.  They were almost ready to say yes, but in the moment, Satan one.  But, one thing I've learned is that nobody ever gets away from the truth.  They'll have a date this week. 

I had another great (not so great) Zone Leader responsibility to attend to this week.  We have 5 Hermanas in our zone and they are really awesome, but we had to change some of the companionships in our zone.  I had to interview all of them and try to resolve some issues.  I guess girls are different from boys.  The joys of the mission! 

The baptism was wonderful.  Because of work and other things, we did it at 8am on Sunday.  We didn't have too many members there to support because it was so early, but we did have the Spirit there.  They are such a strong family.  It was amazing to see the transformation of the family within a matter of hours as they were baptized, received the Holy Ghost, and became members of the Church.  It was great.  The only thing that was rough was that Edwin, the 8 year old son, kicked his foot up when my companion baptized him and did not want to do it again.  We finally talked him into it, but he spazzed and punched his hand out of the water as he went down.  So, he didn't want to do it again so we are going to have to do it this weekend and have him go swimming and stuff to take away his fear of the water.  I think he swallowed water or something.  Still though, it was an amazing baptism.

Today we went to Semuc Champey as our actividad de zona again.  It was awesome.  I love that place.  It's so beautiful.  The only not so cool thing about it is that there are a bunch of European women swimming around all over the place.  The cool part today was that Polochic zone and Salama zone also were able to go so we were about 70 missionaries over there.  Everybody came from all over the place and it was a pretty good reunion.  I didn't get many pictures because I lent my camera to another Elder that didn't have one. 

Anyways, I love you guys.  It's 9:15 so I got to get inside.  By the way my appointment was fantastic tonight and we have an engineer that we're teaching.  Edgar Hass is his name and he's really starting to get the gospel.  Have a great week.  Love you!

Elder Lloyd