Hot, Hot, Hot

Hey guys, Well, here I am once again in Peten. Things are going great and I am loving it up here again. It truly is the home of the Mayas. Sounds like you guys had a super busy week. You guys are always traveling around the whole US. I guess if it was any other way it wouldn't be quite as exciting. The start of the week was concilio with all the ZLs and President. We were assigned two 1-hour presentations for the meeting. It went well, we talked about the importance of working with members and ward leadership and the importance of the Book of Mormon. That is a great book. It has so much power and is essential in our conversion. The meeting went well and we were all edified. Plus Sr. Watts made us chicken cordon bleu afterwards. Soo good. =) After concilio we packed up and headed to Peten. We were all excited because we had some awesome seats in a really nice bus at 9pm, but I forgot to buy one ticket, so we had to go on the 10:30 not so nice bus. After 10 hours in the bus we got on another bus to go 2 more hours and start splits in Sayaxche, a super-hot area. It was a rough day because we were all so tired, but it turned out good and we were able to help all the missionaries. We then traveled the next day and were able to go to my beloved San Andres. It was really nice to be back there and get to see everybody. We got to visit some of my recent converts. It was especially cool seeing Tony and Bertha because they have grown a ton in the gospel. They are reading through the Book of Mormon and are now in Helaman. They know all the hymns. Tony is the President of the Sunday School and Bertha is a teacher in Relief Society. They have been members for 9 months now and are making plans to be able to go to the temple in January to be sealed. They also should be able to go do baptisms for the dead with the ward in November or December. =) That was the good part of San Andres. The discouraging part was that the missionary work there has really slowed down. =( It was sad, but we are going to see what we can do with changes in a couple of weeks. Oh well, the Lord puts missionaries in all areas for a reason. The good thing was that most of my recent converts are doing really well. I think 13 or 14 of the 16 are completely active. It was suuuuuper fun to be there again though. The people are really special. We then traveled to a place called Poptun where we worked a day in splits and also spent Saturday for General Conference. That was an interesting experience. Poptun is super far into the jungle, but they have a whole District. The only thing is that the district building is still really old and not too up to date when it comes to electronics. We got everything ready to go for the conference and when it started up, we only had the conference in Portuguese! We were super worried, but luckily there was a maintenance man there that knew how to work the transmission box and got it switched to English. Had it not been for him, we would've seen it in Portuguese. We missed President Monson's first talk on the ages for missionary service, but after that we were able to see everything. We had to leave the second session on Saturday an hour early to make the 2 and a half hour trip back to Flores for the Priesthood session, which by the way, was awesome! We then spent Sunday and today here in Santa Elena (Flores). The conference was awesome and a huge boost spiritually for me. On the mission it is sometimes easy to get so busy that the simple spiritual aspects of the work can be overlooked. This work is definitely true and I am super grateful to be a part of it. Well, time's up and the chicharrones I ate this morning are starting to fight back. Love you all and Hope you have a great week! Tell Aunt Barbara I say hi and that I'm praying for her. Love, Elder Lloyd