Week 67

October 21, 2014

Well, yet another week has flown by. I don't really have any big experiences, although we did have one nice miracle last Saturday. The stake was doing an activity where youth would get to experience missionary life for a day and they sent two super pilas 16 year olds to work with us for 5 hours so we decided to do divisions. I practiced a lot with Elder Fulmer before hand so that he would be prepared to take the lead. When we came back that night after the divisions, it was great to see how he was so happy and full of confidence.  As he had been forced to speak and understand more, without the help of a gringo at his side, it would seem that the gift of tongues kicked in and he was able to do everything he needed to. They even had 75 contacts with 35 families contacted during divisions. I was so happy that he had that opportunity to see how much he can really do on his own.

Speaking of the gift of tongues, I had an experience that made me feel really good yesterday. For the first time in my entire mission, a person we were talking to said that he thought I was from either Honduras or Panama because of my Spanish. That was definitely a little confidence booster for me as well as one of my minor mission goals.

Yesterday for P day we really didn't do much, although we did go to view some of the art galleries here in Comalapa. They have some of the coolest paintings of streets in Antigua. I'm totally going to get a few of those for my house someday. However, I also saw a painting of the Last Supper as if it had taken place in Sololá by Lake Atitlan. Everyone was dressed as Guatemalans and you could see the lake and the volcanoes in the background. It was cool, until I realized that, wait, Christ really did come to the Americas (probably here in Gmala) and really did call twelve Disciples and really did institute the sacrament, when I realized that the painting just became awesome.

One rather ridiculous thing that happened to us this week was that this Sunday we passed by a retirement home in order to bring and investigator/convert named Fernando to church. He was baptized several months ago but hasn't been confirmed since he started drinking again. We accompanied him to church but after sacrament meeting he somehow escaped. We caught him right as he was being handed a glass of something in a tienda close to the church. He said it was coconut water and then drank it at which point we realized that it was the hardest alcohol available. We brought him back to church and tried to disguise the heavy smell of alcohol on his breath to no avail. To make it even worse, when we dropped it off at his retirement home, all the old people were watching LOTR.

In all, I'm loving being a missionary. Reading back over my journal makes me more and more grateful for every day. I've really come to love it more than I every thought I could.

Love,

Elder Cannon

Ok, so in Comalapa there's a really long mural on the wall as you enter the city. It depicts the history of the people here in the mountains of Guatemala. I found it fascinating so I'll include some highlights here.

Creation, Mayan life, and colonization

Indigenous life

  

Indigenous life continued

Revolution and the great earthquake of 1976

The Guatemalan civil war. Government forces vs. guerillas. Lots of atrocities. The ¨Paz¨ was signed not too long ago, in the 80´s or maybe in 1991.  It's a pretty violent mural.

Hmmm, long story, but it would seem as if I can't access the other pictures right now. It’ll have to wait for next week