Elder Cook, Laguna Chiquibal and Volcanoes.

January 20, 2014

Hey family and friends,

Wow, this week was great.  That is all I have to say. Well I will start out with the highlight of the week. Elder Cook came to the mission and talked to us. It was so awesome.  It was just for the mission.

My comp and I with the assistants.

First, we all had the chance to shake his hand and greet him. Then we had the opportunity to listen to his message. It was great. He talked about a lot of stuff from Doctrine & Covenants and how the mission force is growing. He also shared his opinion about what kind of people we should look for and teach. He then finished with leaving us a promise and a blessing.  It was so cool. I felt like he was talking directly to me. He made lots of promises about our families back home and all the blessing they will receive. Then he bore his testimony of the Savior and it was so powerful. It was incredible. We were all ready to go out there and find some people.

Almost the whole zone.  We were only missing three missionaries.

The zone right now is doing great in comparison with the whole mission. We have the most baptisms out of all the zones. We are Xela Centro and  we only have 7 areas and we have the most...that could be why President gave us permission to go to the Laguna Chiquibal.

They always burn wax.  One time I saw a lady put like 100 candles in the fire.

I know I had already been there but this time it was different. I had the opportunity to see a volcano erupt. Well, it wasn't a full eruption, but it exploded. It was awesome.

Three Volcanoes

Also I got to see the coast, but it was really far away. We could see like 3 other volcanos that were erupting when we saw the coast. Guatemala is really beautiful.

Sorry my emails are not that good as a zone leader we are always just running to get everything done. 

Working in the fields.

I love you guys so much. I know that the work we are doing as missionaries is the Lord's work.

Elder Reinhold

We saw the volcano erupt. It was cool.

 I have a video but I can't send videos 

because they are too big.

Getting Ready for Elder Cook's Visit and a New Comp...

We learned how to make pies in the church with J--, our recent convert.

January 13, 2014

Hey everybody. Well I will start out by virtually introducing my companion. His name is Elder A-- from Honduras. He has 18 months in the mission. This is his first time being a zone leader, so I am showing him the ropes. The good thing is that he has the desire to work. Well this week was good.  The zone did well. It is still improving little by little. Right now we have 2 baptisms set for the 25th. We should baptize 3 this month.

Here is some wipil I bought. It is really cool.

This week all the missionaries are so excited. Elder Cook is coming this Saturday. We are all getting ready - like cutting our hair, washing our suits, and mentally preparing for the huge machete that his is going to give us. We are all getting ready to be spiritually renewed.

Today was a little interesting.  The sisters had a huge fire in their house. We are going to go later to talk with the owner and see the damage. 

This is Sija.  It is parto of our zone.

The quote for the week is, "Over-anxiety is like pulling up the daisies to see how the roots are doing." Neal A. Maxwell This is just like setting a baptism date with our investigators.  You have to wait for the perfect time. Well I am sure that I will have a lot to talk about with an apostle coming.

Elder Reinhold

P.S. Sorry if forgot to mention that we have had 3 earthquakes this week. Looks like the world is going to end. One of them was pretty strong. It was strong enough to make us leave our house. Love you guys.

Hola Familia!

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Hey! How is it going everybody??? Well this week was extremely good but finished out a little bit sad. Well let me start with the good stuff...

First of all we had a baptism. J-- got baptized! This is really exciting.  Also, we broke the 3 month no baptizing streak here in Centro. It was so amazing. He is going to be a great member. It was so awesome how he received his answer. He went and talked to the father of the huge Catholic cathedral in Centro. The father was getting mad at him because he was talking with us and everything, but just like Joseph Smith, he decided to pray. He knelt down one night and prayed, asking where he could find the truth.  Immediately after he did not feel anything and went to bed like normal. He then had a dream he was watching us from above teaching him in the chapel where we always have the appointments. He said not only that but that he received a confirmation that it is the truth and that he had to be baptized. When we do our part the Lord does his part. 

Look how hard the mission is.  No, just kidding.  We invited the
district leaders to lunch for a correlation meeting.  It was a cool restaurant.

The other good thing was that the zone had a great week. We went from 6 baptismal dates to 10 to 23 this week. It was awesome to see the dates for the week not only for the baptismal dates, but everything went well. I looks like we are doing better at getting the zone going and everything. The zone really is doing great.

We made a pinata for an elder that is going to his house.
(Going to his house?  Must be how they'd say it in Spanish.)

Well now for the sad part. Tomorrow the zone is going to have a couple of changes. One of them is our district leader Elder P--. Also my companion has changes tomorrow!!!!! Elder D-- S--, the Brazilian, is going to leave.  He is going to go to the office as secretary. I am excited but a little nervous because I have only one month as zone leader. Well we will see how it goes. I don't know who my new companion is but we will see.

The quote for the week is one from my Mom. "Nothing ever goes away until it taught us what we need to know." - Pema Chodron. I love this quote. If we have something that has always been hard for us, it is because we still need to learn something. I have learned this a lot in the mission with learning the wisdom of being ovedient. (From the blog editor/Mom: He keeps spelling things funny or how they would be spelled in Spanish. I had to leave this one because I think it is cute.)  

I love you guys and we are going to work hard to turn around the area of Centro.

Elder Reinhold (El Elder con la familia más pilas y calidad que hay en todo el mundo. Gracias por el apoyo y todo lo que hacen para mi.)

Post Christmas Phone Call...

December 30, 2013

Eating "Moker Dahnodes" with the Bishop and his family. 

Hey!  Well first of all, it was great to talk to you guys. It was fun using skype. We had a good time talking face to face and it was well worth it.

This is half of our zone.

Christmas was great.  We had an activity as the zone. It was good. We made pizzas and played sports and did a gift exchange. It all turned out well and everybody had a great time.

Making pizzas.

Gift exchange.

This week we had a conference with President it was cool. President Bautista always has the best stories. He told a story about a couple whose kid went missing and they went on their mission knocked on a door and it was their son. I maybe had a little bit of moisture in my eye.

These are paches.  This is the food that everyone eats here
for Christmas and other holidays.  They are like tamales
except they are made with rice.

Well, we got called out in the conference pretty good. So President, from the pulpit, asked every companionship thier goals for the next two weeks. There were 4 zones present. He always started with the zone leader to ask them thier goals. He said, "The zone leader of Xela Centro, where are you guys at?" I raised my hand and when he caught sight of where we were sitting he said, "Oh, los pecadores," which means "the sinners." All the missionaries - all 100 of them, were like, "Oooooooooh." My comp and I were like, "What the heck what did we do?" But our president is like that. He is a jokester.

My comp with his Christmas gifts.

We are one of the only missions in the world that doubled our baptisms this year. The zone is doing a little bit better. I think that the plans that we are doing to finding people wanting to hear the gospel message are working a little bit. We will keep working hard to have the best zone in the mission. I want you guys to know that I would not be anywhere else than right here in the tiny town of Quetzaltenango doing exactly what I am doing. It is a once in a lifetime chance. Well, I will talk to you guys later. I love you guys so much and we will talk to you next week.

Elder Reinhold

Photo of Elder Reinhold on Christmas Day via Skype.

Awesome Week

Why the long faces, Elders?

December 23, 2013

 

 

Family,


Well this week was awesome for a couple of reasons. Fisrt of all we had a couple of really cool activities in the stake. They were, of course, Christmas themed. The first is that the whole zone prepared a choir to sing in a park. It turned out great. There were microphones and lights and big speakers. Everything turned out really good. The other activity that we had was the whole stake went to an aldea called Sija. We brought 3 truck loads of toys and there was a dance and a singing program. It was really cool.


Tomorrow we are going to do the Zone christmas activity. We are going to make a pizza buffet and we are going to play games like basketball, soccer, and board games. We will see how it turns out. This week was really cool. The zone is suffering a ton so my comp and I planned a really spiritual slash, butt whooping zone conference. We prepared really good talks and we invited the assistants to talk as well and then we shared the missionary work and the atonement video it was so cool. The stats went up so we are happy that the missionaries are working a little bit harder. As for our area we are doing great. I think that we could baptize very healthily in January. We have a baptism on January 5th with our investigator named, J--.


Well I have to go, but Merry Christmas and I promise to write more next week.


Love you guys and thank you for all the support.


Elder Reinhold

 

P.S.  More Photos coming.  Having technical difficulties.

Plugging along....

December 16, 2013

Hey family how is it going? Well here we are just plugging along. We will just say that here in the area of Centro we are doing great. We are finding lots of people to teach and we are having success, but the zone is dying. Literally Dying. We are coming up with ideas to help the zone but I am not going to lie it is pretty hard. The whole zone is working at about 50% and that does not bring success. So we have some work to do. We were going to baptize this week but the brother of our investigator died so that kind of threw a kink in the baptism. The whole funerel and everything will be this week so the next week we should be able to have the baptism. This week was awsome also we found a family of 7 that is really positive. The mom of the family has tons of friends in the church and goes to all the activities that we have. The dad has been a little bit harder to get ahold of but last night we had a lesson with him in his house and he invited us to eat dinner and everything. It was great. Its is really interesting. She told one of the sisters in the ward that they were Catholics to the core but that her opinion is changing about the Catholic church. We are praying lot for this family and for the opportunity to baptize them.

 

Just wanted to share a thought that I had while reading the Book of Mormon this week. I was reading in 1st Nephi, chapter 18...I think it is. This is when Nephi breaks his bow. This is a classic story but over and over in the Book of Mormon we learn the lesson of don't sit on your butt when you have problems. There are a couple of great examples: Ammon when the sheep got scattered and also with Nephi's bow. He broke his bow and all of his brothers were just sitting there crying and he decided to make another bow and a sling to go hunt for food. I love teaching this lesson to the other missionaries. If your bishop does not help you or if your comp is hard or if your area is hard or if you don't have investigators, I always ask them "What are you going to do about it? Because sitting on your butt is not going to get you anywhere." We all need to learn how to act. Also the other thing that I loved is when it is talking about the liahona and how it worked according to their faith and diligence. This is exactly like our spirituality or relation with God. The more we do, the more diligence we exercise the more direction we will receive and we will have more spiritual power. When we do not do that, we cannot expect anything.

 

The quote for the week is, "If in a court of law you were accused of being a Latter-day Saint, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" -Jeffrey R. Holland. I always use this when we share messages with members.  It is a great quote. I love you guys so much and look forward to talking to you in a couple of weeks.


Elder Reinhold

Making Things Happen in Centro...

It was "burn the devil day" this week. This is one of the devils that someone made.
It even has little horns.

Hey Family!

 

How are ya' all doin'? First of all, Happy Birthday Kyler. Man, you are growing up fast. Well everything is going great here in Xela. Other than the fact that I feel like it is colder than Utah!!! I thought that by receiving a mission call to Central America I was safe... I didn't even sleep in a sweatshirt in Utah but here it is a MUST-DO. Well it is so cold sometimes. Last week I went to the market and bought a coat, so don't worry, I am okay now.

 

 

 

Elder Christopherson is going home,

 so we made a piñata for him.

Here in the area of Centro there is a non-baptizing streak not to mention it is a zone leader area and the last zone leader here was an previous assistant. Well this week we are going to baptize.  It is a miracle.  The Lord is so merciful with us. Also, we found a ton of families to work with. We found like 4 or 5 families.  We are stoked and we think we are going to lay down some fire in January. That is a saying that we say down here. "Vamos a echar fuego."  We think that we can maybe baptize 3 to 5 in January. This week the Lord truly blessed us. The zone is struggling a little bit, but we are trying to do all that we can to help it.

 

This week the quote of the week is, "We are told emphatically not to pilfer and profane, prevaricate and fornicate, satiate ourselves in every indulgence or violation that strikes our fancy and then suppose that we are "pretty darn good soldiers." No, not in this army, not defending the kingdom of God." -Jeffrey R. Holland Wow.  That will make you think about the little sins a bit more seriously won't it?

 

 

Well, I love you guys and I am in the coolest mission in the world. The culture is amazing - pure Book of Mormon material. I would not trade it for anything.

 

Elder Reinhold