No Rainbows Without a Little Rain

Ayyy all welcome to another week in Guatemala!!!!

I haven't written a whole lot about missionary life, so Ima give a quick rundown of our schedule!

Usually sometime between 5 and 6 we get up for the day- depending on what we have, it may be earlier. We exercise for half an hour, then have an hour to shower dress and eat. We each have one bowl, one spoon, and one cup! On pdays we buy all of our food for the week and try to ration. Then we have half an hour of planning, an hour of personal study, then companionship study, and training for the first 12 weeks. (Then supposedly half an hour of language study but that almost never happens.....) The first thing I learned as a missionary is that there is never enough time. Never. There is never a moment when we are not doing something!

After studying we hit the streets and start visiting people. If visits fall through, (which they do a lot) we try to visit less actives or members in the area. We have 27 recent converts and make an effort to visit each one at least once a week. 

At 1 oclock we have lunch with one of the members, and have an hour for that! The one rest we get for the day, if we finish early. (As much as I love tortillas, they don't make a whole lot of sense with foods like chicken noodle soup....) 

As soon as lunch is over we hit the streets again. The whole time we are contacting, and knocking on doors and searching for new investigators. we cover two ramas, and our farthest investigator is about a 40 minute walk from our house. The area goes for another 10 minutes the opposite direction. If we can we try to pedir jalón, or hitchike!! That's always an adventure. 

We usually get back to the house at about 930, and we hang our clothes up to dry and sweep the water out of the house, and while my comp makes phone calls (cuz he's district leader) I work in the carpeta- or area book until 10:30 when it's time for bed! I have to make sure I pray before I get into bed cuz the second my head hits the pillow I'm out. Life's always crazy busy, but I'm learning that's when it's the most fulfilling!!! 

This week was a weird mix of highs and lows. We started by waking up at 3 am to help with a baptism. De Leon wanted his son baptized on his 8th birthday and they could only do it at 4:30 in the morning. In our rush to leave when they came to pick us up, Elder Petronilo accidentally closed the front door, with the keys and all of our stuff- including baptismal pants still inside, but it all ended up working out. The service was wonderful. I was able to play the piano and also found out I was giving a talk as they read my name on the program! Always gotta be prepared! There were a lot of people who came to support ,especially for a 4;30 in the morning baptism. The closing number was the song "I Like to Look for Rainbows." We walked outside after and as I was still thinking about the service, right in front of all of us was the biggest and brightest double rainbow I have ever seen. That sealed the whole experience!

So we had 2 more Sundays to meet our mission baptism goal. We had everything planned out, all of the investigators ready to visit, appointments set, members to come with us, and it seemed like we were gonna get all these people to church and everything was falling into place. One by one, every single appointment fell through. I was so discouraged. We were trying to find a street contact's house and got lost. I was focused on how uncomfortably hot and sweaty I was, how discouraged I was and how everything was going wrong and we were never gonna accomplish our goal. In the moist of all these negative thoughts and self doubts, I said a quick prayer asking for strength and comfort and guidance. Right then we turned down a small ally that I had never seen before. At the very last house, we found one of the most quality families that I have ever met! They invited us in, and we started talking and eventually began a lesson. We had our restoration pamphlets out ready to start, but instead we stopped and began asking questions. We found out that the dad had passed away about two months earlier. We began teaching the plan of salvation lesson. It went on to be one of the best and most powerful gospel discussions I have been a part of. We challenged them to baptism for the 24th, and they all accepted. I want to testify that God knows each one of us by name, personally, everything about us and he is always aware of everything going on in our lives. 

I am really learning that without the lows, we won't appreciate the highs. It's like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden- They could feel no joy because they could feel no sorrow. As a wise Elder said, life may be full of sorrow and pain, but you can't have a rainbow without a little rain!

Love all of you, you're always in my thoughts and prayers!!

Elder Tadje

This is all the missionaries from his zone. They got together to clean the house of some sisters who are going to open a new area. 

I asked if this spider was dead, and Jax replied that it wasn't when they found it!