Barcenas, Villa Nueva

February
Comin' at ya live from Barcenas, Villa Nueva; The city build on a hill!

It's a strange area - we're really close to Guate, the biggest city in Guatemala. So we can see all the lights and big buildings off in the distance. We're a 10 minute bus ride from Walmart. (I had almost forgotten what that was) and a massive mall. But Barcenas is divided in 1/2- the half of Pisto (or money) is the Hermanas area and is all gated communities with armed guards where you need ID and your exact destination to get in. Then literally on the street that divides our area, the money ends and the hill starts, and it is a HILL! But this area is really awesome, and so are the members. Our apartment is pretty small; one room about 10x30 feet to sleep, study, eat, exercise, store our stuff, etc. But it's made me realize we don't really NEED a ton of space. A lot of the people live in houses smaller than this, with a lot bigger families. I absolutely love Guatemala, but if there's one thing it makes you do is be grateful for what we have in America! 

We have a few people we've been teaching lately; the main ones are Monica Carillo, who should finally get baptized Sunday. She is the girl friend of the stake clerk. Then Dayana Rosales, who's 9 but has been waiting since November to get baptized in March because the water's warmer...? (Apparently I owe her 23,000 Quetz because she gave me a "hair cut" on the bus)  Lourdes Olina is the mom of two of our converts. She has completely turned her life around since I got here, and has overcome some unbelievably hard trials. She wants to be baptized, but is scared of messing up again. We have also been working with this awesome 55 year old guy named Sandro Roberts. He has been attending church for months and no one realized he wasn't a member. He believes the church is true; his only problem with it is that the missionaries go out guy and guy and girl and girl. He thinks that if the church were true, it would be a guy and girl mission. We'll see what happens. Our last investigator Byron loves reading the Book of Mormon, but just has the Evangelical belief that "the church is us" and "it's all the same God, you just have to worship Him." 

Guatemala is actually really interesting in this aspect. EVERYONE believes in God and Jesus. Every single bus, car, tuc tuc and store window has stickers saying "Cristo es mi Salvador" or "Jesu Christo, El camino, veroad y la vida." There are literally churches on every street corner. Everyone believes in God and Jesus, and knows about them, but at the same time, no one really "knows" them. No one completely understands that God is a personage of flesh and blood like us, or all aspects of the atonement. Recently in my scripture reading I read in St Luke 9 where Jesus asks his apostles: "Whom say the people that I am?" They gave him a ton of different answers, all of them different and none of them accurate. But then Jesus asked the the question that really hit me: "But whom say ye that I am?"  

Who is Christ to us? Is he just a character in a book, is He some mystical all-powerful being, or our best friend? Our Savior? Our Redeemer? Whom do we say He is? Whom can we say He is, based on our knowledge and testimony of Him? And what are we doing to be able to say that we really and truly know Him? Our relationship with Christ changes everything. He can go from a story we read about to our help and support through all of life's trials. I invite each of you to think about your relationship with Christ, and see if the things you're doing are helping you to grow closer to Christ or causing you to grow farther away from Him. I promise that as we do that and make the necessary changes to come to know Him, He can and will become everything for us!! 

I love you all so much! Thanks for all the emails and support!

Elder Tadje