Easter in Guatemala

Hey what up Elder Tadje here in SOLOLA!!!! 

Everything was going well in our area, Elder Velez and I were on fire in Barcenas, then Thursday we got a call from President that there were emergency changes! For BOTH of us!!! Elder Velez got sent to the office to be the executive secretary of the mission in his training still, which has NEVER happened. (must´ve had a good trainer or something... I don´t know haha) And I got sent to Solola!! Right now we´re in a trio with Me, Elder Salazar from Honduras, and Elder Carter who´s only here until Friday until the AP (Jacob Newell´s cousin) is done training the new one.

This is by far the prettiest area in the mission. It´s right by a little city called Panajachel, and Lake Atitlan!!! The COOLEST part is that Lake Atitlan is supposed to be the waters of Mormon in the Book of Mormon!!! We even have an institute study book of the BOM and it shows pictures of the lake when it talks about Alma! It´s so cool to be in a site where actual events from the BOM took place, and to be where prophets then walked and BAPTISED thousands of years ago!!! I testify that the BOM is true and is the word of God and it has the power to bless and change lives!!!! 

We also survived the Semana Santa- when the entire world here goes crazy. It´s the holy week of Pascua, or easter. And everythingjust turns into a party. Everyone makes big ´alfombras´in the middle of the streets, or massive designs out of pine needles and this weird dust stuff. Then they´ll throw in absolutely whatever-coca cola, pictures of jesus, pineapples, cigarettes, chicken bones, McDonalds drinks, cut up fruits, shoes, random clothing articles, etc. There is no regard for traffic. If you have a car, you´re outta luck. The alfombras stay until the processions come. The processions are massive groups of people dressed as death eaters who carry big floats with statues of Jesus and the virgin mary. They used to put real people on them, until a few years ago when a cross with a man tied onto it fell off the float and he died becuase he couldn´t catch his fall. Now they´re just statues. But these processions are followed by huge marching bands playing really depressing music. They all walk on top of the alfombras and destroy them. Also everybody in the city lights off their version of fireworks about every 20 seconds, which are just basically bombs that make the houses all shake. 

But I´ve been thinking a lot about what happened to us last week, when our power got shut off. There´s a pretty strong cause and effect there- if you don´t pay the light bill, the power gets shut off. There´s a talk by Elder Uchtdorf from the October conference called ... Portadores de la luz eterna? I can´t remember in english. But it basically says that we each have our divine heavenly light. We also have to be paying daily so that our own light doesn´t get shut off. Because here, if your light gets shut off you have to pay a huge fee to get it back on and it´s a huge long process. As it is with us. If we lose the light or lose the path, many times it is much more difficult to find it again than if we had just stayed on it in the first place. What are we doing to pay our ´heavenly light bill?´What are we doing to make sure the power of God (the spirit) is always with us? The most important thing we can do is the small daily things, like scripture study and prayer. As we do that we will always have God´s light with us!

I love you all so much, and hope you had an AMAZING conference!!! So amazing to see a modern day prophet directing God´s church under His guidance!!! 

Ch´wok Chik! 

(I´m also learning a Mayan dialect called Kaqchikel)

Elder Tadje