Greetings from sunny winter guatemala, Week 2

So this week has been pretty good so far, well kind of. Sunday I was sick and missed all of the meetings on Sunday, luckily here at this MTC my comps were able to go to all but church itself. I took medication received a priesthood blessing and slept most of the day and I am feeling much better, although when I was planning with my comps I thought...Oh happy birthday Ben, so HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY BEN!!!!. The temple opened up yesterday. So we got to go to the temple here in Guatemala. It is a really small temple. Yesterday was also our ´day in the park´. The 3 week NAs and our latin comps all boarded a bus and headed to a park in downtown Guatemala city. We spent about 2 and a half hours contacting with out latin comps. I said, hello, and pretended like I understood what was being said, and when Hna Bernardez looked at me I testified that I knew the church of Jesus Christ was again on the earth and that families can be together forever. We got 5 references, with was about average.There were some of the missionaries that found awesome investigators, ours might have been, but i didn't understand them so who knows. Entonces this is the last week for the latinos and the first group of North Americans. When they leave next Tues my group of NAs gets to go on a tour of the city and go shopping in the mall. I don{t know what I´ll buy. but I am excited for it. I think our pday will be on next Tuesday because of that. Tomorrow we teach our last lesson in English. Whew! Teaching in English is so easy. I never thought I´d say that but really it is. Its a lot harder to express your thoughts and feelings in a language you don´t really know. I asked a Hna here to cut my hair she cut it yesterday. Its about 3 inches shorter now. I just had her remove the layers, because they were starting to look frizzy. This week we had a lesson on the Christlike attributes(ch 6 in PMG) we split up and each taught an attribute. One of the groups of elders gave an excellent lesson on Hope. They said ´hope is the anchor of the soul´ another one said ít is because of hope that we have an eternal perspective. it is that hope that helps us realize that the troubles and difficulties that we encounter are really only a small blip in the eternal scheme of things. It is that hope that helps us realize how pointless some avenues of escape are.´ he said more about some of his friends back home who try to escape from their problems through alcohol and partying all night and sleeping all day. He said The eternal perspective that hope gives him helped him realize that the end of this life for all of us is the same, and that it is what he chooses to do with time he has between now and death that really can make a difference in someones earthly life and in their eternal life. He said hope and faith have given him a direction and a perspective on life. I thought yes that is why I am here. We have hope. we have a purpose, and I know how we can have joy in this life and in the next. Through living the gospel, through internalizing the gospel so we become Christlike in all that we are. When we are Christlike, we have joy. I only have another 3 weeks here It is amazing how time flies. I still feel like I don{t know any more than I did when I came but I understand more and more Spanish, especially when they enunciate and speak slowly. Yesterday we had devotional and had a speaker from the area 70 come. he told me I´ll be in ELS for the temple dedication (in April) and I´ll get a new mission pres too (in July) Love yall Got to go Mem