Christmas Phone Call - December 25, 2012

Seth's First Baptism--Laura (supported by her aunt Paola and her cousins)

Church look a like in the zone leaders' area--Totonicapan

Our long awaited Christmas Day came to pass.  We finally got to speak with Seth. It was amazing to hear him talk, and hear about his life.  He even said that he had not ever gotten home sick.  Which I am so happy for.  He said that he has experienced challenges like he had never imagined.  Everyday is another hurdle as he learns, develops patience and trust.  His biggest challenge is the language, trying to understand the meaning of what is being said, and also trying to communicate to be understood.  Both of his companions have been Spanish speakers, which has been good and bad.  It has probably helped him to have to speak Spanish, and yet on the other hand, he can rely on them communicating for him if he has a struggle.  He said that the first day he was out in the field, he spoke a total of about 5 words.  He said it was so hard.  It was such a culture shock for him going from the MTC's into the field.  He said we should all appreciate 3 things in life. 1.  Space & Cleanliness, 2.  Being able to communicate to be understood, and understanding the meaning of the words being spoken ( he says that it makes perfect sense what he wants to say in English, but it doesn't make sense as he speaks Spanish, and being that most people in his area only speak Queche, and a little bit of spanish it makes it real hard).  He hopes to soon get a chance to work where everyone speaks spanish, so he can learn to speak spanish real well.  3.  We should appreciate  people that lookout for other's besides themselves.  He feels like people in his area just care about themselves, and they don't realize that they can do hard things.  They have no equality of a win, win situation.  There always has to be a loser.   They just care about winning themselves at the expense of others.                   

 So just being able to talk to Seth was quite eventful, and could be equated to a chaotic dream.  I still can't believe the details of the call.  It is truly unbelieveable, for this reason, I just have to put these details down on paper.  Seth called us about 11 am and asked for us to call back his cell phone.  So, we hung up and called and called his number that was given, with no answer, and finally some other elders answered, and let us know we had the wrong number.  Our caller ID was out on our home phone, so we were  calling the number he gave.  He finally called us back and gave us the correct number..  So now we are calling this new number, and still no answer, and just got a message from a spanish lady.  For some reason, Century Link would not let us call into Guatemala.  So, then we sent Bethany to 7-11 to purchase a phone card to see if this would work.  So, Seth calls us back and talks to us on his cell phone till his minutes start to run out, so he runs to the market to purchase more minutes without success.  So, he then calls us from his companions phone, we talk for a bit, then his phone starts to die, so he is running somewhere to borrow a phone charger,  then the phone card arrives, so we call back talking on the card till it runs out of minutes,and get disconnected to have to  purchase more minutes, then we talk some more till the minutes run out again, to finish up on the companions phone till it ran out of minutes.  IT was crazy!!! IT took us about 3 and a half hours to try to get 45 minutes of talking in.  I think we blew his whole Christmas relaxing day.  It was hard because Ben and Megan had to leave to get to her brother's call, Dan & Maegan had to leave to get to Maegan's family Christmas, and soon Dave and Beth had to leave to get to his Aunt's Christmas.  So everyone was leaving in the middle of our call, before we got to finish opening all our presents.  Wow! What a nightmare!

I guess the moral of this story, is that no matter what, we will have a phone card with a lot of minutes on it for mothers day.  We won't rely on our house phone to call out.  Just use a cheap card.  I am so afraid to find out what the costs will be for our many attempts to just get an answering machine, as well as calls to get operators help, as well as paying for his cell phone minutes.  Who knows, we might be paying for this call for the rest of his mission.  But is was so worth it.

December 17, 2012

Our Christmas gifts for everyone. Feliz Navidad

Helping to paint Hermano Walter's house with Elder Perez and Rafa

Things are kinda crazy, but it is not as crazy as home with Christmas preparations. People don't really get too stressed out about Christmas.
Things are going really well, my comp is really good, I am excited for the next few weeks. It has been kinda hard to really get a good relationship rolling with him-- he is 18 years old, but this week we have made a ton of progress in that area. We keep working hard, and this week we did exchanges with the Zone leaders. It was so awesome. Last week, I became district leader, and for that reason we did exchanges. Elder Chicas came to my area and I loved it so much! I don't have a lot of time to write, but Things are good and I am uploading a ton of photos. A lot are from two weeks ago, when we went to the Lake Atitlan lookout point.
Things are really moving along. We are working with a lot of families that we have found, but just can't seem to seal the deal! That is my goal for this week: get them to baptize! We are still working with Salvador's family, Lucía's family, and a couple other families: Diego and Manuela, and Meme and Ana. We have a few people that could be ready to get baptized, but we just need to  work it out! We are really lucky to be in the area that we are because there are a ton of killer returned missionaries that can help us to figure out how get our contacts to baptize . I really love this work, and love the Lord.
Love,
Elder Hilton

December 3, 2012

Hey Family and Friends!
This week has been much better than the last. I just needed to look for the good in everything! My comp is kinda difficult at times. I think that sometimes he acts like a little prideful, but he is really a great guy. This mission is a great test to help me to live with all kinds of different people! My health is just fine, no worries, still gaining weight. When I had the run in with the near passing out experience, it did drain a little bit of my energy, but I just laid down right there and jumped right back up and kept working. But, NOT giving shots or anything. Things are really great. This week we went with Cornelio, the 1st president in the bishopric to harvest his corn. It was really fun, but my neck got FRIED!!! (or course, I was reppin Utah State!) It was really fun and we hauled everything out like Guatemalans with the headstraps!
This week came a miracle! We had a multi-zone conference on Thursday and it was really great and talked a lot about our testimonies of the Book of Mormon and families. We are starting to really study the Book of Mormon to help us gain a strong testimony of it. We started to work more with families and we have already seen results. It has really been something miraculous.
There is a family in our ward that has been working with another non-member family. I think I told you about this family a little last week. We have come into contact 3 times with this family and they basically have to get baptized. They are ready. I just hope that they can see that they are ready. The mom is Lucia and she has told us before that it is a sin to dance. However, we went to their house on Friday night, just to do service and they let us in! It was really fun I loved it. We talked a little bit and husked some corn. Afterwards, they gave us dinner and we talked some more. They are planning to kill a pig sometime soon, and right now is the corn harvest. We talked about times when we could come and help kill the pig or harvest the corn and it was a good night. One of their sons (whose wife is overdue for a baby), asked us what we could offer spiritually. We talked about eternal families and eternal happiness. They came to the Christmas Devotional, all 12 of them, and it was such a miracle. I am so glad that my papa taught me to give service all the time. The Book of Mormon also teaches us this with Ammon and his brothers. I have been waiting for a service experience like this, it seriously was a miracle! God is a god of miracles and will never stop being one. We just need to align our actions and faith with His and He will work miracles! We are going to keep working with this family and I really think that it will be a wonderful experience. We are basically part of their family already. I don't have much more time, but I love you all and thank you for everything that you have ever done for me. Maybe I haven't been as grateful as I should have, but I really hope to come back a better young man than I left! Love you mom and dad and family and friends!
Love,
Elder Seth Michael Hilton!