Abel, our baptism from last change, passed the sacrament!

I am writing today by the way because we went to San Benito yesterday, and no one was willing to give us rides back to Sayaxche. That’s how we get around over here because we don’t have the money to take buses. So we got back really late last night like 7:00. We were not able to use internet because everything was closed. It took like 4 hours to get home!!!

So nothing too exciting happened this week. We had a good Halloween, just working, until we had our RAT ATTACK! We hadn’t had any rats all change. And then at 11:30 I woke up to go to the bathroom and I caught a rat eating our bread. About an hour later me and Elder Godfrey finally killed it. Within 20 minutes, another one. That one sadly got away. Then I was going back to sleep, and I heard another one! This one was really fat so it wasn’t as fast as the others. We killed that one rather quickly. And then like 5 minutes after that one. ANOTHER ONE!!!! But again it got away. That was pretty intense and fun. It's just fantastic. I also heard one last night too, but I was way too tired to get up and chase it around. So somehow we have got to fix our rat problem.

Ha it’s me of course!! Ha ha so awesome!! She didn’t match the headband though. That’s probably why she didn’t win the costume contest ;)
In response to a picture we sent him of Allison dressed up as Jordan (pre mission) for our ward Halloween party.

I'm glad that Ryder is growing up to be feisty!! They need a nutcase in the house so it's not so tranquilo! And with a sweet name like that you've got to get some fame for being awesome!

Yeah I have around 45 ties now or more. I don't know. But I bought ties at every change conference and I got 3 corte ties just barely too. Corte is the material that the kekchi ladies make their skirts out of. The corte ones were free. I will tell you about that mas adelante at a future date.

We have our baptism coming up this Thursday! The last 2 kids of the Fam. Juárez! Lázaro is going to perform the baptisms again, so sweet! And its so going down in the river this time! Its going to be super amazing!!

Oh another thing that happened to us this week. Our water, to take a shower with, is gone. It was just dripping out for some reason for a few days so I was able to wash my hair and that’s about it. But now its completely gone. So now I am walking around with a deodorant shower! Hopefully it comes back soon. We have just enough to come out of the sink to still be able to shave. But that’s about it! I hope I don’t sweat too much! Or I will be really smelly, really fast!

Church was a little better, no microphone yet, but we were informed that supposedly we are going to get air conditioning. So we shall see if that really happens. Abél, our baptism from last change, passed the sacrament. So that was really neat and special for me to see. Primary was ..... well.... yeah....No one felt like singing and they were really obnoxious....The kid's parents are members, we just didn’t know it. And active ones too, for the most part. So no getting investigators through them.

Speaking of investigators, we passed by for those 3 sisters, Hadassa, Maya, and Jessely every day this last week at different times; they must have gone out of town or something. That was a little disappointing. We have a couple other investigators that are progressing slowly, but nothing too promising quite yet. We did put a fecha with one of them though! So hopefully she continues to go to church and hopefully she actually understands what we tell her. That is a big problem here. Not too many people are educated so they don’t really know how to think deeply. So its rough teaching sometimes. But its getting better and we are trying to figure out how to teach them more effectively. It seems to be going a little better so far. But that is about it for investigators.

Maybe you could give me some advice to help animate a ward/branch to actually do something with their callings, and not be lazy, and help them understand the basics of how the church works, because every member besides the president is practically an investigator. So I would really enjoy some advice to help this branch improve. Because it is almost impossible to have someone be baptized in this environment...unless it's the kids of a member like we are having on Thursday. That would really help! We are having more activities, but its still rough....We don’t really know what else to do!

Well there really isn’t too much else that happened this week. I just cant believe that this change is almost over! The time has gone by really fast! So we shall see what happens for changes, we will get the call Monday night....

Well I love you all and I hope you have a great week! Thanks for all your prayers and support!
Stay Strong.
Keep the Faith.
Love Elder Jordan Smith