Hey family and everyone I love hows going, happy new years!!!!! Cant believe its already 2016, crazy how fast 2015 went by, loved every minute of it, but now it's time to focus on this upcoming year. This week was an awesome week filled with miracles and baptism hype, yes we had a baptism, first one our area has had in 7 months!!!! Super pumped, but we will talk more about that in a sec
So as the title indicates, this week my comp and I opened up the city of alma for proselyting. No joke, so here in Xela pretty much every book of mormon historian has told us that the city of Xela has a TON to do with the book of mormon. About 8 months ago i told you guys about a city that was right next to zunil called Almalonga. This city is said to be the city of Alma the prophet from the book of mormon. It has always been called almalonga, it's a very very old word from the ancient languages of Guatemala, so ya Alma and his people lived right next to where I live right now. So, about 10 years ago, the people of almalonga burned 2 mormon missionaries alive............ so they closed the area for good. BUT, there are a lot of people and members who have been talking to us about opening the area again because of its new potential. So, my comp and I had a conference with the mission president this morning and we explained our case for an hour, and we debated the pros and cons for 30 minutes, and at the end of everything, we have decided to open up the city of alma for missionary work again............................ we opened up the city of alma baby. So starting this week, we will be discussing in ward council how we are going to be working in almalonga, we are all super excited!!
Another thing, we might be opening up the tiny branch that existed at the base of the volcano. IN our conference with president, we also brought up the topic of the closed branch in Yanos de pinal, the little branch by the base of the volcano, and president approved our plan!!!! Now we are going to have a conference with the stake president this sunday night, just us 2, president smith, and the stake president, and we are going to try and open up that branch again. It was closed down 3 years ago, but it had 60 active members assisting in a little rented house every sunday................ we will see what happens.
Diego got baptized!!!!! His baptism was super spiritual, a ton of people came which was awesome including investigators, it was such a special day! The spirit was so strong that he cried, he is super excited to be a member of the church! pictures below!
my family in huehue got baptized too, i'm super excited for them!!! fotos below
This week carlos asked us to learn about the articles of faith and he loved them and how direct they are. This week the bishop in sacrament meeting said to the congregation, ´´if lehi were here right now with us, what would he tell us to do?¨¨ Carlos immediately responded, ¨¨he would tell us to keep the commandments and repent!!¨¨ haha Carlos is super awesome, love this guy, he always tell us when we are joking around, hey stop talking apostasy mucha! He is hilarious, he will be baptized in 2 weeks. Celica his cousin came to church too and she loved it.
THis week we found a ton of new and very positive people to teach, he had a lot of little miracles happen this week to us. We were even blessed to reactivate a 21 year old guy! we brought him to the bishop who interviewed him, gave him a calling, and is helping him prepare his papers to serve a mission!!! We are so stoked.
New years eve was super normal, we had dinner with members, then went to the house. we obviously worked all day too haha, but the only thing out of the ordinary that we did was eat dinner with members......................and then we popped a sparkling cider in the house!!! Haha it was expensive, but no importa.
This week was awesome, honestly there isn't enough time to explain all of the miracles that we saw this week. We have been super blessed, we are in great health, and we are seeing the fruits of our labors. have a great start to january, love you guys a ton!! Have awesome weeks, keep the sabbath day holy.
Elder McLeod
