Another Week in Toto!

Hey Everybody! 

Happy holidays and I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas! Christmas time here in the mission wasn’t anything like it is at home, but I have never spent a christmas so close to the Savior. I just want to tell you guys that I know that this is the true church, heck if I didn't know that I sure would have come home by now. Missionary work isn’t easy, but it’s worth every hard moment. I encourage you all to do something this week to strengthen your own testimony. Help to build someone else’s testimony or just do something that you know is right. Remember when we serve others we are only in the Service of our God!

I miss you all. Make right choices and do something each day that you know you should do. :)

Love you all,

Elder McLain

ELDER SANTA CLAUS: The Adventures continue in ToTo.

Hello Everybody! I don't have much time to write an email today but I just wanted to say Merry Christmas and I hope that you all enjoy this week and remember the true meaning of Christmas! I love and miss every single one of you! Remember how much our Heavenly Father loves us. He has given us His Son so that we can all have eternal life if we only choose to accept this gift. 

Love you all!

Elder McLain

From Austin, “Yeah we are singing in the central park here in Toto as a zone so I only have a little bit of time to write.”

Austin was also Santa at the ward Christmas party. I sure love that boy <3

Santa and his reindeer. Got to love Missionaries!

Who knew dressing up as Santa was part of the mission experience? :)

Earthquakes in Toto and Working Hard!

Hey everybody! 

I hope everything is going just fabulous and that you are all enjoying this wonderful time of year!

This last week was pretty good here in the mission. I’ve been learning a lot with this opportunity to train a new missionary. I’ve had to take a lot of the responsibility and honestly I was really scared to be training, but so far I’ve seen that when we put our trust in the Lord we are able to fulfill our callings. We just have to do it his way, not our way. 

As for our investigators right now. We don't have too many whom are positive but we have been meeting new people every day and there are bound to be some prepared people whom we run into in these upcoming weeks. We challenged our investigator to baptism this last week, Carlos, and he told us he would be baptized. However, he is waiting for God to tell him what day he should do it. So we are going to be working with that over the next week or so.

I felt my first real earthquake! It was pretty weird. Sunday morning at 6:11 AM I was woken up by my bed shaking vigorously. It was pretty sketch! I kinda screamed because I didn't know what was going on. That lasted about a minute. Then later that day I was studying, and my comp had gone to take a nap..... when the whole house started shaking! It was the weirdest thing that I’ve ever felt. So I got up and ran to the door. And just waited it out. It ended up waking my comp up as well which I guess was God’s way of telling him he shouldnt be napping. :) But the one in the morning was a 5.7, and the one in the afternoon was a lot stronger, however I don't know what the rating was.

Good news is that I have now lived through 2 earthquakes.

Alright everybody! Have a wonderful week.

Love Elder McLain

Hello Everybody!

This last week went really good! We met a bunch of new investigators and spent a ton of time contacting and talking with the people here about Christmas! Which is extremely difficult because half of the people here are Evangelico, and believe that celebrating Christmas is a sin.... and the other half of the people are Catholics who don’t want anything to do with us. But, regardless, we met some, Good news we ended up having 6 investigators come to church! That's the most that I have had in the mission! But, besides that the week was pretty normal. Nothing special really. We did meet a family of 13 who are all super positive! So we will be working with them over the next few weeks. But everybody, I know that this is the true gospel, that Joseph Smith really did restore the gospel in its fulness to the earth again, and that today we have a living prophet here on the earth. I want you all to know that I love you so very much and i miss you, however I know also that this is where I am supposed to be and even though it may be difficult, it's worth every hard moment.

have a fantastic week and try to do something nice for somebody else this coming week,

Con amor,

Elder Mclain

Totonicapan. Beautiful!

Training & Thanksgiving

Hello Everybody!!!! Long time no see. Well only 4 months... But yeah long time. I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving definitely wasn't the same here but we did get to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the Stake President and his family. Now would I consider it a thanksgiving dinner if I was at home no, but it was still good. I'll include some pictures of what we ate.

Well I began training this last Tuesday! My new comp. is Elder Monzalvo from Mexico! He's really awesome and I can tell that he wants to be a really successful missionary! We have been working hard since he got here and I'm really confident that we are going to have success in the coming weeks. We had something pretty cool happen. We have an investigator named Lesli, and we were walking up to her house to visit her, and the path to get there is really small and there is only one. We started up the path and these two dogs came out all angry and I'll be honest I thought I was going to die. We couldn't get past them.. So we kind of backed up and just waited. Meanwhile a man came out of one of the houses because he had heard the dogs and got them out of our way and all, then invited us into his house. Turns out that he had a dream that we were going to come and visit him. And when he heard the dogs he had a strong feeling to go outside... Well he is a member who hasn't been active in about a year. But I guess he has really strong desires to put his life back in order, and he is already doing just that. He came to church with us this Sunday. I don't know, I thought that it was a pretty cool story to share with you all. So we will be working with him more now and hopefully he will become active again.

Something else really cool happened last Friday. I was with the Zone leaders in a place called Noaholah which is about an hour and a half from our area. We had to go up there to do a baptisimal interview on our way back from the training meeting. After the interview we were waiting for a bus on the side of the road, and or a car. We really were just waiting for anything. I finally saw a car coming so I waved at it and surprisingly it stopped. We walked over to the window and learned that it was Elder Ochoa, the President or first counselor I'm not sure of all of Central America. So... Haha we went back with him to Cuatro Caminos, and he just talked with us the whole time. He basically just told us that when we have problems and aren't baptizing or aren't having success, we can't blame it on the problem, we have to do our part and overcome the problems that we have. It really was an awesome experience that I can't explain over email... But I feel like a lot of times we have problems in our lives that we like to use as excuses for not doing what's right. But really we need to look at the problem, address it and do our best to overcome it.

Well everybody. I hope you have a wonderful week. Love you all.

Elder McLain

P.S. go check out this video. 

http://www.mormon.org/Christmas

He is the gift

Basketball on P-days. 

Elder McLain's Thanksgiving dinner. 

Thanksgiving with the Stake President and family. 

Eating Cow Liver!

HELLO WORLD.

       How is everybody doing on this fine Monday afternoon? This last week really seemed to fly by! It was insane. We didn’t get to do a lot in our area, nobody really had time to listen to us which was a bummer. But life goes on, right? There were however two baptisms in our ward this last week by the sisters Hermana Velasquez and Hermana Viera which was awesome! We've been helping with these kids a little bit as well so it was nice to see them take the step of baptism. Sunday I had the opportunity to confirm Lester as a member of the church in sacrament meeting! It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, but I was insanely nervous. First off, I had to do it in Spanish. Secondly, I’ve never ever done that before. But in the end it all worked out. We don’t really have any new news as for the work in our area. We are still working hard on setting some baptism dates but we will just have to see what happens. This could be my last week with Elder Carlson as well as we have changes next Tuesday. We will see what happens. All I want is to stay here in Toto for at least one more change. I really have come to love it here. Other exciting news of this last week, I ate cow liver which was nasty. Ah. It was terrible.... But I've heard of other missionaries eating worse so I will just count my blessings. :) 

Well everybody, have a wonderful week and remember to choose the right.

Love Elder McLain

Taco Bell!

Hello Everybody! 

Nothing much has happened here in Guatemala since the last time I wrote you all. The work has been pretty slow... But we have been busier than ever. I don’t really understand how it works out that way but it does. As far as our investigators go, Andres who is about 60 really wants to get baptized, but his wife has threatened to leave him if he joins the church... So that's a really tough situation right there. We will just have to keep working with him and hopefully a milagro (miracle) or something happens. The familia Batz has really been progressing lately, and we are going to put a baptismal date with their daughter Diana for the 22nd of November this coming week. I'm extremely confident that she is going to accept. She has been singing in the choir in the ward and come the last two weeks. She has a lot of family in the ward and is always extremely positive. As for our recent converts, Danny has been working super hard, and we learned yesterday that he can serve a mission, he just has to go and talk with the Bishop. He really wants to serve he has just been scared to talk with the bishop, our doubt was that he was too old (25) but I guess they make exceptions for recent converts. Also, one of the highlights of last week, we cant go into malls as missionaries, and Taco Bell is in the mall in Xela, Danny went to Xela Saturday and bought my comp and I Taco Bell. Talk about heaven. :) When I poured out my mild sauce it went into the shape of a heart <3. 

We also had interviews with president last week which were wonderful, he’s such an awesome guy and full of so much knowledge of the gospel. He shared a quote with me, it was something like this, "A man cannot have both doubt and faith at the same time." I really enjoy that quote and have put it into work here. Attitude is everything especially on the hard days, as long as we have faith, we will always get by. 

Well everybody, I will talk to you next week. Have a wonderful week and CTR. :)

10 New Investigators!

     Trick or treat everybody! I hope you all had a very happy Halloween and didn't eat too much candy. I don't think I ate any candy on Halloween, it was kind of sad, but we had better things to do. This last week was really good. The week started out as normal, and it was pretty hard to find anybody to teach. But, Friday my comp went to Jucha and our district came here to Toto for divisions, and that was the best day work wise that I have had here in the mission. My companion’s name is Elder Mendoza, and we taught 11 lessons in the one day that he was here. He taught me how to really work and really what we should be doing as missionaries. He’s an awesome missionary and really I learned so much from him. We went and taught a new guy named Carlos, who was a reference from the sisters, and it was one of the saddest lessons I have had while I have been here.

      Carlos has a wife and three daughters whom have left him. Yes, they had a good reason to leave him, he has a really bad drinking problem, but it was extremely hard to talk to him and listen to what he had to say. I really feel for the guy, he has such a strong desire to change, he is just having problems getting over his addiction. He was crying just about the whole lesson, and in the end he asked us if we could give him a blessing. So we did. We have a lesson with him tomorrow and we have a whole game plan set out to help him stop ,but it is going to take some work on his part as well. But, I know that anything is possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and I am extremely excited to see him progress.

     As for other people, we met 10 new investigators on Friday and should be working with them over the next little while. Danny was able to bless the sacrament on Sunday, and I think I know how my parents felt when I blessed it for the first time, because I felt like my little kid was all grown up. It was such a cool experience to see him up there in a white shirt and tie. Our other investigator Carlos who owns a barbershop came to church this week, along with the daughter of one of the part member families. It was the first time that we have had more than one investigator at church! Whoo. We also tried to put a date for baptism with Andres, and he didn't accept, he wants to know all of the commandments before he will accept a date, so hopefully this time next week I will be writing you all with a baptism date for the next Saturday. :)

     Saturday was the Day of the Dead, which meant that every single person here in Toto was at the cemetery. It was crazy, nobody  was at home nor in the streets. So we didn't get much done Saturday nor Sunday after church, because I guess the day after the Day of the Dead everyone goes back to the cemetery and stays there the whole entire day. But, next week should be a lot better. I have new goals and new methods that Elder Carlson and I are going to use to find new people and teach our current investigators. 

    It has been really cold here lately, we are up at 8,000 feet and I guess come December, there won’t be snow, but there will be ice everywhere, whatever that means. So that makes me more excited for Christmas here.We already put up our like 8 inch Christmas tree and one strand of lights. Whoo.

Love you all and I will talk to you next Monday. Thanks for everything.

  Con amor,

             Elder McLain

Christmas Decorations in Toto.