eye of the tiger

ma sa leechool? thanks for all the letters and glad everything went well for thanksgiving. i am loving how positive and thankful everyone turns out to be this time of year. i am just smiling ear to ear. we taught a family the other day that had a christmas tree!! ahhh if that didn’t put me in the christmas spirit, i dont know what does!!! Let’s see, this week has been good, we are trying really hard to find people for december, we want to have a big baptism the 25th and celebrate with a white christmas!!! we have like 3 or 4 possibilities, but i am really trying to have the faith to find another family. i know God will lead us to them if we are just worthy to find them. anyhoo, yesterday was great, we saw the 4 boy sof the coc chub family receive the priesthood, and they were all in white shirts and ties and man i was just overflowing with joy. its really something i can’t explain, to feel so happy for the happiness of someone else. And, great news, in place of having a branch christmas party, the branch is taking all the money and going to the temple!!!!!! they want all the recent converts to go and do baptisms. man i am so stoked. i know if we can just get the newbies to the temple, they will have that seed that can sustain them. its so much more probable that they remain active if they make it to the temple. get them to the garners, as alma says. anyhoo, so i am pretty excited about that. this will be one of the only chances they have because it’s pretty far and everyone is pretty poor, they really can’t pay to go very often.
we have also been blessed to find a couple promising new investigators and the Lord is just answering our prayers.
friday night we had a special dinner with our recent converts and our mission president and the area 70 came to speak to them. all the way from the capital, that’s like 10 hours driving. anyhoo, lets see, well, i am doing well, we find out changes this week, that’s right, this change is already over an we will find out of castro and i stay here for my last change....
well, love you all, hope you are all happy and healthy and strong in the faith!!! if youre going to finsish the BOM this year, you should be finishing alma. i am right now and holy moroni and helaman, and those 2000, man its powerhouse in the scriptures!!!!
LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
hna hall

Happy Thanksgiving

hey family and friends!! this week’s been adventure filled. We went down to the valley in the back of a truck and saw amazing mountain sunrise and had amazing zone conference with pres. Torres, it’s always refreshing to go to those. the only down side was that the {hotel} had a monkey who attacked me...hehe it was pulling my hair and lifting up my skirt and just nuts. i wish this computer was faster because my comp got some funny pics. it was intense.
then this week we had this crazy activity friday night where we invited the whole town, and had a message about mormons and my comp and i taught lesson one to a LOT of people---heheh then it turned into a talent show, it was fun. then the missionaries decided we wanted to have thanksgiving dinner today so we searched for a turkey and miraculously found one in one day. usually you can only find them market days. but anyhoo, we had to do a bit of prep work first, which meant we had to kill it, clean it, THEN stuff and cook it. and don’t worry that i have never cooked turkey and neither had anyone else, so i called presidents wife to get a recipe and a kekchi woman to show us how to kill it. it was, well, an adventure. we had to tie it up and cut its throat and i had to hold the wing cause it was going nuts. then it was the blind leading the blind trying to get all the feathers off, and get all the guts out and keep it looking like the turkeys you find in the store...it was nuts. then we filled it with veggies and sewed it up and stuck it in the oven with lots of butter. and miraculously, it turned out PRITTY GUUUD. we made mashed potatoes, and a fruit salad and lots of veggies and rolls and oatmeal cookies. we didn’t have time for pie, but...oh well. it was a pretty cool thanksgiving dinner, seeing as how i LOVE this day as much as 4th of july.- so i have officially made a thanksgiving dinner for the first time. and it was delicious, even though we had to guess with a lot and didn’t have a ton of ingredients here in the mountains...
let’s see, what else....well, that kind of took up my time for writing today. i wish i could send photos but it’s just rediculous. soon billy.
oh, also, if you want to send christmas packages, they need to be here by the 15th in order to get to me by christmas. otherwise i will get them in mid january. just a heads up.
i hope you all have a great thanksgiving this week and remember all that there is to be thankful for!!
love you!
killer hermana hall

hey family and friends!!!! How’s life in the states!!! this week has been good, we have been working with a few people but we are in the process of looking for prospective baptisms. we are working with a really cool couple who lost their baby in march to some strange sickness and we have been having some really powerful lessons with them. Sometimes, i am amazed at peoples humble testimonies and i am never tired of seeing just how amazing is the plan of salvation. Man, it’s just such a powerful doctrine of you think about it!! i love being a missionary. they say if you like being a missionary, you’ll like the celestial kingdom, but if you don’t, then don’t bother shooting for it. well, luckily i LOVE this work and i can really see how it makes me happy. i have a different love in my heart than i have ever had, and it’s a cool feeling. just seeing others happy literally makes me heart swell. i guess i was pretty selfish bofore this, and i am glad i have seen a little light. i will keep working on that part of me...hehe
so this week we are also starting choir practice for the christmas choir!! if singing christmas songs doesn’t make you baggy i don’t know WHAT will. but i am excited to spend christmas in senahu, because the people there are gold and i really want to spend it with them. pray that i don’t get a change for my last six weeks.
so we are planning a really big activity on the 20th, where we are having a big cultural night in the city hall, the branch is putting it on, with traditional dances, choir singing, and all kinds of presentations. and the missionaries are putting on the first vision. we are doing it like two missionaries and telling the story of joseph smith and the others are acting it all out on the side. and guess who gets to teach... ahhh me and my comp!! yeah, so i will be teaching the restoration to the whole town pretty much. if i ever had desires to be like alma or amulek or ammon teaching an entire city, this is it!! heheh wish me luck because believe it or not i am KINDA nervous....but that’s exciting this week. and tomorrow is zone conference, which i love because it like, always gets me jazzed up and enthused about the work. ahhh i love it here. so just so you all know i am well, and i am happy. AND i am still eating lots of caldo. the other day we were looking for a few references and we got kinda lost on this muddy path in the jungle pretty much, and then we suddenly came out and saw a house, so we went to ask them if they knew the people we were looking for and they were all in there having a caldo party to celebrate the harvest. so without even knowing their names, they invited us in and insisted that we eat caldo with them. ahhh gold. it was like the kings feast, and totally by accident. they gave us caldo, we gave them a message about a living prophet. too bad i think they were more interested in the caldo...oh well. it was an interesting day anyhoo.
well i love you all.
hermana hall

Things are rocking here in senahu, we are rigth now blessed with 7 fechas and some pretty good possibilities for november. the fam cucul will get baptized in the beginning of november...they are doing well thanks to some pretty amazing members. i am realizing something...i somehow thought that when i ended my mission i would get to go home and rest...heheh thats funny. i then started thinking, and its not going to happen. because as a missionary, i have seen and realized the importance of members and all the things i wish or love that they do. and i know know the things i need to do as a member. i have been very impressed with people. i was talking with some norte elders and we were talking about how everyone in the states has this great LDS image, they all go to church, meetings and dress great and do their callings, on the outside they are pilas. but they seem to see the church as an organization, a resposibility, another TO DO list. and really its not about that. its about helping those who need help to make it to the celestial kingom. james says it straight out- pure religion is helping widows and orphans. the poeple here are impressive. they dont look impressive, and even in meetings and things they dont seem like they have much faith. and they all admire the nortes who ´know´how the church is. but really, if you're around them long enough, you see that although they dont always do things right, they do it with heart. they see needs and try to help. they are more pilas on the inside, while we are only the outside. and really what matters? are we doing visiting teaching because its required and because its what we are supposed to, or are we doing it because we know that someone needs help? i was thinking a lot about this, and its one thing i want to be better at- being a member who understands the purpose rather than just the organization. anyhoo, lets see, more good times in senahu, always are stories but they all fly out of my head when its email time. we are in el estor today which makes me happy and makes me feel at home again...hehe
well love you all hope you're well. sorry for the preaching, but i love being here and only having to worry about the gospel....its chaabil.
love hna hall

a couple pics you might like to see. i am working hard...hehe

se´nauq´news

its strange to think that its fall there, colors and cool weather and school days...its been summer since i left the states....i havent really had a season change. well, except rain and sun. but those arent really seasons, since we have them both all the time.

hehethe third language is, well, hard. i have been working on teaching lesson one, which is the joseph smith story. and i can tell the most simplified, outlineish version of it. hehe i taught a lady the joseph smith story in about 6 sentences yesterday...hehe its moving along though...spanish was SOO much easier to learn!! and so, the work goes on. its been a little slow here lately, but i think we have some possibilities for bap...we are teaching a couple families, i love teaching families. i just teach them while imagining them all in white and its a pretty cool thing to see, even in my mind.

i have been finding some pretty great runs here in senahu, always either uphill or downhill, and full of junlge views and foggy mountain tops. i really want to show you all this place. YOWSERS!!! well, i better go, i am going to run outta time!

love you all, thanks for everything you do!!!!

hermana hall

The internet is ridiculously slow today so I am hoping I can at least get this sent off…anyhoo, things are going well here, lets see… not too many adventures going on this week. The work is a little slow, we have had some fechas fall and its getting a little frustrating. But I know if we just step it up with a little more faith then we can pull through. Anyhoo, so i guess that’s the price we pay for living in the most beautiful area in the mission. So this week we headed down the mountain for zone conference, and that was fun. We got ICE CREAM!!! They don’t have that really here in senahu, but it is down in the valley. And it was my companions birthday, on the 21st, and dads as well. And if I did the math right, HAPPY 60TH BIRTHDAY DAD!! Holy cowser! And Audrey, happy birthday on the 24th!!! I hope you have a great day. I am not really exactly sure how old you are, and you probably don’t want to think about it anyway, because I am younger and already don’t like to think about my age… but HAPPY B DAY ANYWAY!
Lets see, oh, so zone conference, we went down, had a great time, interviews went well, president said most likely I will end my mission out in polochic which makes me pretty excited….then we ended late and had to stay the night in Teleman, because there are no trucks that go up the mountain at night. Then the next morning in the same foggy contacts and skirt, we headed up the muddy slide they call a road. We hopped in the back of a truck, followed by three really really gay men that were stylists, they said… I find it strange to still run into weirdos like that. They told us we were beautiful and we told them about the book of mormon. It was funny. Oh man, we were up in the mounaint the other day and we decided to eat lunch up there. As we were eating our PB and Hs at the lookout, all these qeqchis came out to watch us. They loved watching us, so we went to talk to them. They wanted to know all about the book we carried, and they wanted us to take pictures of them "reading" it…they can't read but they liked it. So we made an appt and came back to teach them. I might have told you about them last week. But anyhoo, the cool thing is we came back and they were all gathered around to listen, and even though they can't read, they wanted the book, and they were going to have their kids who CAN read, read it to them. And they they sent us to all their neighbors' houses. Its just proof that the book or mormon is powerful. It seems simple to write it out, but really to be here and see the desire they had about it, because they recognize who we represent and the people here have a faith I don’t pretend to understand. They are tough. But, its good. Anyhoo I am getting windy and I am not even sure I will be able to send this. Stupid slow email. Love you all. Have a great week!!!
hermana mary

yo heart senahu

So they say every good Polochic missionary has a good story about entering the Polochic. I hope mine is good enough… So i was so excited about how much i loved senahu that i forgot to tell you. Anywho, SO the day i came, we were stuck in Coban because there were no buses leaving to the Chic because of a landslide in the road. We finally found one that said they were going to try, so we hopped on and i was glad i had my osprey backpack to pack instead of silly old suitcases…. We got about to where the pavement ends from coban and they stopped and told us they counldnt go farther, so, we got our bags and had to hike up and over the mountain to catch a bus on the other side. Thats when the backpack came in Handy. So then, a mountain later and 3 qeqchis carrying suitcases on their heads later, we got the other bus. Then we headed basically without problems up to senahu and when we got there, we met an american lady named lauren who is here doing a health study for the WHO and BYU, and she is documenting malnutrition. Apparently we are in the epicenter of malnutrition for central america. Guatemala is the most malnourished country, and senahu the the worst area of guate. So, here we are, malnourished and all. Dont be suprised if i come home with a pot belly…. But it is sad actually, i do see a lot of people here who only have totillas and chili to eat and i dont mean chilli with beans. I mean just hot sauce to put on the tortillas. Its sad. I dont know how easy it will be to adjust to the fattened lifestyle of the US gain. Man there are just so many heartbreaking stories here. But, i love the people. Oh, so lauren has been running with us every morning and wow i am getting whipped back into shape because well, everything is really big hills. And we hiked up a mountain to explore the area up there, took a lunch, and we were lunching on top, and all these qeqchis came out to watch us eat and then we were contacting them and they wanted us to take pictures of them pretending to read the LDM, because they can't read, but it was really funny. We are teaching lessons here in qeqchi and its really hard. I just have note cards with pictures to show them…it pretty much makes my head hurt, and i am not sure they understand us yet….but its fun. I feel like its my first change all over again. Trying to have the faith to learn another language…anyhoo its pretty fun. Well, life here is good, love you and miss you!! Thanks for all the mail!!!
Lix Hal