The whole situation with Martin has me so high with the spirit

(I started the tradition of asking Andrew questions in my email that I want him to answer in his.  My questions are in italics.)

Alrighty another Monday, ya know before the mission I didn’t like Mondays much. That changed fast.


Do you want me to send anything in particular with the Karrs?
Sending things with the Karrs...dang I can’t remember what I was I was hoping for....one minute...I dunno any more music you feel like sending :D ha! Pictures, anything little and silly that would remind me of home. Surprise me? Dang it I can't remember anything that I was thinking of...I'll remember after I leave.

What kind of news do you want me to tell you in my emails?? ( I was feeling like I send the same news week after week)
News in your letters huh... well I like how the boys write me a little paragraph that’s fun to see how they are doing. Maybe a little something from Dad too once in a while? :D Oh if you can see if you can capture the mysterious Brandyn creature and send me a picture of him. As for weekly news I think you are doing pretty well, I prefer a mellow email with news of a regular week to one where something a bit intense or dangerous happens haha

Tell me a little more about your mail system. (I have not received any letters from him since mid July)
Alright this mailing system, I'm not too informed on the workings or very confident in it even. I have been writing one a week for a little while at least and some good letters too. On my end I write the letter, put it in the envelope, address it and hand it to the District Leaders along with Q6.50 for postage and that’s the last I have power over it. There used to be places here that you could send things through the Guatemalan national mailing system but for cause of some missionaries acting foolish in ways uninformed to the common Elder, a lot of those places are for the moment off limits on pdays.

Speaking of letters, guess who I got a letter from! Elder Parker McCormick! I received a letter with all sorts of sharpie art on it and understood who it was from. He wrote the letter on July 5th to be received on September 10th (which was my 7 month mark so kinda cool) also the same night I got a small package from Elder Vargas containing about 5 ties, and one from Elder Bowman of my little scripture case that I accidentally left in Juana de Arco. Those and some Dearelder from Elder Smith’s mom and aunts and cousins. It was a happy night.

Martin news. On Saturday we visited him on one of our last opportunities before his bap. date next weekend to teach him the last principal needed for his baptism, the Word of Wisdom. Luckily he has no problem with tobacco or alcohol or any of that, but when we mentioned coffee he confessed that he drank it. He sat for a moment, looked up and said, Looks like I still have a bit more to change. I won’t drink any more coffee. It was incredible how strong the spirit is, he in honestly the most amazing person, so willing to change to follow God. It’s hard to describe but every time after something spiritual is said or something happens he looks up and says a quiet ¨gracias¨. He really thinks of God in everything. In that same lesson we were talking about the Holy Ghost and he almost got a bit teary.

He’s constantly praying and seeking the Lords guidance in EVERYTHING I can’t wait to see how he sees life with the Holy Ghost. In our next lesson the day later we asked him the baptismal interview questions and he professed a strong faith in everything. It was incredibly touching to me when we asking him about Joseph Smith as a prophet and the Book of Mormon and he immediately answered with a testimony that he believed them without a doubt. in our prior visit we gave him a chapter to read in the BoM 3Nephi 27, and in our last meeting he told us that he had kept reading and reading and even went back to the beginning of the Book and read 37 pages! He said that as he read it he felt the spirit incredibly strong and so kept reading! He is so incredibly amazing. Even during the lesson when we were demonstrating how a baptism is done I stood up and did a demonstration on his son, after ward he stood up to but as we sat down so he did. I think he wanted a demonstration with him haha he later said directly to me...that he wanted me to be the one to baptize him. As I write this I get teary. He’s so full of Love and sincere repentance! Hopefully next week will be a report on his baptism! Oh one last thing about our lesson on Sunday, all the way up to this point he still was praying like a evangelist, I'll explain another time, but this time we came strait to him with how to pray, to the Father, in the name of Christ. He offered to say the prayer and acted on what we said. How Incredible!

As for stories I don’t know what else, the whole situation with Martin has me so high with the spirit it’s hard to think of little occurrences.

Oh! One funny thing was we were visiting a really old man named Juan who has received nearly all the lessons and likes them, but has a hard time coming to church. He has a friend that visited him a few days before and told him that the missionaries of the Mormon church...where American spies! HA! What was funnier was his reply to him. ¨what about when they are both Latino? ¨

Very very very much love. PLEASE stay safe, keep the works, without which there is no faith! Much Guatemalan Amor, Elder Bronson

Andrew's companion Elder Seguro

Andrew drew this of his friend Elder McCormick

Elder McCormick drew this for Andrew

Another round of pday emailage

Alright family here we go, another round of pday emailage.  Pday this week is on Tuesday because of an activity planned, I'm in the process of writing a letter right now that explains it further, it was alright.

Questions...
Care package received! Only yesterday too, it’s incredible! Thanks so much for the music, the piano stuff and the Called to Serve are amazing, as well as the pbnj haha I have peanut butter right now and jelly even but they just don’t taste the same as the ones from the states. Thanks too for the batteries, but now I have 3 different battery chargers! Maybe when Elder Karr goes home I'll send some back to ya guys I don’t need all 3, I don’t have that many batteries or things that even need them. The CD player is really nice too thanks. Of coarse the pop tarts are well received...IN MY BELLY

My companion now is Elder Segura, he is from Costa Rica though he appears more Chinese than fully Latino, from his mother’s side I think? Anyway he’s a nice guy and kind of a dork. I find myself talking about anything from Pokémon to Naruto with him and he seems really distracted by television and movies...and his bed. If ever there is a moment extra he’s napping. He’s a really hard worker, and though he’s been a bit sick on and off we have been hard at work looking for new people to teach. He’s a really nice guy and we get along well. Not as much of a leader type though, I find myself having to take the first step or the lead in a few things like planning.

As for mudslides I haven’t even heard anything about them here, here its just extra rain. It’s rained at least once a day here for the past week or so and my umbrella has been in great use. I hope all is well in the other parts of Guatemala.

It’s good to hear all things go well at home.  Here on the 15th is Guatemala’s Independence Day so maybe that will be exiting. What’s more exiting this month is that I will be turning TWENTY. The big 20 a whole new level of manly adulthood. Mama, your boy’s a man. And he speaks Spanish. I might say that I’m fairly fluent in the language here; if I had to live here on my own I could easily do it linguistically. Any words or phrases you want to know in Spanish?

As for the work we are getting ever closer to Martins Baptism, it’s scheduled for the 18th, Elder Jordan Smiths Birthday. It will be my first time bringing someone to the waters, and hopefully will result in the activation and furthering of his family too. His wife and smallest child aren’t members and we have yet to teach them. If Martin is Baptized than he himself might be able to baptize his family, how great a blessing!

I feel a very strong feeling of love and appreciation for the opportunity to email you all every week, it’s a great stress reliever to talk to the ones you really love. Know that I am praying for you in every prayer I am looking forward to Christmas when I can hear your voices.

I love you,

Elder Bronson

p.s. the last picture of the is part of a painting in a national museum here, Missionaries! Complete with little blue Books of Mormon

He truly is golden

SHANE ALMOST SPLATTERED!? a la gran. puchica...

I did have a impression to pray for your guys protection, even as if it were angels watching over you, I'm glad I followed that one haha I don’t know what I would have done...
questions!
Right now we have someone wash our clothes for us and that’s nice, takes a lot of time off of my pday to wash clothes. I had to discard one shirt I can’t remember why but I guess it was destroyed. They are still white.
It wont let me view the video, it only gives and option to download it.
I have been writing but it takes a while to reach you and I don’t know how the office works if they have to sit on it for a while or whatever, but know that I am writing.
I'm getting plenty to eat. We cook for ourselves letting eat whatever I want...or have time to cook. Usually simple things. Sunday is my mac n cheese day. In the mornings I usually have cereal and a cup of instant oatmeal, only with yogurt in it! RICO!

This week has been pretty good, not too many news but a couple possibilities. TONS of contacting. I don’t know if you guys know but I haven’t had anyone be baptized yet in my over-six months here, but hopefully to high heaven that’s going to change in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I told you all about Martin? His entire family minus himself, his wife and his smallest kid are baptized, long lost inactive members of the church. He himself is Evangelical...or however you say that in English and he prays like one. Or last lesson was about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, endure to the end basically. When we were explaining baptism in the back of the Book of Mormon in Spanish is a dictionary of all sorts of terms and under baptism it used a word to describe it. Almost like a pact with God, a covenant. Ever since he has been telling me how much he truly wants to make a pact with his Father. He shared a story about a dream he had where he was cleaning a house and God appeared and told him to keep cleaning the house as to prepare for Him. I don’t remember it all but another part was there was a gate that he didn’t have a key to, so during the lesson when I used the example as Baptism basically being the key to Heaven it really hit him. Last Sunday was stake conference and he came. The only investigator to come on the bus ride to the other church he asked me when they were going to set up his baptism! He truly is golden, prepared of the lord and I’m so happy for him and so exited.

That’s the biggest story here; dang I’m still thinking about how Shane nearly got hit.....SHANE MY GOODNESS TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF! If something happened to ANY of you I don’t know how I would take it being so far away...

Well everyone knows that I love you and care about you. Take care of yourselves and stay strong, especially in the faith. Your dedication to the gospel and the teachings and examples of Christ is the most important thing to focus on.

Love you all

Elder Andrew Bronson

New companion and new area

Wow it really is interesting looking at those pictures, it always depends on the computer here but once again I will try to send ya guys some. The one with dad and puppy made me think of how much we have back in the States. Carpet...fancy comfy bed...puppies...ya know, and the rest. Hopefully if this computer wants to be my friend you can see my new living conditions. And hopefully someday I too will be as buff as Ethan Kellogg.

I did have a change this last Wednesday to an area called Santa Elena, I have yet to really know what it means but I think Elena is just a name so it wouldn’t be too hard to figure it out if so. Btw Santo, or Santa depending on the noun it describes means ¨Saint¨ or ¨Holy¨. My conditions here are a bit different then they were in Juana de Arco.

There, we had a family above us who was incredibly nice; our bathroom worked with a bonus of hot water in the shower, and in the kitchen was the pila (where you clean the dishes). Here, (not complaining just stating the facts) we live alone in a big garage type building, a small living space on the floor above. 3 rooms, one bedroom, one kitchen and one study room. The pila is down a flight of incredibly steep stairs, and down there too is our toilet and shower. For over 25 odd days now we have not had running water and have been using stored rainwater to do what needs be done. The shower, as you can guess is cold and most mornings I only have the courage to stick my head in and wash my hair and pits. Yum!

My companion is named Elder Segura and is a Latino. He’s a good guy but has a couple difficulties like getting up on time in the morning; nevertheless I hope we will get along. He’s been in this same area for

4 and a half months poor guy and by the end of this change he will have had 6 months of his whole mission here, a whole forth. Our bishop and ward leaders live outside the area and are pretty much out of walking distance except when we meet for church. We have few investigators but I've been putting my trust ever more on the lord and he has already blessed us. The last week, we, through a little bit of service, found a family who turned out to be long lost inactive members, with their father never having been baptized. Martin, the father, is an...¿como se dice? Evangelist? And prays like one and likes to preach to us during our lessons but we’ve been able to get passed that. Within the first week of meeting him we taught him the restoration and the plan of salvation, and he came to church. His son Wainer is an inactive but he listens intently to the lessons and he with his father came to church this week. Yesterday we were looking for an investigator and at his door was another teenager who lived there named Henry. He let us in and we taught the restoration. At the end we gave him a Book of Mormon and he said that we wanted to read it.

Ever since changes to this more impoverished area, not knowing anybody, and living in a house that lacks a lot more of what I used to think of as essentials (ex: knives and bowls) I’ve grown a lot closer to the Lord and rely on him all the more. I’ve been reading Jesus the Christ and man! You can learn a lot in that book. Currently I think I'm around page 280ish.

Ok questions...

Oils? Hmmm I’ll check this week and tell you the next but I remember lavender, terrashield, digestzen, and.....more next week I guess haha I I already told you my situation with changes, but I could mention that Santa Elena is very very close to Juana de Arco, in fact I saw Elder Bowman today when we were shopping, him and Elder Winkle! Super-sadly my best buddy here on the mission Elder Smith se fue al Peten...i mean left for Petén which is at the very tippy top of Guatemala and I haven’t heard from him since...tear...we’ve been together since MTC Provo until now.

I might get my package this week but you never know, hopefully (or in Spanish Ojalá pronounced like ohhalA). As for this Brandyn character...have the boys text him up and see what he’s up to, I’ll be reading his email after yours so I don’t know this weeks situation yet.

Love love AMOR!!

Elder Andrew James Bronson

Answers!

Questions! Or more apropriatly…answers!

Care package...lemmy see. You said that you all had CDs to send me if I had a CD player right? Well I don’t have one now, but maybe you could send me a small one! Just a little one and then those CDs, maybe even a bunch of them. CD ideas being John Schmitt, Mormon Tab, and anything else completely awesome. The way I see it if it helps me think of Christ it can be just about any type of music ever. Oh another good idea would be batteries, I'm running low.

Actually when I had a nasty belly bug I used some Digestzen and I think it helped. I always use lavender when appropriate and I checked and saw that I don’t even have peppermint.

On a weekly basis I like to hear from any of the following: You and Brandyn. I also from now and then get emails from Trent, and Elders Ririe, Anhder and McCormick but not every week. Usually from Elder McCormick though. The emails and replies are usually really short little hellos that don’t take too much time.

We have transfers in two days, Wednesday but supposedly we don’t hear until Tuesday night which would be ridiculous because we would have no time to say goodbye to anyone in the area, pack and get ready so were thinking that it’s going to be tonight really late. I am currently in my first area still and very likely am out. I would very much enjoy that. I am sad that I might be splitting up with Elder Bowman though...these last 6 weeks have been some of the fastest of my whole life and its all thanks to him....he such a dork...I love him

How about some random occurrences just today!. We started the day with a giant water balloon fight which was way fun, then headed to the biggest Pizza hut I've ever been to. It’s a sit down restaurant here in Guatemala. SUPER FANCY. While we where there we were hit with a MASSIVE rainstorm that turned all the streets to rivers and the bus we took acted more like a boat making huge wakes in the street. Great fun!

Much much much much much love sent your way! I pray for you guys every night that you will be safe and successful in your doings. Please always stay united as a family and strong in the church. It’s hard on the missionaries if no one wants to attend sacrament meeting haha.  Just realize the spirit that is there and always follow gods will first. Things will work out.

SO MUCH LOVE

Elder Andrew James Bronson

6 Month Anniversary!!

I was just thinking of mailing you guys the memory stick once I fill it up a bit more...I guess ill just have to start taking more pictures I only have like 400 hehehe. I haven’t been able to find my first memory card for it but once I do, which I'm sure won’t be a problem if I just get down and search a little while which I haven’t had time to do. Don’t worry mama ill get you your well awaited pictures...

Elder Mark Daniel Bowman is a North American who has half Spanish blood and thus can sometimes fool people into thinking he is Latino which is pretty funny. Really he’s a really funny guy we end the day laughing our heads off at random stuff all the time. Sometimes its hard to be spiritual with him because he’s such a joker but it made the change here go faster than ever.

As for pdays we do what ever we need to get done. Essentials include buying food, emailing, cleaning the house, writing letters to family and cleaning clothes. If any time is left we take it easy for a bit.  Usually but not every time we have an activity where we go do something fun like dodge ball or capture the flag. That’s about it for pdays

New investigators we have a couple, but more than anything we have found a few old investigators. One is Miguel who’s in his young 20s and is planning to live in the US soon. He has a desire for baptism and is currently looking for work without Sunday shifts. He’s even reading the book of Mormon! Another just yesterday is Marco Antonio who has received all the lessons before but lost contact with the missionaries for a good 2 or 3 months. His sister was baptized a while back and is now...grumblegrumble...inactive. Her daughters come to church though. I don’t know if I told you all about Tere. She’s really close to accepting a date for baptism but she like all others needs to STOP WORKING ON THE SABBATH. Besides that all is fine and I’m really exited for her.

Alright now that the questions are hopefully answered I’d like to say that TODAY IS OUT 6 MONTH ANNIVERSARY!!!! And what better way in the world to spend it than at the HOLY TEMPLE!!!! it was incredible as always...I understand the Spanish spoken so well now that the session might as well have been in English, and kind of brought to memory all the times of going to the temple at home...good times.

Ok btw that was a fun little Charly Email I quite enjoyed it even the sunrise pictures were beautiful. Thanks Charly I miss you pup.

Oh last thing. We got sick last week! In the house for 3 days both of us with fevers but all is well now. I was just sad because we had so many nice appointments planned with Tere and everyone...dang.

Love you all and hope all is well and healthier at home! Getting ready for school already dang...good luck guys and have fun! I pray for you every night!

Elder Bronson

The work progresses with Elder Bowman

I want to start off by saying...SHANE DOESNT LOOK THE SAME AT ALL!! What happened to ya buddy? Far too much soccer and being awesome I guess but you my friend look SO DIFFERENT. I guess you guys might say the same thing about me too haha but we’ll see I guess. Awwwwww.... cute little charly dog...

So anyway those sunset pictures were amazing! The sky looked to be on fire wow. I haven’t had the opportunity to take any more sunset pictures so those will have to wait too... I'm in a different internet cafe so maybe a different computer will let me upload some pictures..? Maybe haha hopefully. Well the work and everything goes well here. Since I was with Elder Vargas we didn’t have anybody who was ready for baptisms but after 4 weeks with Elder Bowman and us working so much better together and so much harder we have a couple good people ready. Unfortunately changes are in another 2 weeks and there is a really big possibility that I will be in a new area and Elder Bowman will take the Baptisms. We had however re-activated a number of less active members and now they are strong in the faith once again, which brings just as great of joy. I’m so happy when people decide to let Christ in and allow themselves to change and ¨mejorarse¨ or better themselves.

This week for a letter I was thinking of drawing everyone a very asked for picture. Shane if I hear correctly wants a logo for his company-type-deal and Scott just wants a picture, maybe a person? I will draw Wesley one too and his is the one I have already started on and if I do say so myself its one of the better dragons I've ever drawn haha ;) if I can pull together some money and some time I’ll print off some pictures and put them in there too.

We’ve been doing a ton of machete service and I even got to sharpen and use my own machete for some of it. That kind of service really wears you out but is really fulfilling. I took some before and after pictures of some of it. If the pictures I’m trying to attach send work you will see me and my companion Elder Bowman and our complete domination of the ¨Monte¨ menise! Muahahah!

Well, I hope as always that life is good at home, everyone’s happy and healthy and safe and spiritual haha you aaaare saying your prayers right guys....? If not its SUPER SINCHO! Or maybe a little bit of CASTIGO ATTACK! Or something like that, please do so that you can get your darn blessings. I love love love you all and pray for you every night and day. Sean prudente, que mas puedo decir?

SO MUCH DARN AMOR

Elder Bronson

*still no pictures were sent :(