Sept 19

The phases of Hermana Baird and Hermana Compton:
(This is what happens when being with someone for almost 4 months, 24/7.
I promise we love each other haha.)
We start annoying each other..
Then talk about how we can stop annoying each other..
Then we love each other again and are once again best friends.

Today we had such an awesome Zone Activity! We went to a soccer court and we rented these huge balloon ball things. You run full speed into each other and then fall over and just bounce. Its was a ton of fun, and don't worry, no one got hurt! 

This week Hermana Compton and I both completed 1 year on the mission. It was a great day. We bought a piñata from one of our investigators and we burnt our shirts. We also had divisions that day so it was super fun being with the Hermanas from Chiyax!

As I think back on this year, I am so grateful for all that has happened. I have had experiences that are indescribable, companions that are some of the most loving people I have ever met, and above all I have strengthened my testimony and my love for my Savior. I have strengthened my relationship with him and know with out a doubt he is guiding me and protecting me here in Guatemala. I am so grateful for the 6 more months I have to serve the Lord with all of my might, mind, and heart, and help his children come unto him.

August 29

Ofelia and I before church. This litte girl is so special to me! We have been teaching her and her sister for awhile now, but they havent been able to get permission from their parents to get baptized. This week we were able to teach her parents too and it was truly a miracle! We are hoping soon that the whole family will be able to be in church with us. :)

 Ofelia and Salome (one of the kids of the Familia Herrera) being us for a few minutes after church! 

Juanita! This is Ofelia's sister. She ALWAYS uses corte, but I gave her a dress that was too small for me and she wore it to church! It was such a miracle haha. That was the first time I had every seen her wear anything that wasnt typical clothing from Guatemala. 

The rainy season is beginning! Yesterday after church we went out to work and after our first lesson it started down pouring. Sadly, every single lesson that we had planned didnt work out. The people werent home or they were busy. So, we were out knocking on doors for 4 hours in the rain! We actually had so much fun. But we were SOAKED! Everything in my backpack was soaked as well. My scriptures, everything! We had dinner with a family that night and when we showed up, they were all in shock about how soaked we were. They made us change into their clothes because they thought we were going to get sick. Well, lets just say our outfits were very interesting. And that it was a good thing that was our last appointment before we went home! It was a good, fun, wet day! 

August 22

The zone Totonicapán.

Hermana Compton and I's new addiction.. Making s'mores over the stove with nutella.
And we have another whole change (6 weeks) to make them together! 

Saturday we went to an appointment and when we arrived there were a ton of people at the house! We thought ahhh dang it we arent going to have a lesson cuz there is some sort of party. Well, when we put the appointment, they appearently knew, and the told us, "Come in! We have been waiting for you guys!" Well, lets just say, that we are not in a touristic area, so many people are used to seeing white people. We walked in and everyone was just looking at us haha. They were preparing their Tamales for the party (thats what they are doing in the pic), and then all of a sudden they all wanted pictures with us! We became the entertainment very quickly. The family still said that we could share something with them, but we decided it would be better to come back a different day when there wasnt a birthday party. It was a funny experience. The types of clothes that they are using is called corte. In Toto, almost everyone uses it! Its not as common in other places, but here its almost strange if someone doesnt use it! I love it when little kids are using it, sooo cute. So after we took pics with everyone we asked them if we could take pics of them haha.

This week was my comps birthday. With my district leader, we planned a surpise lunch with our district. Well, lets just say that latinos know how to have fun on birthdays! Three of the missionarys in our district are from Honduras, and they have a tradition where the smash eggs on the person´s head whose bday it is. So we blind folded her and smashed eggs on her head haha. Then I felt a little bad so I washed her hair for her haha.  

 

August 15

It has been another week of miracles here in Toto! First of all, I went to my first Consejo de Líderes and it was amazing. Its where all of the Zone Leaders and Hermana Leaders go and listen to our mission President. It was so amazing, the spirit was so strong, and I learned SO much. We learned a lot about our desires, and if we put our desires in line with the desires of the Lord, we will find out that we can have a lot more success. We also talked a lot about faith. And how in order to reach our desires we need to have faith and hope that the Lord will help us. He has promised to help us as long as we are always trying to keep his commandments. Our mission president talked a lot about obedience. For those of you who have served a mission, you know that obedience is one of the most, if not the most, important thing. We need to be obedient so that the Holy Spirit can be with us. If we do one thing wrong, we are offending the Spirit, and its hard to have it with us when we teach. After consejo, my companion and I made the commitment to be exactly obedient in everything! I have truly seen and felt the difference this week because of this. We saw so many miracles, and were truly led by the Spirit in our lesson, and while trying to find new people to teach. I had a very special experience on Friday. We went to a lesson with an investigator who we had just started teaching. We had only taught him one time and really didn't know too much about him still. We got to his house planning on teaching a lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we started talking to him we felt quickly that we should not talk about that, but that we needed to talk about repentance and baptism. A scripture came to my mind, it was a scripture about the final judgement. I opened up my Book of Mormon and I knew exactly what verses he needed to read. I asked him to please read the 4 verses, and as he began reading I realized those were not the scriptures about the topic I was thinking. It was a scripture that talked exactly about Repentance, and was a scripture that was absolutely perfect for the situation. I was in complete shock. This scripture came very clearly to my mind, and I didn't even realize it was different than what I had been thinking. The Lord truly helps us in life if we are worthy to have the Spirit to be with us. This experience testified that to me. The spirit puts the exact words in our mouths, and the exact ideas that we need to share in our minds. The mission is so amazing, and I know I always say this, but I have learned so much, and am so excited to keep on learning. I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

xoxoxo
Hermana Baird

August 8

Okay so this week was just amazing and full of so many exciting and joyful things! First of all on Thursday we got to go to the temple. This is something so special because we only get to go every 6 months. When we got there one of the first people I saw was a Sister named Paty Socop. She was one of my favorite people in my other ward, Baúl, so I was so exciting to see her! Then the next person I saw was the Bishop´s wife from Baúl too! Another one of my all time favorite people. As we were in the temple I was pondering a lot about my mission up to this point, and was just filled with love and gratitude because Heavenly Father has put so many amazing people in my path that have made it so much fun to work hard with. As we left the temple, Bishop Willy, from Baúl was outside waiting for his wife!! We took some pictures and were able to catch up some. It was such a great day to be able to go to the House of the Lord and to see so many people that I love so much. 

Yesterday we had an experiencia that I would like to share also. On Saturday, we had a day where we just kind of felt down. But something that I have learned is when you start feeling like that, the only thing to help you out is to just keep working, but harder! Yesterday we were working and we felt a ton better. We stopped by this place that sells tortillas to talk with the people there. There were two girls who started talking to us, Graciela and Sandra. We asked if we could share a video about Jesus Christ with them and the gladly accepted. The invited us in and we starting to share a message with them. At the end of the lesson we felt the spirit so strong. We invited them to be baptized, and they both said that they wanted to be. We asked Graciela why she would like to be, and she told us that she felt like what we had talked about was true and that she felt that we were sent to her house because she needed help. She told us that she has been feeling really sad lately and really alone:her family all lives about 2 hours away, and she just lives with her sister and cousin to sell tortillas. She told us she knew that we were there to help her and that she felt so happy that we came to visit her. We know that the gospel is going to bless her life so much and we are so happy that our Heavenly Father placed them in our path.

Today was an amazing day too! We had a zone activity which is always fun. But then, my favorite family ever came to visit us! THE FAMILIA SANCHEZ! They came all the way to Toto from Xela to take us out to lunch and to visit with us. Jaime Sanchez, actually traveled to the states a couple of weeks ago and was able to meet my mom, stepdad, and our horses so he was able to show me all the pics they took and catch me up on everything. It was such a great day! 

I love the mission so so much. Although there are times where it can be the hardest thing that I have ever done, the miracles, and the tender mercies make up for it all! This week my heart has been filled with so much love and so much happiness. I love Guatemala and I love the people here. This place truly feels like my home and I am just so grateful for all of the experiences I have had in these past 10 months. 

Thanks for all the support! 

xoxoxox

Una hermana de nuestro barrio quien es la mejor! 

Y mi querida compañera :)

July 18

Well this last week has been a pretty exciting one. I had transfers! I was so sad to leave my area because I really have a lot of love for those people in theat ward, but I know that they are my family now and I will see them all again soon! The sadness passed quickly though, because my new area and new comp are super awesome! Its actually funny because my comp is Hermana Compton again! She was my comp in the MTC so we already know basically everything about each other and are learning quickly how to work together here in the field. 

My new area is amazing! I am in a part of guatemala called Totonicapan. This place is way different than anything I have ever seen. Almost everyone is dressed in the typical clothing here called ´corte´. They also speak another language which is called K´iche. Its nothing like spanish! Luckily almost everyone speaks both languages so we can still comunicate with them, but some of the older people dont understand spanish very well so we will have to bring translators with us. Its super fun, we are trying to learn a little bit of it, but holy cow its so hard. I have never heard anything like it before. We have about 5 aldeas (I think that means village in English) in our area. They are little villages up in the mountains that are super far from centro, where we live. Its so awesome because so many people have never even heard of the church, so there is just so much work to be done here! 

I love this work and I love being a missionary. I am so grateful for the oportunity to serve the people here in Toto! Amo a toto! 

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Baird

Hermana Compton and I! 

 Hermanas in our district! 

 An aldea in our beautiful area!

 The view from my desk! So pretty! 

It's been awhile....

Ahhh I havent written a blog in forever but I am going to just update on the most important stuff.. First of all, Alejandro got baptized! I am going to attach what i sent to my mission president about Alejandro so you guys can get to know him a little too:

"Hola Presidente Smith,

This week was seriously great. We have an investigator named Alejandro who is 17. We actually found him when we were doing a service project for the semana de la familia. Him and his mom passed by and were asking what organization we were. We talked with them for a bit and then got there info. We kept trying to call and pass by their house to put a appointment, but never could find them, and when we talked to them on the phone they said they were about to leave and didnt know when we could visit them. So one day we finally were able to put an appointment and when we got their they werent there. As we were leaving we found them walking back to their house. We started to talk and they were very straight forward with us and told us that they were evangelicos and that the day they talked to us they had no idea that we were Mormons. They said they were just looking for work for their son, and good friends for him, so thats why they were interested when they saw us. We were with the mission leader of the stake and he started to explain that we would jsut like to visit them and explain who we are and what we believe without any comittment. We also explained mutual and how Alejandro could meet knew friends that have good values. They accepted and we started to visit them. He went to every single mutual since we invited him, but he didnt want to go to church sunday because he went to his other. We were going slowly with him because of what they had told us. Well a couple of saturdays ago we visited him and invited him to church again, and he said yes he wanted to go! We were super excited and that same day at church he met with the Bishop and asked him how he could become an official member of the church. So the next day we visited him and we put a baptism date, and he is getting baptized this thursday!! We are so happy for him. Yesterday we had a missionary activity for all of the young men and women in the stake. It was a talk and then we left with the kids and contacted. When we got back to the church we had a testimony meeting and alejandro bore his testimony in front of everyone. Elder Fuentes was in his group and said that he was super awesome and the kid who was contacting the most people in his group. We are so excited for him and its truly amazing how the Lord prepares people and then uses us as intraments to bring them to the gospel."

So yeah, alejandro is super awesome, and he got baptized this Thursday! The baptism was amazing and the spirit was so strong. He now wants to start getting ready for his mission, so we are super excited for him.

This week we had a super cool experience. There was a lady outside her house cutting flowers and I had this super strong feeling to talk to her.. We kept walking cuz my comp was on the phone but I told her that I really wanted to talk to that lady so when we go back we need to knock on her door. Well when we had finished lunch and were on our way back she was outside still doing yard work. We asked if we could help and we started pulling weeeds with her. After we were able to share something with her and she was super receptive to us. The next appointment she told us that she had a dream that she wanted to share with us. (People here in guate have a serious gift.. There dreams are amazing! Everyone has super religious dreams) She told us that in her dream Jesus came and there were tons of people that were wearing white and rising up to heaven. She was stuck on the ground, she really wanted to start to rise but couldnt. She prayed and prayed and God told her she wasnt prepared. There were then two gringas (white people) who came up to here and started talking and she new in that moment God was giving her another oportunity. It was super cool and we were able to explain to her that it isnt a coincidence that we were there with her--two gringas just like her dream, who were hear to help her come to know God better. She told us she knew it wasnt a coincidence and when she saw us in the street she felt like she needed to talk with us, and was happy when we started talking to her. I love being a missionary, I love guatemala, and I LOVE these people so much!

Much love from Guate,
Hermana Baird                                  new comp

last comp and comp from MTC

                                                              Alejandro

volcano eruption