My new companion is from Honduras

Hello everyone! As always I hope everything is going well for everyone. Here's what I did this week-

1. New companion! My new companion is Hermana Baca. Shes from Honduras. She speaks English but we never speak English unless I have to tell her a secret. This is her last change, so Ill be killing her too right after Christmas. She seems really nice and so far everything has been good with her. It was really sad for me to say goodbye to Hermana Stevens because shes my mom out here. So were in my same area that I was in before.

2. Thanksgiving - us Hermanas went to the Xela Temple again on thanksgiving, which was awesome. That was our last time to go though. The dedication is in 2 weeks. We celebrated thanksgiving as a zone on Friday by watching toy story 3, playing games, and eating taco bell. It was fun to have a little down time all together. I did miss all the delicious thanksgiving food! Ive never been a taco bell fan.

3. So as far as missionary work goes - we had a baptismal date for a day, but then it fell. We had been teaching this old grandma for a week or so. Shes raising her 3 grand kids because their parents died, and she cant read or really do anything to make money except make tortillas and this breakfast drink called atol. She was a reference from a member and was really positive. She went to stake conference last week and loved it. So we set the date for in a week. The next day we taught her the Word of Wisdom and found out that she smokes, but she said she wanted to quit, so we helped her set a goal of quitting and we thought everything would be OK. We came back the next day and found her, cigarette in hand. She then gave us a mountain of excuses about why she no longer had time for all this stuff with the church, and in the end said that she didn't want us to come back. Bummer, right? Its sad because the Lord is just waiting to bless her! She needs lots of blessings! But if she isn't willing to obey the commandments, she cant receive all those blessings. Its the same for all of us. There are so many blessings we could be getting, and we get to choose whether or not we qualify for them. I wonder how much of the time I choose to not get blessings. Probably way too much.

4. Better news - we found a good family, the wife went to the temple open house and loved it. They're really positive and I hope that they progress!

That's pretty much what went down last week. I'm excited to see how things go with my new comp. I know that this is the Lords work. I know that the scriptures are the word of God. I know that we have a prophet today. I love the Gospel! It is so wonderful!  I hope that y'all have a wonderful week and that Thanksgiving was great for everyone.  Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Love, Hermana Gilland

The Quetzaltenango Temple Open House

Familia y amigos! 

Here I am emailing y'all again! I hope y'all had great weeks and I'm sure everyone is looking forward to Thanksgiving. I can hardly believe that its thanksgiving time because its summer here always.

So here's what I did this week:

1. The biggest thing I have to talk about is our trips to serve at the Quetzaltenango Temple! We got to go to Xela twice to serve. We had to travel to Reu the night before, and then leave really early in the morning to make it to Xela at 8 am. And of course everyone gets around here via school bus crammed full of people. So that's always an adventure in and of itself ha-ha. Anyways, we got to Xela in the morning and it was SO COLD! Luckily it warmed up pretty quick.

It was such a beautiful experience at the temple. I just felt so full of emotion because it was beautiful to see the people serving and proudly getting to show their new temple to the world. We got to go through the tour, and I just felt so strongly that this is the work of the Lord on the Earth, in His temples. It was so pretty inside, I definitely think its the most beautiful temple inside. They made it so nice, but with Guatemalan influence.Guatemala is really ghetto and nasty and impoverished, right, so inviting people to come inside a building like this really is a once in a lifetime experience. This is definitely the most beautiful building in Guatemala. So it's really special. Lots and lots of people were really touched. I was just so excited when so many less actives and investigators from my ward came, because if I could feel such a powerful testimony from the Holy Ghost that the Temple is the house of God, how much more powerful was it for those people who had never felt the Holy Ghost, or who hadn't felt its influence in so long. It was such a special experience at the temple.

2. Another cool thing that happened this week was that we had a stake-area conference, I don't know exactly what its called. But we got to hear talks from Elder Clark of the 70, Sister Mary Cook, Elder Holland, and President Uchtdorf. Elder Clark gave his in Spanish, but the rest were translated from English. Elder Holland did share his testimony in Spanish though, and boy does he have a terrible accent, like the worst! He said so himself he-he. But it was really cool to hear the General Authorities give counsel especially for Guatemala and Belize.

3. We had a baptism of 3 niños on Sunday! Niños are pretty easy, but still really exciting. They're adorable. Were hoping to baptize their parents in time, wouldn't that be awesome!

That was my week! I'm so grateful to be here in the work of the Lord. I know that the church is true and that the gospel of Jesus Christ has the answers that everyone needs in their lives. I love being a missionary! Its awesome! Have a great week and thanksgiving!

Love, Hermana Gilland

No Investigators Came to Church - Pathetic!!!!

Buenos días everyone! I hope everyone is doing well. Thanksgiving is coming soon right? Crazy. 

K here's how my week went:

 

1. The bad: No investigators came to church! Agh! Pathetic! We do a lot to try to get people to come. A few days before everyone says that of course they're coming and God is first blah blah. We had 8 people who were maybe going to come, plus niños. But then Sunday morning comes. We call people to wake them up. We go to peoples houses to wake them up. We offer to help make breakfast and get the kids ready. We promise the teenagers prizes if they go ha-ha. But no one came. It was a huge bummer. Its like the worst to be a missionary and show up at church with no one.

 

2. We still might have a baptism next week though, of this really pregnant teenager. We want to hurry and baptize her because shes due next Sunday, and around here there are all kinds of superstitions about babies, for example, the 40 days after a baby is born the mom and baby can't leave the house or do anything. So we have to hurry. We'll see how it goes, I can for see a few big disasters coming with this one ha-ha...

 

3. I had a very interesting cultural experience yesterday (Sunday). Something awful happened - a young girl's husband died in a motor accident! It was really sad. She has 2 little kids. She found out during church. It's a tragedy. But it was really interesting to watch the ward come together. In America when something like this happens, the Relief Society organizes when dinners will be taken over, organizes who will be watching the kids. In Central America this is what they do: It was announced at church that the wake would be at 5pm and that everyone was to meet at the young woman's house (and in Guatemala, everyone lives with or right next to family, so all kinds of family live right there too). Me and my companion got there a little after 5, but people had already been there working for a few hours. The entire ward was there. All the women were in the back of the house outside cooking a HUGE meal for everyone. There aren't means to cook large meals here, so several fires were built with several huge pots on them, cooking things like a hot fruit drink, batter for tamalitos (kind of like tamales) chicken, vegetables. I was helping clean and dry about 200 giant banana leaves because here they use the banana leaves to wrap tamalitos, not corn husks like the Mexicans use. Other preparations were also made. The men set up a huge tarp tent thing with lots of chairs, I have no idea where they got that stuff. Lights had to be rigged up so the women could keep cooking (and when I say rigged, I mean there was a guy sticking a raw exposed wire into an outlet. It actually worked out. I got pics). It was basically a giant party, everyone was happy and smiling. But it was all in support of the family. Everyone felt kind of a sense of importance, of duty to be there helping. Wecouldn't stay to eat the food because it wasn't even close to being done when we had to go home. Apparently these things last late into the night. It was a really interesting experience. I got lots of pics and will try to send them next week.

 

So that was basically my week. Tomorrow we get to go to the Temple open house! I'm so excited! It will be awesome. I hope that y'all have a great week. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to serve a mission. Its a wonderful blessing and I'm learning so many things that Ill use forever. I love the gospel. Have a great week!

 

Love, Hermana Gilland

I am excited to help at the Quetzaltenango Temple open house!

Hey everyone!  My week this week was pretty good. There were some really great parts and a few bummers. Here's what happened:

 

1. On Sunday we had 2 great investigators come to church! Our mission really focuses on families and men who will be able to hold the priesthood, because there aren't many priesthood holders in the ward. These men are always the hardest for lots of reasons...but 2 came to church! One is the nonmember dad of a recent converts family, and the other is a dad of another positive family. We were super stoked about them, and they both stayed all three hours. Yay!

 

2. The bummer: We had 3 almost-dates for baptisms this week, 2 for this past weekend and one for in a few weeks...and they've all fallen through! One is Amílcar, I think Ive written about him before. We think hes scared of what people will think if he joins the church. I think all of them will eventually be baptized, but it was just a bummer to think all week that we were going to have 2 baptisms and then in the end not have any.

 

3. K here is the super awesome exciting news: Hopefully y'all heard about the new temple in Guatemala (Pres. Monson mentioned it at conference), the Quetzaltenango Temple. Well, all the hermanas in my mission get to go and help out at the open house!!! The temple isn't even in our mission, but its only an hour away from us, and they need more helpers, so we all get to go! (the elders don't get to go, they're super ticked) We went to a training on Sunday in Quetzaltenango, or Xela (pronounced shayla, the x makes the sh sound), and learned what all we'll be doing. In the next two weeks we go up to Xela for 3 or 4 mornings to help guide people through the temple. It is just a really awesome opportunity and we are all super excited. We got trained by Elder Martino of the 70, and we also got to watch the movie that they'll be showing to all the guests that come through. The movie talked about the history of the church in Guatemala and of course about the temple. The new temple is BEAUTIFUL. It is so amazing. I feel so blessed to be a part of this.

 

Interesting things about Xela: Xela is another mission, its north of where I am and in the mountains, and so believe it or not, its cold up there! Not super cold during the day, but at night you need a coat! I had no idea that there were places in Central America that were cold! The Xela hermanas were wearing long sleeves and cardigans and tights! I cant imagine wearing anything like that because where I'm at is usually really hot, we're always sweating our brains out and looking super nasty all the time. How crazy haha. So for the open house I have to try to get my hands on some sweaters or something hehe. 

Well that was my week here in Mazatenango Guatemala. Im really happy to be here. I know that this is the Lords work. I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can bless everyones lives. Thanks for your prayers! Have a great week!

 

Love, Hermana Gilland

Miracles Can Come From Fasting

Hey everyone! This week was really awesome :) I hope y'alls was too.

1. This week we saw the miracles that can come from fasting.  This is what happened:

We've been teaching this awesome lady named Brenda for a few weeks now, and pretty early on we challenged her to pray to know if the church was true with a date in mind to be baptized, Oct 29. She had been praying, and really liked what we were teaching her and what she was reading in the Book of Mormon, but she didn't feel like she had gotten a firm answer yet. We had been telling our district and zone leaders about Brenda, and because it was the end of the month, they really wanted her to go ahead and get baptized. We set monthly goals as districts and zones and they're a really big deal to the zone leaders. Anyways, so the zls really wanted to come with us to show us how its done and commit her to baptism for this past Saturday. They came with us on Tuesday, and we felt like they might have overdone it, but she committed to be baptized in 4 days so we were happy at first. But then the next 2 days we couldn't get ahold of her! We had set appointments but she had pretty much disappeared. We were really scared that she was hiding from us because she didn't want to get baptized. We had a hard time with a few other people this week so we decided to fast for some help with everything, to at least salvage the situation with Brenda. The first half of our fast, everything still seemed to be falling apart. Most of ourapts fell through and things were just crappy. But then the next day lots of awesome things happened, and one of the awesome things was that we found Brenda! We started off by apologizing for the crazy elders pressuring her and telling her that she can totally get baptized next week if she wants. But she was like "No the elders were fine. I want to be baptized tomorrow. But if you guys need more time then we can do it next week". Wow!  Heck no we don't need more time! We don't really know how that all worked out but it did, and we had her baptism on Saturday! It was a beautiful baptism. You could just tell after wards that it was really special to her. She was crying a little bit and everything. It was very sweet. It just goes to show that this is the Lords work, not mine. Me and my comp had just very little to do with her conversion. We are so grateful to get to meet and work with such special and prepared people.

2. So basically this week was awesome. The mission is really focusing on finding whole families to be baptized, and we have 2 potentially really awesome families that we hope will progress. Also Amílcar will hopefully be baptized this week! 

3. Interesting fact about Guatemala: So I'm 5'1" tall, in case y'all forgot. In the US that is really really short. In the US in a group of people, I'm pretty much always the shortest person around. In Guatemala its way different. I frequently find myself in groups where I'm the second tallest woman (my comp is always the tallest, shes a freakish 5'11" ha-ha). Women and men here are teeny tiny! And I don't just mean they're an inch or 2 shorter. Every day I see women who come up to my shoulder. Yesterday there was one who came a few inches below my shoulder! She is under 4 ft tall! Isn't that crazy! There are taller people here too, of course. I know lots of women who are a few inches taller than me. But probably about 75% of the women here are around 5'3" and shorter. Yea, Guate is crazy.

So that was this past week. My comp only has 3 more weeks left in Guate, so that's super weird. Shes pretty baggy (in this mission we say "baggy" not "trunky") but she is going to finish out strong. Thanks for your prayers! Being a missionary is really really awesome. It is so fulfilling and rewarding. I am learning so many great things. Everyone should go on a mission!! I'm grateful for the power of the Book of Mormon. I'm grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful that we have the Gospel on the earth today. It is so clear and comforting. I hope y'all have a great week! Feel free to email me!

Love, Hermana Gilland

Six investigators came to church!!!!

Hey everyone!!
This week was pretty good. Here's what we did:

1. We did have one big bummer -- Amílcar had to change his baptismal date because of some conflicts in his schedule, and also we think because he is nervous... He is like 5 times busier than all the other Guatemalans here and works all the time, so he can hardly find time to meet with us. He tells us though that hes reading the scriptures every day, so I'm confident that hell get baptized in the end.

2. Wedding!  We married the kid we baptized a few weeks ago, José Manuel, and his girlfriend. Hes 17 and shes 21... so that's kind of weird, right?That's like if my little bro Tyler (who hasn't written me in like 3 months by the way) got married to one of my friends! Yikes! Oh well they're married now so that's that. I learned this week that you don't really have to put all that work into wedding planning like we do in America. You just need a bunch of niños to blow up balloons and some streamers. The way things are around here, the wedding was more than the couple could have imagined, which is sad, but its also nice that they could be so pleased with their little wedding. After they were married she was baptized, so that's all taken care now. The mission is really focused on baptizing families, and they count technically as a family. So we kind of feel like were cheating by marrying some kids, but everyone seems to be OK with it ha-ha.

3. At church we had 6 investigators!! Yay!!! It was awesome! My comp and I did divisions in the morning so that we could go wake up people for church and they all ended up coming. The one that were the most excited about is the nonmember dad of a recent convert family. Hes actually one of the guys that we taught last Sunday that ended in that big mess. He was definitely the most positive out of those guys, and were hoping that his heart was touched and that little by little we can help him to gain his testimony. We were just so happy with all the investigators who came. It was great.

4. So my comp and I are working on a really awesome plan to get the ward going with missionary work. I think I already wrote that the Bishops focus for the ward right now is missionary work, but no one really has a plan for how to make that happen. We've been applying some of the things I learned in my student ward last year about organizing people and getting them focused and with a plan. Were excited to get the plan going in each of the organizations this week and really get moving. We wont see the results immediately, but in a few months things should really start moving with the help of the ward.

5. My companion Hermana Stevens officially only has one month left of her mission! I'm getting nervous about her leaving because I still have a ton to figure out about this missionary work stuff. I leave almost exactly a year after her, so I almost just have one year left. That's really weird to think about because that's really not very long and I still feel brand new, but I guess that's just how it goes.

So that pretty much was our week. I hope my emails aren't just super boring ha-ha. If y'all want to hear about something different or have questions or whatever, feel free to email me! Its great getting emails from everyone. I am really grateful to be serving a mission. It is really fun and rewarding. Its really great to be trying really hard and working totally for the Lord. I know this is His work -- there's just no way that a bunch of young kids could come teach the Gospel to all these people and find success without so much help from the Lord. I'm grateful for everything Ive been blessed with and especially for my own testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Everyone should serve a mission! And all the grownups should serve too! I hope everyone has a nice week!

Hermana Gilland

PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! Love you!!

The hardest time in my mission, so far.....

Hey everyone! I hope y'all are well!

 

This week has been interesting and good. Ill just tell a few interesting stories from the week.

 

1. So remember the baptism last week, with a 17 yr old kid named Josè Manuel? Well, we found out a little interesting twist to the story. On Wednesday we found out that between his baptism on last Saturday afternoon and his confirmation on Sunday morning, his girlfriend moved into his family´s shack in the boonies. Ha-ha yea, a slight problem right? That's not allowed. So to fix it we´re marrying them this coming Saturday and baptizing them. That sounds bad, but they really want to get married. I think its crazy but oh well. They tell us they're not sleeping together and we've taught them the law of chastity like3 times, so what else can we do? Sorry if that story was a little pg 13 for the kids, but its too good not to share.

 

2. Also this coming Saturday we have another baptism! Its a guy named Amílcar, hes 32 yrs old and has been investigating the church for like 20 years, and hes finally getting baptized! Yay!

 

3. We had Ward Council on Friday and the bishop is super stoked about missionary work! So were pumped about this. The bishops goal for each organization in the ward, that's 9 organizations, is to find and baptize one family each by the end of November. We are so excited and hoping so much that the ward actually gets on this because it would be incredible for the mission!

 

4. Random culture fact: here in Guatemala, we eat with our hands. Its pretty normal to be served a piece of meat with like a fork or spoon, no knife, so you have to just pick up the meat and go at it. its pretty disgusting, but that's life out here. The lady that cooks us lunch doesn't even own knifes to eat with.

 

5. So something sad happened on Sunday. It was definitely the hardest time in my mission so far. We have a tradition of visiting some recent convertsevery Sunday and having a quick lesson with them, and every week we hope that their 3 sons-in-law will come to listen to the lessons, because their wives are members but they're not. This Sunday they finally came! We were super excited and shared lesson one (about the restoration of the gospel), and it went really well. At the end we talked to them about praying to find an answer for themselves about whether or not it was true and things just got bad. We had thought it was going really well but all the sudden there was tons of contention about polygamy (my comp said that'sonly the 2nd time in her 17 months that polygamy has come up), and then one of the guys started picking apart how my comp had described when she prayed and received the answer that it was true, and how our Spanish was just going to confuse everyone, and all this other stuff that is too confusing to explain. Anyways, there was this terrible spirit in the room and I just burst into tears because I was so sad that they were so hard in their hearts and that they thought that they were supposed to be convinced by words to know if the church is true. So that was embarrassing. But they just kept going and going and it was terrible. It was terrible to feel the spirit leave like that. We cried a lot. I don't exactly know why, were girls you know. But it was awful. But it made me want to work even harder. There are so many stories about Paul and Peter and Ammon and Alma and all those guys about how powerfully they spoke and how people couldn't deny that they spoke with the power of God. I know that not everyone will accept the Gospel, but I want to someday be in tune enough with the spirit to leave people with no doubt that what were saying is the truth. I know that that's possible because so many in the scriptures do that. I hope that I can be worthy to represent the church like that. I'm going to work really hard to do that.

 

Well that was pretty much my week. I hope that last story wasn't depressing, they always tell us to write mostly happy stuff home. I know that the Gospel is true. It has to be. I know that Joseph Smith saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and that Thru Joseph they restored the true and perfect Gospel on the earth. I know that this is true. I hope that everyone has a great week! I pray for you all often! Thanks for your prayers on my behalf.

 

Hermana Gilland 

 

That was pretty much my week.