Training Elder Rangel from Mexico NOV 28 2011

Well I'm sorry but due to problems with the new internet place my letter will not be very long or well written. My apologies.

I received my trainee this last tuesday. His name is Elder Rangel. He is from Mexico and he does not speak English. YES!!! I´ve loved it so far and I´m learning quite a bit, very fast. We haven't had any problems or conflicts at all (Referring to the language) He is you average high belt wearing, none sports playing, friendly funny guy. He plays the Guitar which is Great! Elder harding had one he gave me so we play that at nights when we find the time. Strangely he really loves ''death metal'' not what i expected but its his favorite kind.

We have been working none stop and already have 20 progressing investigators!! But I hope to push our selves even harder this week. He is quite shy when it comes to approaching strangers and i usually do most of the talking but thats not going to happen this week! he´s going to do just as much as me now that he´s seen the approach a few times. We laugh a lot and play a lot of Futbol with investigators hah It has been a lot of fun and i have noticed that my spirit has been improving and improving. It wasn't bad really from the start but through our day to day happenings i just have a little bigger smile now. I know its because we´re doing everything we´re supposed to and the lord is blessing us for it. I´m glad I received a humble and fun person to be with. I believe we will have a lot of success together and i hope to keep getting happier and happier as the mission goes on.
Life here in the mission has been great. Things are constantly changing and I'm always finding new things i can work on. I tell ya what i´m going to take advantage of every minute i´ve got here.
I love the emails i´ve received and i run out of time before i get to answer them all so thank you so much for all the love i´ve received and i hope you all know i love you all so dearly. Thank you thank you thank you

Next week I get a trainee NOV 17 2011

Well here we go, I´m getting that opportunity i have been hoping for.
I´ll be picking up my trainee tomorrow after noon down in Xela. We´ll
be staying in the same area and i´ll be with him for the next two
changes.

I´m SOOO PUUUUUMPED! haha it will be so much fun. I dont
speak the language super well yet and I'm not sure if he will either.
Although there is a 5/6 chance ill be working with a latino and i
really hope that i get one. It will be awesome for my spanish. It may
be difficult at times if there are words i don't know but its more
important i show him how to act then how to speak. Yes speaking goes
along with action but! you can speak all you want but you don't tell
people you love them, you show them. Hope that makes sense? I cant
wait to get started with him and i hope he´s one that wants to push
his self cause I´m going to need him to do so. Not just for his sake
but for my own, I´ll tell you right now that I´m going to learn just

as much as he will during this time, if not more. WOO HOO!!!
In other news you´ll never guess who spoke for our stake conference
this past sunday. Don L. Clark of the seventy Mary N. Cook, Jeffrey R.
Holland and Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Im going to take a shot in the dark and
say "I bet my stake conference was better than yours". Although we
only watched it on the TV it was so great!! Holland speaks a little
spanish! We got to hear it in english, the first guy was in spanish
and was translated and we were stoked that we would get to hear
holland in english from his own mouth but then he started going off in
spanish! We all laughed so hard. He didn't speak spanish the whole talk
just beginning and end but it was cool to hear from him. Uchtdorf was
great as always and so were the others. They mostly talked about being
a worthy temple recommend holder and using it. Obviously because of the
new temple in Xela. What a great stake conference.
Well no insights or cool stories to tell but I´m sure i´ll have one or
two this coming monday. I love you all. Every single one of ya. Family
friends and acquaintances. Thanks for everything you do, have done, or
will do for me.
Love Elder Wimmer

A VISIT TO THE TEMPLE NOV 10 2011

Well a wonderful week here in Quetzaltenango. The open house started this friday here in Xela and about 4,000 people showed up! pretty good right?. The next day (saturday) We had the opportunity to go the temple with a family of investigators. We left from Huehue at seven in the morning to go pick them up. We rode in the back of the bishops pick up for a very long, cold, and cloudy 3 hour drive. When we got into the Xela valley the clouds parted and it became a BEAUTIFUL day.
What a blessing. When we arrived the temple was absolutely beautiful!!
it sits on a hill over looking the city, you can see it from almost any where in the valley! We parked in a big open field at the bottom of the hill and walked up from there. When we got to the top we walked through the gates we saw the line we had to wait in. IT WAS GINOMBEOUS!!! This was a bummer simply because long lines are never fun BUT it was also so amazing!! seeing so many people come to see the temple in this foreign country was a beautiful sight. The best part was that after we joined in the huge line, it just kept growing! it was worse than the lines at disney land and lagoon combined! (using worse in a good way) Well after about an hour of waiting a man with a walky talky approached us. He started to explain that the line was getting to the point that if it stayed this way not every body would get through the temple before the end of the night. He then asked us if we could gather all the missionaries and meet up with him again for further instructions. We gathered all the missionaries and met him again. He then explained to us that was a plan A, B, and a plan C.
plan A and B had already been tried so they were resorting to plan C.
He had just made up plan C which was the funny part but plan C consisted of us (the elders) taking specific groups of 45 from the line and bringing them through the temple on the same tour just at a faster rate. We were going to be tour guides through the temple!!!!
and of course being the missionaries he first contacted Elder harding and I were the first missionaries to take a group through! We took a group from Guatemala City and led them for a 15-20 minute tour through the temple. What an awesome experience that was! We took in the end 3 or 4 groups through the temple. It was funny because we led them through even though it was only our first time through as well. Temple was just gorgeous inside. I loved being able to watch families faces full of excitement and amaze as they walked through the most beautiful piece of architecture that Im sure they´ve ever laid eyes on. It was such a blessing for me to go to the temple that day. The next day at a members house they told us in total that EIGHTEEN THOUSAND people came to the open house that day. What an amazing day it was. Our investigators loved it, we loved it, and Im sure the heavens were rejoicing in the success of the church that day in the country of Guatemala.
Well hope that all is well back home and know that all is going just perfectly here. Thanks for the love and support. Love Elder Wimmer

[NICK] Learning...Christ like attributes

  Well due to recent events i will not be finishing last weeks story
unles I type faster than i usually do. Instead I have something i
would like to share with you that has recently helped me open my eyes
a little wider on.. well pretty much everything.
    Over the past few weeks here in the mission i have found myself
becoming increasingly more frustrated,angered, and over all less
patient with the happenings around me. Be it my companion, the
conditions of my living quarters, or simply the people in my day to
day events. I have been in conflict with myself trying to figure out
why I havent been just completely happy! Especially since I'm on the
mission and all. I had been praying for help, I had been praying for
everything around me to realize its self and i had been hoping and
thinking that "oh, things will be better when i´m senior companion" or
"things will be better when this person changes or when someone else
stops doing something". I just didnt understand why I couldnt just, Be
happy! Or why my prayers maybe werent being answered.
    The other day i was reading in the fourth missionary talk where i
found a passage that completely took my thoughts for a run. For some
reason I felt as if I had never read it before even though I had read
that talk at least 5 or 6 times. I´m now going to quote to you the
passage that i read strait from the talk.
    "Every challenge you face, every hard thing you confront, every
bad thing that happens to you, every unfairness, every conflict, every
sadness, tragedy, every disappointment and heartache, every temptation
and every opposition happens for one purpose only: to give you
opportunity to respond by applying in your life the teachings of Jesus
Christ. As you do so you are changed to become more like Him."
        "If you were never presented with some advantage to be gained
by dishonesty, such as recognition, or money, or a better grade on a
test or avoidance of punishment or embarrassment, you could never
develop integrity. If no one ever offended you, you could never learn
to forgive or internalize mercy. Were you never wearied by the
annoying behavior of another or the repeated failures of someone else
you could never become patient. Were you never subjected to the
appetites and passions of the physical body for food, for water and
for sexual fulfillment you could not develop self mastery. Without
opposition the plan would be frustrated, you could not progress and
the purpose of life would be unachievable."
      After reading this I realized that if christ had answered my
prayers and my hopes that he would have been taking away my
opportunity to learn, grow, and ultimately my purpose of life here on
earth. I´ve learned that trials are not just problems which happen or
just come up, but that trials are opportunities for us to become better
people. Trials are why we exist. We are here to accumulate, through
trials, the qualities of christ and IF we handle the trials correctly
and we do accumulate those qualities, we will achieve our ultimate
goal and live in gods presence again.
    Well, believe it or not when I pray now, I no longer do so for my
trials to end and resolve themselves but I now thank him for the
opportunities he has given me to learn, grow, accumulate the qualities
of christ and become a better person. I´m not telling you that the
trials have gotten or will get easier, but i will tell you that my
question on why life gets hard and why my prayers may not always be
answered is now understood.

  Thank you so much for all the emails, letters, love, and support i
recieve. I love you all and pray for you always
Elder Wimmer

[NICK] a WK later....brother can you lend me a dime?

Good morning and happy halloween! I havent seen a single pumpkin, child in a costume, or free piece of candy yet and i don´t think will sadly. But! i will get to see a bunch of drunk people mourning for the dead! A fair trade i say. Well today is a beautiful day here in Huehuetenango, its a partly cloudy day and the city is buzzing with anticipation for who will be the next president here in Guatemala. The elections are this coming sunday so there are posters and people every where showing their support for whomever they desire to win.
Apparently its gonna be a close one!

Well for this week i have few short stories and thoughts i´d like to share with you so i´ll start typing.

This last saturday we went to visit the family Gonzalas, a family we´ve recently started teaching. They seem quite interested and they said, they are going to attend church with us this coming sunday.
Saweeeet! anyways, when we got to the house their kids let us in and we sat down in the front room with the father as we usually do. The father always loves talking with us especially since he has been to the states for work and also has family there working too. So during our talk about the states he says "I have a question for you" and we said, "yes?" perking up hoping that it would be pertaining to our religion. He then asked us a very different question than we were expecting. "Do you guys have social security numbers?"..... That is never a good question coming from anybody that lives below the border of the states. Very nervously we replied "Yes??" concerned at what he would say next. He then proceeded to tell us about his cousin working in the states.. Illegally. He needed a social security number to be able to stay working there. So the father then asked us and i quote "would it be alright if my brother used your social security numbers until you go back to the states?"... That question was quickly replied with " No sorry (yes we included a sorry for some reason) but we are not able to be involved in those kinds of interactions while we are missionaries". And now might i add, HECK NO. Not only as missionaries but NEVER would i let ANYONE use my social security number! American or Latino! What did you think I´d say?! "Why sure! just leave it under the mat when i get home. Oh hey and could you also put that money that you stole from my savings account back when you´re done with it? that´d be great thanks" Anyways, he said "oh ok ok, its just he's in a tight spot and i just thought i´d ask for him." we resumed our conversation and eventually got talking about his home and financial status and how his experience at the states was. He said he wanted to go back really bad but didnt have the money. I don't know how close he felt to us and I didnt feel as though we were super comfortable with him yet, but his next question made me feel as if he was QUITE comfortable with us. "Do think there is any way that i could borrow 5,000 dollars from you guys? I just really need get to the states to earn some more cash. I would pay you back eventually for sure though."...... either i REALLY under estimated how close we were with this man or I am REALLY sure that the people here in guatemala think we just carry around thousands of dollars with us every where we go. We replied with the same answer that we gave him the last time, but this time he wasn't satisfied with that answer. I will finish the rest of this story later today because we have to leave now. But if we dont come back...
Until next time!

IMG_5511 (1).J

ps I just sent a picture and I'm sending another. 
Both from TODAY! right after playing futbol. P day pics woo hoo
Elder Delgado is the other elder. He is so awesome. we took the pic
because he wore barcelona and I wore real madrid and they are rivals
haha but we ended up on the same team and also ended up DOMINATING the game hee hee I scored 6! times.
yes Im bragging but I dont care.

[nick]WK 7 How much?

Well as i was hanging on for life outside the sliding door of the bus/van I was thinking what i would write about. I decided that... i had no clue. no new stories really because due to the new change all we´ve done is visit members mostly and yet some how we have still found a lot of new investigators which is wonderful. and so since i didn't have any really great stories i thought id tell you just a little bit about the finances of the country and we´ll see where it goes from there. So, here in guatemala the worth of a dollar is about 7.5 quetzals. In other wards yes, if you came here for a vacation practically everyone from the states would be considered "rich". To give you an example of the worth here, we live off around 40 dollars a week. thats including food for the week, taking buses, and P-days which includes eating out, a lot more bus rides, paying for the soccer fields and internet. We do all of this for 40 dollars. One random example that still amazes me is that for one of those small bags of chips here its about 7 american cents. also a regular size water bottle is about 15 american cents. Also i can go out to eat for and get a chimichanga with beans rice a soda and a smoothie for a little under 4 american dollars. its pretty crazy. To give you an idea of your average income its around 2,000 quetz a month which is roughly
250 american dollars. Thats the AVERAGE income per month. You couldnt even afford an apartment to live in, in the states with that income let alone buy groceries and transportation. The quality of living is obviously VERY different. being here has really given me an amazing appreciation for my lifestyle that i have back at home. I´ll describe you you´re average house here. Absolutely NO ONE has any of the
following: washer and dryer, dish washer, completely sealed windows, carpet, or drinkable faucet water. about 50% of the houses have hot water. There is NO sewage system and there is ZERO A/C or heating systems.  about 50% have four wheeled vehicles and zero percent might i add for the male teenagers have x-box´s or PS3s.  I am not exaggerating(?) about any of those. It is a wonderful and easy lifestyle we live in the states and i hope that you are all VERY grateful for where you are right now. Im not saying this for you to feel bad for me or the people that live here im saying this so that you will appreciate a little more the next time you take a hot shower or walk on your carpet, drink from the faucet or drive your car to work. Well thats just a little of the lifestyle here and i´m loving it! i hope that i can be telling you a good story next week! Thank you everyone for the amazing love i have recieied in my life and thank you for being an influence on my life in one way or another. Love Elder Wimmer