I'm Staying in Coban...Yeah!

Hey Family!!
Well I am doing well and it sounds like you are doing really well over there. You sound busy and that is what I like to here. Well you are all probably wondering how changes went down well, you don´t have to worry. Everything in Coban 2 is staying the same. My companion and I are together again and I am really happy. We have a lot of work to do here and I am excited for this new change! This week was a really great week minus it was very hectic and not my favorite. The baptisms that were planned all fell through because they are not ready. We had felt that one of them was not ready but he confirmed that for us so now it is just more teaching and praying that he progresses. The other two are ready we just can´t get him married... it sucks. But hey we saw him in the Plaza and he is still optimistic so I am hoping things will go well for him this week!
The thanksgiving dinner was so great!! We had a turkey that was amazing and I took a picture but sadly the computer won´t let me show you, it is what happens in Internet Cafes. It was a lot of fun and it made me think a lot about the family so I am hoping to see so many pictures of the Thanksgiving up there. It would be the greatest. We also went to President Fraatz´s birthday the next day and had another Thanksgiving dinner. He is the old stake president in our area and was mission president in Nicaragua. It was really great so this week was filled with a lot of food. It has been nice and I heard it gets worse. Tamales and ponche everyday baby. I am going to get so fat, but hey it is Christmas in Coban and that is the best thing in the world! Here in Coban the church does a parade and the elders are involved and everything. They do a nativity scene down main street so I am pretty excited about that. It really is going to be a great change and I am going to party hard!! haha just kidding I meant to say work. Well to tell you about the area...We are working with the Coronado Family. They are 18 and 21 and married. We contacted them and I can´t remember if I have told you all about him but they are progressing really fast. They have some doubts and weird questions but hey I think that is all part of it right! We had some really good lessons with them this week and I am hoping that they progress like crazy! We are also teaching a 23 year old girl named Marcia who is progressing also. She only speaks kekchi, Q´eq´chi!! I am learning a little here and there but not much. I am trying to get a little down so the sister that is helping us doesn´t have to translate everything but it is a very pretty language. They now have a triple in Kekchi. It is great!! The people here are very blessed for it and the church is growing pretty fast here!
Yesterday we had a Conference and Pres. Uchtdorf and Elder Holland spoke!! It was amazing and what was great was Sis. Torres was leading the music! It was amazing to see her and I know she is the happiest to be able to come back to Guatemala! When Elder Holland bore his testimony in Spanish it was amazing and I knew the people here were very touched by it. Marcia came and she really liked it.
Well family everything is working out amazing! The work is great and I love my mission. It is ballin and it really is so great to be here! I love you all family! Elder Colton Steamberry Llewelyn

Celebrating Thanksgiving

Hello family!!

Today has been an amazing day and this week has been amazing!! I went and bought all the Christmas presents today and I hope that you all will like them. It is kinda crazy stuff but hey! I am in Guatemala! Everyone sounds like they are doing really good except for Alyce and her sewing machine part. haha tell them to be nice and to think about what they´ve done... haha ok I don´t have very good advice on this one. Well this week was a good one. We worked hard and we are now teaching two Kekchi women who don´t speak any spanish. haha it is really hard but they are both learning and one is reading and that is because the other can´t read. The triple is now being printed in Kekchi and it is amazing! haha not like I understand or even read it yet. We had three baptisms scheduled this week and I am very excited. One is Jose Barrios. He is 23 and is now ready to be baptized!! He is great!! He was the first investigator I met here and well we had to put ourselves pilas as they say here and he just needed a little push! The others are Wily and his 13 year old daughter! They are great and they have been waiting a long time for this. We have to get them married first which has us a little worried but we have the plans to baptize them this week hopefully!! Today we will be celebrating Thanksgiving!! We paid a sister in the ward to help us out and we are having thanksgiving as a zone!! Whoo!! I love Coban and I love my family! I hope all is well and that you are all still feliz!

Another Great Week

Hello the best family in the world!

I would like you to know that this Monday has been amazing. It was so nice to hear from all of you and all your letters were amazing! You all sound like you are doing really good and I`m doing really good here! We put another baptismal date so now we have 3 baptisms for the 19th of November! It has just been a really good week and I am loving this change but I am a little sad that it is ending. We are already in week 5 and who knows what is going to happen. I don`t want my companion to go. We have the same time and we get along really well.

But for a relapse of what my week consisted of, well the excited things because as a missionary things happen but it is what I do everyday. So that you all know Otto Perez, mano duro, won the elections. President Watts said that we could leave which wasn`t bad but outside of our house at about 10 o clock last night there was fireworks crazy things happening outside and yelling and car horns ambulances and all that jazz. Haha it was pretty funny. Both my companion and I had a good laugh because we just thought, well it`s Guatemala. But for a good spiritual experience, here is a good one. Well on divisions with one of the teenagers in the ward we went contacting. We contacted a young couple and they told us that we can come back. We scheduled an appointment with them for the next day, we passed and they weren`t there. Well a couple days passed and we had a busy day so we asked the priests if they could do divisions and they left. We passed by the house again and they did not accept us but we scheduled an appointment with them again, it is what happens in Guatemala but I felt like there was something there. We my companion and I passed by the next day and we had an amazing lesson with them. They had a lot of questions and the sister told us, I don`t have a lot of trust with random strangers but she looked at me, pointed and said but I felt something that said I could trust you. This family is very young. She is 18 and he is 21 and they are married. They don`t go to a church right now but they told us they weren`t sure which is the one that was true. It is like a Joseph Smith story. I know the Lord is blessing us.

This work is amazing. It is full of miracles and I know that with the support I have that the families here in Guatemala are being blessed. I love you all. You all enjoy your new Justin Bieber Christmas CD while I am here eating tamales and ponche for Christmas!! Whoo!! haha I love you!

Second Baptism

Hello family!!

Happy Halloween!!

This week has been really really good. Everyone sounds like they are doing good and I am happy to hear that Hannah is now able to kiss random strangers and she is certified to do it! (Hannah is CPR Certified...)

The hunt sounds like it went really well except for the fact that you didn`t shoot anything but hey! There is always next year right? This week went by really fast and I feel like this change is going by really fast! I have been here now for 3 weeks and it feels like it is flying by. I love Coban and I don`t care who knows it. I am having trouble with the computer and I would like to add photos but I think it might have to wait until next Monday. The baptism went really well. Pablo was really excited but he was very nervous and he has reason. His family had told him that they would kick him out of the house if he was baptized but he did it anyways. He has a family here in the ward that is very supportive of him. They entire family showed up and I think that helped him out as well. We also had 3 other 8 year olds that the parents had asked us if we could teach them. They were all baptized and it was a really great service. The ward put on everything and it was way nice. This ward is amazing and the people here and very supportive. All in all the baptism went really well. The rest of the week was filled with hiking in the mountains and going from one edge of the earth to the other! haha there is a lot of walking. It takes about 3 hours to walk from one end of my area to the other, that is why we don`t do it. These boots are a lifesaver and I am rockin them.

I also went on divisions with Elder Nelson this week after district meeting. It was a pretty good time. We were teaching a lesson and we had brought one of the young men in the ward who is preparing to go on a mission with us. Well I was teaching a principle to a less active sister in the ward and a chicken decided to walk into the house, it is normal don`t worry, what is not normal is when the young man we brought picks it up when we are teaching and begins to give kisses to the chicken. haha only with Elder Nelson would weird things like this happen. We are also teaching a couple of fairly old people and well the sister doesn`t really respond to my questions why? she only speaks kekchi and I don`t understand a word she says haha so those are my pretty good stories of the week.

Today was a sister in our zones birthday so we all got together and hit the piñata in the shape of a sister missionary. It was pretty funny and then we went to a nice pizza restaurant and there was a group of europeans and they were talking in english, I said hi and I got scared because I don`t know how to do missionary work in english. It brought on some good laughs.

Well that was my week this week. This place is amazing and I love where I am. The baptism was a miracle and it was awesome to see all of the kids get baptized. It reminds me of my baptism yet I don`t remember it very well I just remember how happy everyone was. I see now why and what an amazing step that is in someones life if they really understand the significance of baptism. We take upon the of Christ because we know what he did for us in Gethsemane and we believe in the words he taught us and maybe at the age of 8 we are not quite sure what that means we just know what happened is real. I love this work and I love Guatemala. It has it`s funny points and all like when I was shopping in the store this morning there we two live chicken just hanging out on the coat wrack but it is something you just grow accustomed to!! haha I love you family!!