February 11, 2015

Okay I have 23 minutes and about an hours’ worth of stuff to say so hopefully I will be blessed. J

This week was great. I leave Tuesday for Santa Ana. I will miss the hospitality and the people here but I’m am excited to finally get to share this great message. Monday I got your package. Thanks! It’s been really nice to have!  And I got a letter from Granddad and Brynlee a couple days ago. I think mail from Utah takes longer but Idk. Tuesday we got to leave the CCM and see the City. It is a beautiful city. The architecture is amazing. We went to the central commercial which is a market and I was feeling great when a guy ran up to the new nurse lady who had only been here a week and snatched her necklace. It was really freaky. He ran off after that. I immediately put my watch in my pocket. We walked around the market and saw some stuff. I didn’t have much Guatemalan money so I didn’t get anything. We went to Wendy’s afterwards and it was great to finally have some “American” food. After we went to this plaza and began talking to people. It was harder than I thought. Especially to get started. I felt like I was in the movie “The Best Two Years”. But as we began to talk to more and more people it became easier and at the end a guy came up to us and started talking to us while I was talking to someone else so my comp started talking to him and I continued talking. I only gave out 2 pass along cards cause time was a little short. But a friend in my district gave out 4 LDM. It was a sweet experience even if I could understand much of what they were saying. We heard a great talk about the atonement on Sunday by Elder Holland from June 2006 and a great Devotional with our president that got us fired up. We now say “fuego arriba” to our mission president all the time haha. He says much of how we need to smile because people don’t want to listen to sad people.  That kind of reminds me of your experience dad haha. Yesterday elder Jose Alonzo from the area 70 of Central America came to the CCM and talked to us. Our district had a great a capella special musical number of mas cerca Dios de te. It was a great experience and brought the spirit in really well. He talked to us about Enos and prayer. He also talked about D&C 11:21 and if we desire something we can have it through Christ. We had an amazing district meeting after but the spirit constrains me to talk about it.  It’s just a lot and it was a pretty emotional meeting because our DL told how he had a friend die of cancer who was one of the happiest people and best friends he had and how his grandma died just a week before he left. Later he said it’s just as hard to lose a family member as it is to have one fall away from the church. Which is pretty true. Although with your family member you know you can see them again if you and they are faithful. But things are going great here. BYU needs to pick up some slack. oh yeah we got like 20 new American’s it’s crazy and one came all the way from New Zealand. I told him my dad went there on his mission. I can’t remember what part. He didn’t say much about Wellington but he seems like a great guy. He is going to Coban Guatemala. Which is the jungle and they speak q’eqchi. It’s the native language of Guatemala. A guy in our district taught us a little he is one of my best friends in the zone. And our ZL. He is going to Qtalcenango and his dad went to the same mission which is crazy! Anyways I’m excited to leave Tuesday. I’m pretty sure I take a bus. I’m going to miss some people here. Hope things are going good at home. I can’t believe you are disgracing my room like that. I’m pretty sure that I write Monday but not 100 percent. Anyways peace and love, Elder Hendricks. Keep up the letters and tell my home boys from the Lou to write me.