2012 May 21

2012 May 21 PM

Hey guys!

This week was good. I sent you guys’ fotos of some of the stuff that I have seen here in Colotenango. It is so beautiful. And then there are some fotos with me and my comp. He is cool I like him a lot.

Also, I need the recipe for no-bake cookies please. :)

The time in this area is going by soo quickly that it is just ridiculous. My Mam learning has been kind of stunted, but still miraculously quickly considering, lately because all of my learning is just from asking people and writing it down but the bad thing is that Mam is not a standardized language at all. On one hill they say it differently than the valley which is different than the mountain on the other side of the river and like that. So I get kind of confused sometimes in what I am supposed to say, because everybody understands everyone but not everyone speaks the same. So my theory is that if I just get a book that I can learn it from it will be a lot easier. So that is basically what I am counting on, and I am going to get them from a member on Tuesday. And the rest will be history. 

Something cool that I found out this last week was that if you say Washington (where I am from), you are almost saying "I want to sleep" in Mam.  wa chin tan. 

Me and Elder Vaughn are getting really excited about Colotenango. On Sunday, 7 investigators went to church and in his entire 3 months that he had been here before, only 3. So we are getting extremely blessed right now and I am loving it. So it is really cool. 

Yeah, the heat of Colotenango after the cold of San Francisco is so exhausting. I come home every day completely exhausted and I have gotten better but before, I would just plan for the following day and crash on my bed in my church clothes just to "rest my eyes" and end up sleeping in them and waking up at like 3 to go to bed. But it is not so bad anymore and my legs are getting used to climbing all of the mountains (see fotos). So I don´t get as tired anymore but thanks for the pointer about how to not be so tired.

We have this one family, Domingo, who are progressing pretty well they went to church after I don´t know how many years of inactivity on Sunday and there a lot of grown up kids (2) in that family who want to be baptized. And we are excited about everything else that is happening too.

That is awesome that everyone is so busy and important and amazing as always.

I don´t have any more time so I will talk to you guys next week.

Love

Elder Froelich

2012 May 7

2012 May 7

Hey guys!

This last week went by so extremely fast! It was just crazy because all of the other weeks seemed to be going be pretty quickly too but this last week was just ridiculously fast. 

AND before I forget I DID MY FIRST SEW TODAY! My pants were coming undone next to the pants so I just went into that sew and needle bag that you sent me with and I saw a lot of stuff in there that I didn´t even know how to use at all. But I just got the string that I wanted and I doubled it up and tied a knot and TA-DA! (I sent you a picture with the email). So you guys can be really proud of me if you want. It is kind of ugly and not much to look at but I think that for the first time it is not half bad!  

My week has been good though. It was a little bit sad saying goodbye to everyone (and I still have to finish doing it tonight when we get back to San Francisco) but I am getting all of their contact information so that I can keep in touch with them after the mission as well. So it is all good. And we definitely have to make sure that we talk about the trip in October when I talk to you guys on Sunday.

That is awesome that all of my siblings are going well and keeping busy with moving or trips to Africa or a whole bunch of other stuff. 

That is awesome that you were able to teach such a great lesson about applying the scriptures to our lives. As I have been kind of speed reading the Book of Mormon in these last few weeks, I have really increased my love for the Book of Mormon and then I got to thinking that if that happened with the Book of Mormon when a long time ago (like before the mission) it was a chore to read the Book of Mormon, I got to thinking that if that can happen with the Book of Mormon, then it could probably happen with any other book of scripture. I don´t know if I am going to have time to really delve into the other scriptures too much while I am still on my mission (but I do want to do so more with the New Testament) but I am excited to get that kind of love for all of the other scriptures as well (because right now it really is kind of a chore to read the Old or New Testaments even though it really shouldn´t be). So I am excited about that: Loving the scriptures-all of them. 

Well, I love you guys a lot. And the scriptures are true. They really are. Read them and you will love them.

Love

Elder Froelich

2012 May 14

2012 May 14 PM

Hey guys!

It is going to be really fun when you guys come down to pick me up!  I am really excited about it!  And I am really excited about my new area too, Colotenango.  Plus it is back in Huehuetenango and I love Huehuetenango so I am excited about it just because of that.  But I am also going to be able to learn a little bit of Mam!  And I have 6 months to learn it which is for sure long enough to get a basic sufficiency and supposedly it is easier to learn a language when you have already learned one.  So I already learned Spanish and I was starting to learn Quiche so I think that I should be able to get Mam down pretty quickly.  I am SOO EXCITED!  There is no way for me to express how excited I am about this area!

This week was good.  Monday I went to PDay in Momos and then we got back to San Francisco and said goodbye to all of the members.  On Tuesday I had changes and I got to my new area in Colotenango, Huehuetenango.  It is so hot there especially coming from San Francisco, El Alto which is one of the coldest parts of the whole mission.  So I have been getting really tired lately every night and sweating for every little thing that I do like Niagara Falls but it is all good.  I love this area.  I am learning Mam pretty quickly and easily because Quiche actually stemmed off of it so a lot of the words and grammatical structures are pretty similar from the little that I know.  So that is cool.  I am planning on buying a Mam book either today or tomorrow to get started.  There are a lot of people who can only speak Mam too which is frustrating when I can´t talk to them because a lot of the times, the members are too busy to be with us all of the time so I am going to learn it.   J

I am winding down from the President´s challenge to read the Book of Mormon in 40 days and I just finished reading about when Christ came to the Americas and taught all of the people.  Before, I guess that you could say that I knew that it was true and could more or less say that it was true but it was just different this time.  I actually felt like I knew for sure that it was true, like I was reading the journal of somebody who had actually been there.  Which really is what the Book of Mormon is,-a Journal.  That was a sweet experience.  It actually happened and I had never thought about it like that until this last time that I read the Book of Mormon.

Well, I am out of time so I have to go. Thanks for everything! I love you guys!

Love

Elder Froelich