January 27, 2016

This week has been a good one!

Elder Apaza and I are really working hard in this area and we are seeing some great results! We are organizing 2 wedding this coming Saturday and then afterwards we are baptizing them! It's going to be a riot!

Miracle! This Wednesday, all of our appointments had fallen through and we decided to pass by one of our progressing families. We taught them and all that good stuff then when we were leaving the father got up to shake our hands to say goodbye and as he got up he passed out. He started falling down really slowing and his wife and I guided him to the couch. My companion and I explained the priesthood really fast and gave him a blessing. About 3 minutes after the blessing he was normal and felt good. He said, "I felt like the battery went out and when you two put your hands on me and blessed me the battery recharged and worked again." 

I love the priesthood and it was a really cool experience. He is a man of incredible faith. We gave this guy a Book of Mormon and handed him Moroni 10:3-5 to read. We passed by two days later and he said, "I read what you guys gave me and it was really interesting, so I started reading from the front page. I started at 7 and planned to read to 7:30 but when I next looked at the clock it was 10, but I still felt the desire to read. I finally stopped myself at 3am but I could have easily read all night." Then he went on to tell me the story of Joseph Smith and the witnesses and then how Nephi was incredible and he was explaining everything in incredible description. He read until 2nd Nephi and he told me that the book is 200% true. haha His name is Ismael and was truly prepared for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

His wife was also prepared. We have been teaching her and she has been changing so much in her life. He daughter was with us for a lesson and she started crying and thanking us because she has seen the change in her mother. All of us just sat there for a little while crying. The Spirit is incredible. She stopped drinking before we had even taught her the Word of wisdom. She is so lead by the Light of Christ. Her name is Patricia. She is the one who needs to get divorced and we are doing everything to get her divorced. God prepared this family and it's just a huge privilege to have been able to find them and now teach them.

I am really trying to work more in the residential areas. As a missionary it really bugs me how there and people in there who haven't had missionaries visit their house.. So my companion and I are working strategically to work more in the residential housing areas. We are experimenting in these areas, working the far corners and knocking doors. Ha, no one has told us we can't do it, so we are just going to wait until someone tells us. It's easier asking for forgiveness than to deliberately disobey. haha so we are just going to continue to do it until someone tells us we can't and we will be like, "We just want to share a message of Christ" and everything will be alright.

The Fam we are baptizing this weekend is incredible also.. I feel have already written enough tho so I won't bore you guys with them. haha

So that really sums it up for this week I think.... Thanks everyone!

Elder Buhrley

pics

My companion and I woke up at 4 this morning to go do some paper stuff at the bank for the wedding we are going to have this weekend. With our luck the bank was closed so we decided to hit Taco Bell so it was all worth it in the end. But tomorrow we have to wake up at 4 again. Its all good though! as long as we eat Taco Bell!

I found a yogurt with a broncos sticker on it and I didnt even care if it went bad three weeks ago I still bought it and have it in my room now. haha GO BRONCOS!!!!

January 19, 2016

Hey everyone! 

This week was a really solid one. I am really excited about this area. We have been finding a lot of really great families and I'm really pumped for them! We have Four families progressing! Three of them went to church and it was incredible to have them all there, and just by coincidence, our mission president, President Markham, was at our church and met them and get them all pumped about their baptism dates! It was awesome! 

Marriage is a big thing... We are experiencing the good and the bad of marriage. 

The good is that we are having 2 marriages this 30th! I am so pumped! Two of the couples are getting married the 30th and baptized the 31st! I'm so excited for them! They are people passing by on just a little bit of money right now so the Relief Society pitched in and are going to make food for the wedding and the Bishopric is buying them a cake and the Young Women are going to fancy up the chapel for the wedding! This ward is awesome! 

Now.. the bad side of marriage.

One thing about one of our families is that the wife is married to someone else.. She got married when she became pregnant at the age of 16. They lasted less than a year and  then separated and now she has been 30 years away from him but she hasn't gotten divorced and married to her *husband*. I hate Guatemala for their marriage and divorce laws. It costs about 25 dollars to get married and 1250 dollars to get divorced... It's really sad because they are a poor family. We are working right now with a lawyer to help them get divorced and he is a member so we are going to ask him to do it for cheap... I'll let you know how that goes. Please pray for the Familia Martinez!

I talked to you guys about the steps of faith in my last email and I want to talk about it again because I'm seeing miracles here in Villa Nueva!

1 Be Believing. You have to really believe in what you want. You need to pray to God and tell him that this is what you want and that you know that it is something righteous.

2 Commit Yourself. You have to be able to commit yourself completely to your desire.  Sometimes the hardest part of commitment is just telling yourself, I'll do it!'

3 Do Your Part. Fulfill with your commitment. Do all in your power to fulfill your desire and God will make up for the rest. Give it your all. Faith is action. 

4 Pray. Pray as if all depends on God, because it really does. 

5 Expect Trials of Your Faith. God will try your faith. Mosiah chapter 23 verses 21 to 22. Ether 12 verse 6. God wants to see your faithfulness through out it all. He will push us through the fire to be refined. 

6 Expect the Lord to Act. God is a God of miracles. He works miracles according to the faith of his people. We need to have the faith to expect the Lord to work something big in our lives. 

Those are the steps that I have put into play. I love this talk by Elder Cook and I invite you guys to read it. I know that God works miracles. I know that through Him we can achieve anything that we wish to achieve in our lives. I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful for the atonement. I'm grateful for the church that Christ organized. He organized it so that we all might know what we need to do to have happiness during this life, and what we need to do return with him and live in His kingdom after this life. 

Pictures.. I took a picture with our dog again. hahaha It's the neighbor's but I claim it to be ours. The other picture is of our P day in the capital because we had to go to the eye doctor for my companion, and another companionship had to go too. It was such a lame P Day and we got lost in the Capital because their was a peace riot. haha 

I love you guys so much! Have a great week! Should out to Aunt Kara, Ally and Sophie for growing another year!!!

Elder Buhrley

January 12, 201

Hi Family and Friends!

This week was solid! We worked our tails off and it was a really good week of faithful finding and miracles. 

pic-my new district y Patuca

SO.. When I got here I really noticed how this area is a little rough. It's a bit hard. To start, I looked at the numbers of the area and the elders who have been here haven't had an investigator baptized in a long time, and also haven't met the norms of excellence that the mission has for a long time. It's kind of like I came into an area that is completely bare, no investigators whatsoever to work with. A lot of people have told me that it's a really hard area and that there aren't very many baptisms at all but my companion and I are choosing to not listen to that. There are baptisms to be found here.

So to start off I have really been focusing in on finding people by the Spirit. Having the faith to be able to find those people that God has been preparing. He knows who they are. He wants to help you find them, but you have got to listen and follow the Spirit to be guided to those people. Listening to the Spirit we found four very positive families. Two of those families went to church this Sunday and it was amazing to see the members support them. The families said that they felt incredible and have found the church that they like. I'm so pumped for them! They both need to get married so we are working with a few lawyers to see who can do it for cheap:) 

Something funny that's going on is that we have a puppy. haha it's the house owners and he puts in on our patio. Pituca loves to play with us. She loves to do it so much that she will even start scratching the door and barking at us at 3 or 2 in the morning... haha what a blessing!  

This week I have been studying a talk by Elder Gene R Cook, ¨Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ¨ Go look it up! It's incredible. I've always had faith but never have had the way to be able to use it. This talk explains how we can make faith something powerful to achieve whatever goal that we may have. I have be seeing miracles in this area because I have been putting into practice this talk. It's incredible. I know that God will work miracles in our behalf when we exercise faith in him. 

That's it! Thanks for everything! I love you all so much! 

Elder Buhrley

January 6, 2016

Hey!

This week was crazy! We got the call that we had transfers and that I was leaving for Villa Nueva! It's in the capital. I got to say goodbye to all my converts and the members and it was something special. Tears were shed. I will forever remember Palin and all my 6 months I had there. 

I am now in Villa Nueva and it's on of the hardest areas in the mission. All we have are gated comunities.. You can't enter the gated communities if you don't have a name of the person, address, and they have to send a piece of paper that says that they are accepting you. So.. we can't knock doors, we can't every talk to people in the street! It bugs me so bad passing by houses and not knocking them, and seeing a nice couple walking with their child in the street and not being able to contact them... This area is going to be pushing me a lot. It's going to be a game of intelligence and strategy to be able to baptize here. We are going to make incredible relationships with the members and they will give us their friends to baptize hopefully. haha 

Saying goodbye to Elder Duran sucked. He is a very close friend. I had come to love that guy so much.

My new area is cool. There is a Domino's and a Little Cesear's and McDonald's. But I got really fat during Christmas so I am going to back off from the food. haha The members in Palin absolutely killed Elder Duran and I with food! It hurt at some points! They threw a party for me when I left and everyone was there! It was soo good to see all the special people that I was able to teach! I reactivated some families too and it was soo special to see them. One family that is really special to me started crying and I am so happy to have been able to know them. I love the mission

My new companion is from Peru. His name is Elder Apaza. He is 25. So that's been something different, making the change from Elder Duran who turned 18 and left right to the mission and Elder Apaza who is the other extreme. ha I can already tell Elder Apaza and I are going to get along. We are going to have to work ourselves harder than ever to be able to have success here.  It's something new and I'm excited for this! 

I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am so thankful that I am able to represent Him. I am so grateful to be part of his church. The church that he is guiding in these days so that we may be able to receive direction on how to be happy. It's incredible that we have been given such a great privilege as this. To know the truth and be able to follow it. If you don't know if it were true, pray to God, and he will tell you. We can't go through the motions and be alright. Only the true converted people will be able to stay in the light. It's the difference from Nephi and Laman and Lemuel. Nephi prayed to God to receive an answer. Laman and Lamuel did not. 

I love you guys so much! Thanks for everything! 

Elder Buhrley

December 29, 2015

This week was awesome! 

 We baptized! It was Christmas! It was a solid week. I got to see the fam! They all look so good! Made me really pumped to go and work my guts out! 

Christmas was alright! Its not the same as it was at home but it was really funny! Elder Duran and I ate ourselves sick! Everyone gave us soo much food to eat! I never thought I could have shoveled that much food into my mouth. And now Elder Duran and I are preparing ourselves for the 31st to die again! We are allowed to be in the house of someone in the bishopric until 12:30. We went to the house of the familia juarez. We got there and my companion and I are pretty sure that they were fighting just moments before we entered because there was a really tense feeling. We didn't want to spend too much time there so we left at 11:30 and went to our house and climbed the roof and watched all of Palin explode at 12. haha. It was soo awesome! They love fireworks here. It was something else!  

We baptized Flor Rocke. The family story is really sad.. The dad died about 2 years ago. Her brother was diagnosed with a mind disease that makes him lose capability to remember things that happened just a few seconds prior about a year and a half ago. The other brother died about 8 months ago. The mom died a month later from cancer. And now Flor is living with her 2 sisters, one which is pregnant at age 19, and her brother who is slowly losing his mind. Dang I've never experienced or witnessed a harder situation. 

This Christmas was something really special. I really got to focus in completely on the real meaning of Christmas. I love Jesus Christ. I feel like I am coming to know him more and more everyday. I know that he loves me, and that he loves all of you. He made it very clear when he put himself in the way of the bullet of damnation for us. He took upon himself the pain of eternal suffering for us. I love my Savior. I encourage you all to study the scriptures more and look for the character of Jesus Christ. He is an absolutely perfect man. I am eternally grateful for him. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR! MAKE GOALS AND FULFILL WITH THEM!

Elder Buhrley

December 22, 2015

Hey everyone!

I can't believe i'ts almost Christmas. I honestly can't feel it at all. I'm still sweating my eyes out in the wonderful sun of Guatemala. haha 

We baptized Olga Vasquez! I love her so much! God really does prepare people. She had problems with coffee and was living with her "husband". She had a doctor tell her that coffee was destroying her liver and she had a hard time giving it up, but when we got to her house and taught her the word of wisdom she said that gave her enough strength to quit coffee. When we first met her also her "Husband" had left her a few weeks earlier! SHE WAS SO PREPARED! Its a great privilege to be able to teach her. 

 This Christmas, I'm going to go to a member's house and eat with them at 12.30. It's going to be a riot! We are going to the Juarez house and are eating tamales all the night. Tamales are maza, which is ground up corn and water, with a little chicken and peppers in the middle. ha. It's going to be a little different this year than the past year. 

We have a lot of investigators who are progressing and going to church. It's such a blessing to be able to help these people come to Christ. I love the mission so much. 

Everyone should throw a little something spiritual into their Christmas celebration. This is such an awesome time to remember our savior and what he did for us. It's something personal and we should seek to have a personal relationship with our Savior. I love you all so much and am so thankful for everything that you guys do for me. What a blessing it is to have you in my life:)

Elder Buhrley