May 18, 2016

The mission is going great! We are seeing a ton of miracles and its a lot of fun to preach the gospel! 

My companion with Hyro, Milton and Jazmine

Well I really don't know what to write! We are just working with some great people right now. We are working with a ton of part member families and referrals from members! We have a guy named Milton who lives with his girlfriend whose name is Jazmine. They are soo awesome. We are just the best of buds. Milton is from Nicaragua so he has to get his cousin to take his papers out for him and send them here to Guatemala so we can marry Milton and Jazmine and get them baptized! Jazmine was baptized when she was younger with her family but are now inactive. Its been fun reactivating them! Jazmines brother, Hyro, is a stud. He is 19 and was also living with his girlfriend but ever since we started teaching them he has stopping smoking and drinking and now he is kicking his girlfriend out so he can follow the commandments so he can serve a mission. We have had an incredible time teaching them! 

We are also teaching Martin. He is married to Anna, a lady Elder Guzman and I baptized. Martin hadn't been able to go to church because he had been working Sundays but he talked to his boss and in the end left his job to be able to go to church with us. The first Sunday that he went was a stake conference. After the conference we went to visit him and he looked at us and said, 'That was soo much more than I could have ever hoped for.' He is progressing incredibly fast! When we asked him, 'Martin, when do you want to be clean of your sins?' He responded, 'I want to get baptized as soon as possible.' haha he is awesome! 

We are working some more great people who we are trying to close the deal with right now! With faith I will send you baptismal pics this next Tuesday! 

I love you all! Thanks for all the help. I know that the Gospel is true. I know that Jesus Christ atoned of our sins. It's something personal. There are two things we can do, learn about our Savior, or learn how to become like our Savior. The one takes place in our minds, and the other takes place in our soul. 

That's all I have to say! haha I love you guys! Keep pushing yourselves to be the best you can be!

peach trees!

Elder Buhrley

May 11, 2016

 Hi All,

I am staying in Antigua for at least 6 weeks more! That's going to be great because we have some great investigators! I will still be with Elder Sorto so we are excited! 

We baptized Marcos, Monica and Flor! It was great to see them get baptized! Marcos and Monica started crying after their baptism and it was a sweet moment. 

It was so great to see the family this last Sunday! I feel so bad because the connection was bad and I was in a noisy room and couldn't hear anything! But nonetheless, it was just so great to see them. I love my family! I give thanks to God for putting me with them! 

We just had zone training and my companion and I got to share some good stuff. We shared a lot about covenants. God is a God of covenants. We make covenants in the temple and through baptism but we can also make promises, or covenants with Him in our daily lives. God is always giving us revelation in our lives, whether we notice it or not. We always receive thoughts or feelings that we should do something, like maybe read the scriptures more or pray more. But we just rub off that feeling and keep going in our lives. 

President Duncan (a 70) told us the other day that every one of these revelations, thoughts, and feelings, are a commandment from God. He is telling us these things that we may follow them to be blessed and happy. When we notice a revelation, we can make a promise with God that we will follow it and He will bless us more. 

¨God I promise and covenant with you that I will do my homework the day that I receive it, and I know that thou will help me with my studies.¨ My companion and I have been making these promises with God and we have seen so many miracles. ¨God we promise that we will contact 15 families every day, please lead us to a family that though hast prepared.¨ We are seeing a lot of miracles. I invite you all to think about the little or big things in your life you can promise to God you will do. I know you will see miracles!

I love you all! 

Here are some pics of the wedding and baptism! 

Elder Buhrley

May 3, 2016

This week was a good one! We are working with some great people! We couldn't close the deal with Ismeal Cristian and Egma so we are going to keep working with them and with faith they get baptized this Sunday.  We had a wedding! Those are always fun. We married Monica and Marcos! They are hilarious. They will get baptized this Sunday with the sister of Monica whose name is Flor. The computer that I'm using is ancient so its not letting me send pics. I'll send them the next week! 

The other day our Mission President read with us Mark 12:41-45

41 ¶And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.

 42 And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.

 43 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:

 44 For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.

Abundance and Substance. God's asking and requires from us a portion of our abundance, but what He really wants is a portion of our substance, a part of our hearts, where it hurts to give but we faithfully do it anyways. He wants people who work in the 4th quarter, when the body hurts and you're all beat up but you just keep giving more of yourself. He wants us to give part of our soul. He wants more from us. Are you giving of your abundance or your substance? Are you giving where it is easy to give or are you giving it all? When we give of our substance, we put our lives in His hands, and just like the great carpenter He is He makes us into something much better than we could have made ourselves into. 

Matthew 16:24-25

 24 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.

25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

That was my spiritual thought! I love you guys! Can't wait to see the fam this Sunday! We will be skyping at more or less 7pm Guatemala time, Mom!!

Elder Buhrley

April 26, 2016

Hey everyone! This week was normal. 

We have worked hard this week and it was fun. Elder Sorto and I are changing our way of working in our area 100% so it's been fun! We are looking at 3 baptisms this Sunday. We have Ismael, Cristian (his son) and Egma (Wife of Cristian). They all know they want to get baptized but not this Sunday. Elder Sorto and I have planned a killer week with lessons with them in different houses of members and with the best members in our ward. We are going to be having a great spiritual experience with them every day and the Spirit will lead them to the waters of baptism. We are going to close this deal! They will be getting baptized this Sunday!

Other than that I don't have much to say. Working hard and have been receiving a lot of revelation lately on how I can better myself as a missionary! It's exciting! 

The other day I was read Joshua 1:9 with some recent converts,

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. 

Sometimes we over think things. God has not commanded us to be perfect the first try. He has commanded us to be strong and of good courage, or in other words, He commands us to try our best. He tells us not to be afraid, just to have faith in Him. And the promise is true, when we do these things He will be with us, guiding us, helping us, picking us up when we fall. This promise is the same promise that we receive as we partake of the sacrament every Sunday. Just try your best. Trust in God. We will fall, but He will be with us and make things be all right. 

I love you guys! Thanks for all the support! 

Elder Buhrley

April 19, 2016

Hey! We are seeing so many miracles! I will share the biggest from this last week! 

This last week Elder Sorto and I were set on baptizing but didn't have anyone to baptize! We then starting to work like crazy in our area book and wrote down all the people who had attendances to see if we could find a miracle with one of them. We were visiting them but then Saturday came around and we still didn't have anyone to baptize. 

Elder Cox and Elder Rosas are two elders in my zone and they had a baptism and needed me to go and do the interview. The baptismal candidate could only do it at 8pm and there wasn't a bus to get back to my area so we all thought that it would be a good idea to do divisions. So we planned on me going to the area of these Elders from Saturday to Sunday. 

Saturday morning I was just talking to Elder Cox, who is a stud, and he told me, ¨Elder Sorto and I are going to find someone in your area to baptize tomorrow!¨ and I kind of told him the same thing back and then he told me ¨Bro, I had a dream last night that your companion and I found someone today who had already gone to church and I did the interview with him and he got baptized tomorrow.¨ 

I didn't think much of it but left my area and went to work with Elder Rosas. Elder Rosas and I killed ourselves but every single one of the appointments that he planned fell through. We were getting rejected left and right, and to make things worse, during our first lesson we visited a family in an alley. There was a cat lying down in front of us and a car came driving by and ran over the cat. The cat was rolling in circles shooting blood with its eyes bulging out of its head and I just grabbed the little girl of this family and kept her from watching her cat die like that. haha it was soo bad! Then Elder Rosas and I went on for a little while longer in rejection and a druggy wanted to fight Elder Rosas! It was really funny but at the same time it sucks when you can't find a lesson!

A goat I found on P-day :)

 I then received a call from my companion, he said ¨I'm shaking! Elder Cox is doing a baptismal interview for a guy that we just found who had gone to church before!¨ Apparently Elder Sorto and Elder Cox went around in our area looking through the old investigators and went to a house looking for Octavio (old investigator) when they came across Cruz, his brother. When they entered into the house Elder Cox leaned over the my companion and told him that this was his dream. When they sat down with Cruz, a 19 year old stud, they started talking a little bit. Elder Cox in all boldness told Cruz that he had seen him in his dream last night, and that he was ready and prepared to be baptized. They challenged him to get baptized the next day and Cruz accepted. It was sooo crazy! What a miracle! God really is preparing people for his gospel in many different ways. It was awesome seeing Cruz get baptized. God really does work miracles in the lives of the faithful. Do you have enough faith to see a miracle today?

I love you guys! Look for the miracles in your life! 

Elder Buhrley

My Zone

April 13, 2016

Hey everyone! This week was awesome!

I want to start off with the big miracle that my companion and I saw. After the priesthood session of General Conference with the talk by Elder Nelson about the power of the priesthood, I had been praying a lot to really understand the power of the priesthood I hold and I have been asking God what I need to have more priesthood power. I received an answer this last Wednesday. Elder Sorto had contacted Carlos in the street Tuesday and put a lesson with him for Wednesday. We got to the house of Carlos and Carlos showed us his wife who was on her death bed. She had been in bed and hadn't eaten anything for over a week. She couldn't talk or hear. She looked horrible, but this humble family in the tin house couldn't afford any medical treatment. I just felt deep in my chest that we needed to give her a blessing and Elder Sorto felt the same. We gave her a blessing declaring that she would receive full health. The family was very thankful and we scheduled a lesson with them for another day. While on divisions with Elder Cox we were working close to the house of Carlos and Maria so I decided to see how they were doing. I knocked the door and Maria answered it. She was walking. She had been healed. She then gave us thanks with tears in her eyes. Carlos and Maria both went to church this last Sunday and are preparing for the 24th for their baptism. God is a God of miracles. His power is here in the earth and its held by the worthy priesthood holders of His church. 

This last week was full of miracles. We found 5 families who are progressing. It feels so good to teach and testify to families that they can be together forever and that God has prepared a way for them to have a complete joy in the life through the gospel that he gave us through His son.

So.. My fam went to Hawaii. I felt that I needed to throw down some money also so I invited some Elders to Dominoes on divisions. haha It was Elder Rosas' birthday.

Love you all! Thanks for all the support!

Elder Buhrley

April 5, 2016

Hey everyone! This week was crazy! It was a lot of fun though!

So my companion and I were really stoked for this week and our plans changed rapidly. I hadn't had a personal study in 2 weeks so on Friday I got Elder Sorto up nice and early to be able to have a personal study. We got 15 minutes of study when we got a call from President saying that we needed to find the sisters in our zone a new house that same day.. So we didn't get to study but instead we went to find the hermanas a house. Something happened with the Hermanas that... well.. if it were to happen with Elders no action would have taken place, but with hermanas it's a little different. Gotta protect the Hermanas! :) So my companion and I spent the whole day working our hardest to find them a house in the hardest housing market in all of Guatemala. It was rough! But at the closing of the day we found them a house and we, with members help, moved the hermanas' stuff from their old house to the new house. We finished really late and had to get up early again the next day to clean their old house and then talk with the landlord and do paperwork. With conference and that experience we didn't work in our area for 2 days. haha but it was a fun little adventure.

Conference was incredible! I loved every second of it! I took 3 questions into Conference and received answers to all of them! It's incredible to have set apart men and women like them! 

Sunday night Elder Sorto and I called some converts but they didn't answer the phone. We called them 4 times, because Guatemalans never answer the first or second time, and they still didn't answer. We then felt that we needed to pass by their house, so we followed our feelings. We found the young couple crying together with their kids in a different room. My companion and I followed the feelings and thoughts that were given to us by the Holy Ghost and we were able to find out exactly what was going on. They had been fighting and were having troubles in their marriage. With everything that my companion and I were able to learn from Conference about marriage we were able to help them and give them the advice that helped them in that moment. There are so many experiences like that in the mission and it feels so good to know that God is guiding you. Look for ways to be an instrument in the Lords hands! 

I don't have time! Love you guys! 

Elder Buhrley