HERE YA GO!!!

Hola Familia,

How is everything going? It sounds like things are going great in Utah. I´m so happy to be here! I thought I was missing the snow a little bit, but 5 degrees below? Pfff that´s tough! Christopher, WOW. I just don´t even know what to say about you. In a slam dunk contest? Playing varsity? Tanner? What have you been up to! I haven´t heard from you for a while! I´m so proud of all of you though, thank you so much for the awesome emails, I love them! I got an email from Sherrie, Emily, Shane, and last week from Uncle Nathan. Will you tell them thanks a ton? Seriously, those emails are awesome, I really appreciate them! I heard from grandma about her back, I´m so sorry! I´ll keep her in my prayers, like I always do. I hope everything works out! Thanks for all of the emails, you all are awesome.

Well, I´m here in the internet cafe, and I just have no idea where to start. I have a list of things to tell you that is huge! We have had some of the funniest, greatest, weirdest experiences this week.

So, When I first got here, I was PETRIFIED to try to talk to people in Spanish. I´m shy in English, let alone in Spanish!? ha Well, I´m happy to say this is wearing off, and yesterday we went on splits with the secretaries. The secretary I was with, Elder Stoddard said, ¨Alright, you´re the Senior Companion, you´re guiding this whole day!¨ So he was having me do everything. I´m getting used to talking to people now, so It´s not half bad, but we stopped at a members house to give a lesson. I´m not sure what happened, but all I can say is the gift of tongues is real. It wasn´t me, it was a blessing for sure, but I lead the whole lesson, shared our little spiritual thought, and just sat and talked to the people! I had to ask for a word or phrase every now and then, but I feel like it´s finally clicking! It was definitely a milestone with the whole spanish thing.

So, when I was a little worried to talk to people, I saw this family. This was one of the first nights we were here, and I thought to myself how I wanted to talk to that family! We were going somewhere so I didn´t talk to them! (I know, I know i´m learning my lesson!) Anyways, I watched where they went, and thought to myself, one day I WILL talk to that family! The next night we were passing where I saw them go, and I said to my companion, we should knock on the door of this house! Well, It turns out that this family doesn´t live there, but by some miracle they were there again! We talked to them and set up an appointment! We´ve been teaching them, and let me tell you, they are AWESOME investigators. They are asking all the right questions, and they sincerely want to know if it´s true or not! I am SO excited for this family. There are the two parents, Edwin and Cecilia Marroquin, and they have a baby. I love this work.

You know, It´s kind of funny how you told me to stay away from drunk guys dad... (We call them ´BOLOS´) here. Yesterday we were walking down the street, and I see this guy who has connections to the ward. He lived in Boston with his family, and grew up in Boston, so he can speak English. He´s here because after Sept 11th, the government cracked down, put him in Prison in Lousiana, and then sent him back here to Guatemala. He is an awesome guy, who is sincerely seeking the truth, but won´t accept the gospel. He reads his bible and knows it really well, but not well enough to accept that he needs to be baptised. He won´t listen to the missionaries very often.. Anyways, the other day we were talking in English, and we totally hit it off, we´ve been having these deep conversations and stuff. He calls me Mel, and we´re ´friend´s´. Well we were walking down the street to a Cita, and we saw him standing there! He stopped us and wanted to talk to us. It was pretty obvious he was drunk with the big strand of spit stuck in his goatee and with how weird he was acting. He was really rude to my companion and just wanted to talk to me.

So, we´re just sitting there talking and he´s telling me how God loves us and how we´re all important but he has none of the answers. It was really interesting to see how desperate he was! He started balling and crying and asking me what God expects of us. I was doing my best to testify that we are his children and that he really does want us to return to live with him and have happiness in this life. He started telling me how much he loved me! I was like... I love you too! haha and I put my hand on his shoulder because he´s crying and could just tell how hard his life is! Well, all of a sudden he grabs my head, pulls it in towards his, and gives me a big wet nasty kiss on the cheek! Wow, Can I just tell you how awkward that was? I had NO idea what to do. My companion was standing there trying so hard not to laugh, and everyone has been getting a big kick out of the fact that Elder Melville got kissed by a Drunk guy! Whew, so, let this be the lesson. NEVER tell a Bolo you love him.

I´ve really been thinking about the Book of Mormon a lot lately, and the more and more we teach and talk and study it, the greater my appreciation is for it. Seriously, It is incredible. The fact that I love about it is we can know it´s true for ourselves! We don´t have to believe our friends, family, or some Pastor somewhere. We can know, between ourselves and our Heavenly Father if this book is true or not. I love the challenge in Moroni 10 that the prophet Moroni gives us to pray and ask our Heavenly Father, with FAITH, and we can find our answer. How awesome is that, we can know between ourselves and our Heavenly Father! No other person! So, we need to take advantage of this! Don´t believe because the Prophet tells us good stuff that we should follow, don´t believe because it´s just what our family does. Find out, using FAITH if this book is true or not. If we don´t believe that we will get an answer, we won´t, but if we DO believe, I PROMISE we can receive the answers we need through the Holy Ghost. I love that.

Well, my time is just about up, and I need to get to work! We need to find more investigators who are READY to hear the message. So i´m just going to spit out some answers to your questions really fast...

Elder Hautau is still having a tough go, the Assistants are arranging splits so that I can go out and do work with him in our area.. WHEW pray for me. I´m way excited though.

Fast sunday is hard on the mission, but easily INCREDIBLE, I bore my testimony in spanish, it was great. It was great to hear Elder Lanham´s testimony too.

We have a baptismal date! A little 9 year old named Oscar Blanco decided to be baptised! He will be baptised Jan 17 at 6 pm. COOL!

I gave the whole Blanco family CTR rings, as well as some other people, and I´m DRY out. They love those, so if you have more to send that would be great. thanks.

My head is fine, you can barely see the mark... haha

My back and feet get tired, but no big problems! Everything is great and I feel like i´m blessed wíth strength when i´m working as hard as possible.

I´m just about out of green drink, so if you can find a big thing of that, that would be great! Anything healthy! People can send whatever they think i´d like, I don´t care haha
They don´t
have to send anything though

I need a bunch of addresses, and if they´re at college just their home addresses are fine. Courtney Brown,(is she married?) Cara Claybaugh, Jillian, Thanks for Kaseys email addy. Marc Miller.

I love you all so much, I´ll see ya soon!

Elder Melville