Week 10 Layco District, El Salvador--September 29, 2015

It must be the wet season...

Ay sorry for not writing yesterday we had no internet all day but we are blessed that we can write today! So this past week weve been getting quite a bit of rain. But on sunday i got absolutely soaked. in the baptismal font cuz we had a baptism! after church we baptized our investigator Gerson. due to unfortunate circumstances we wont be able to confirm him until after conference in two weeks. so pray that everything will go well from here. this past week was super fast cuz so much happened. wednesday we had the meeting for the new missionaries so we had a nice reunion with distrito pedro from the ccm. the messages from presidente and hermana hintze were excellent. we also got our orientation meeting since we came so late our first day. thursday we had exchanges but this time elder jack (the zone leader) came here with me so i was in charge of the area! definitely intimidating to have to do that but it was a great day and we had a lot of success. sunday in sacrament meeting i had to give my first talk in spanish! it was on the obra misional. it went really well. one member even told me he understood everyting and there were few mistakes so thats a relief. i will have to give a talk every month it seems so it was good practive. i also got to teach an english class on saturday to this less active member family. the lesson went really well and that family is super good and they have a daughter that wasnt baptized so we are working hard with them. i love them though! ive been in the field for about a month now (4 weeks) and it hardly even feels like it! i know all of you back home may feel differently but it still feels like i just got off the plane in guatemala! time is really weird here. i really appreciate all your letters and emails always! sorry that i cant respond to everyone every week because time is just my worst enemy here. Love you all!
Elder Abilez

Pupusa count: 81
(we got pupusas from a member on sunday and they were so bomb! they were queso and loroco and also made of maíz instead of arroz. first time having maíz pupusas and loroco. I think thats my new favorite kind now)

Gerson!

while cleaning the apt yesterday my comp found this flag in the corner behind some stuff on the floor. really terrible and he just laughed and i got kinda mad cuz thats disrespectful. we cant retire it here (obviously cuz we cant just set fire to this flag) so i at least decided to hang it up in our apt

Week 9 Layco District, El Salvador--September 21, 2015

It's inevitable

So lets start by saying how im kind of a germaphobe now. always clean my hands before eating absolutely anything and i only drink from my water bottle and im just super super careful. but im sick again. you just cant stop these things i guess. but i got sick last wednesday so im getting better. this past week was really tough though being sick. and we had very little success overall. our baptism on saturday fell through because the hermana got sick and didnt show for her interview. but this week we have plans to get two baptisms so im excited. supposedly i might be baptizing both so we shall see. i dont know exactly what things to talk about this week. even though it was tough it was super super fast. crazy that im writing you guys again actually. yesterday we had a stake activity with the youth preparing to go on missions and we went tracting with them. i got to be the senior companion for an hour and i wasnt really scared at all! and we got two future appointments out of it so it was pretty successful! but heres something that i really wanted to talk about. america. so obviously being here i miss america here and there. but what really gets me is when we talk about the restoration and joseph smith. that went down in america! you never really think about that. but when you see the members here having strong faith that some kid in new york had a vision of God and Jesus Christ you just know that there is some great power in that account. and realize how special america is. and now i mean especially salt lake. honestly i miss salt lake. i miss it because i never appreciated it like i do now. salt lake is fun but its a big city and i really dont like big cities right? but realize that salt lake is so rich in church history. look at the temple and see that it is the house of God. but also see the sacrifice that went in to the 40 years of building it. see the sacrifice of the saints who travelled there to establish it. see how the progress of the church in its early years brought it to salt lake where we base ourselves now. where the prophets and apostles congregate and receive sacred revelation for the world. the power of the church that is in america is great because of the history of the restoration. but the history of the church is strong here too as i stand in the lands of the nephites and the lamanites. here its harder to see through all the garbage and wickedness that runs through the street but i can feel it. so this week think of where you are in terms of history and in terms of how the Spirit resides there. i wish i could just go back to the salt lake temple and look at it to fully appreciate it. but that can wait 21 (nearly at 3 months already!) more months because there is a lot of work to do here. love all of you and i pray for only the best for you all. i know that this church is true and i am grateful that i can carry on the work that joseph smith started almost 200 years ago. ¡Salud!

He's only eaten 42 pupusas, up 13 from last week--major slacker! ;)

Week 8 Layco District, El Salvador--September 14, 2015

Las Cucarachas!

So there are a few cockroaches that live under our bathroom sink and it is so annoying. They dont really gross me out but i really just dont like having them there. one got a little too bold and started walking out from the comfort behind the sink so i killed it mercilessly to send a message to the others. also i killed a cricket thats been in our closet room for the last two weeks. and lots of other cockroaches and spiders and whatever. there are a lot of bugs here. but its okay. hey i finally got a mosquito net from the hermanas here so now i can actually sleep well! little blessings every day. so spanish is hard. not like speaking because for the most part i can teach lessons and talk with people. but its dang hard to understand people still. combined with the accents and how fast they talk it can be really difficult. there are certain members and investigators that we have that i am starting to understand pretty well now. im getting used to the language. and i learn a lot of the slang words. not necessarily to use but rather so i can have some clue of what people say to me. so this week was a roller coaster. on tuesday i got to go on exchanges with the zone leader elder jack in the central district. this area is the heart of the city so there were tons and tons of people. that was a super fun and really different experience. it was fun to be able to talk with elder jack in english and just share all kinds of things. i got to learn a lot from him. the next day the assistants came to our area in layco so elder palacios went with elder coates and i left with elder jack again for some splits. it was kinda intimidating because i pretty much became the senior companion and needed to take charge in our lessons with our investigators. well we didnt get lessons with investigators because one wasnt home and the other two dropped us that night. so that was fun to manage. but we went to a member family to teach a lesson and that went great. thursday was just a long tough day and i was really distracted for a lot of our lessons. friday and saturday are kinda a blur but we got some new investigators and then yesterday was just busy with the work and church. now its p day again and we getta play more soccer! so im excited. you should all be disappointed to know that in these last two weeks i have only eaten 29 pupusas. i hope that i can increase this number exponentially with each weekly update. so we shall see. alrighty you all stay sweet and stuff and eat pupusas cuz i wanna eat them for every meal now. mostly cuz im just hungry all the time even when i have 3 pupusas for breakfast and 3 for dinner and lunch with a member family. i just want more pupusas! and to work of course. if any of you have any doubts or fears about anything in your life right now just forget about them! every day i have thoughts of home or a small doubt just pop into my head for no reason at all! i know that this is just satans way to make us weak and turn away from the Lord. always have a prayer in your heart and when you get to the end of the day you will know that the Lord was supporting you the whole time. this is something that is so important to me here as we have to walk for miles and miles back and forth across town, take nothing but cold showers, and get rejected by tons and tons of catholics. but i know that i need to do this and that this is the one thing that is most fulfilling to me at this point in my life. i love you all so much and wish only the best. sorry that im one of those missionaries that has long emails but i mean ya know. so bless you if you read this. until next week!

Elder Harris y yo last pday!

quick look at my apartment. its not much but its where i will be for at least 10 more weeks

Week 7 Layco District, El Salvador--September 7, 2015

guesssssss what!

okay so this keyboard is english but the computer is spanish so this is even harder than before. but hey im alive! its been a while right. cant type question marks...well im here in a zone called layco in distrito layco. my trainer is elder palacios from colombia and he is superrrrr awesome. like really devoted to the work for reals. its good for me to be able to start my mission out like this so im pretty lucky. hes 21 and has been out for a little more than a year. and guess what! i baptized on saturday! yup four days in el salvador and i already got to baptize someone. it wasnt one of our investigators though. elder palacios is the district leader so we went to go interview one of the hermanas investigators for baptism and amongst it all hermana rodriguez was like elder abilez would you be able to baptize hermana maria tomorrow. and i just said cómo? haha hey i found the question mark! but yeah it was really sudden but im so happy i got to do it. it was sweet and the water was super deep and cold and kinda green but it was cool. so heres a funny story from my first day. we went to go meet with a couple people but none were to be found. then we started tracting on that street just cuz we didnt have an appointment for a while. after knocking a few doors my comp turned to me and was like what door do you feel we should knock. i had no idea so i just said the white house towards the end of the street. and then we had this exchange: la casa blanca? sí. seguro? no estoy seguro. pero..... and then we knocked. and two gigantic dogs started attacking the metal door that every house here has. and then my companion just laughed at me and kept knocking and the dogs were going into some feeding frenzy. they were literally throwing themselves against this door to get out at us. luckily no one answered so we didnt die or anything. but it was pretty funny that the one house that i chose was the worst. ummm ive had pupusas a whole lot here. thursday for dinner, friday for breakfast, saturday for dinner. just now. lots and lots of pupusas. and theyre real good here. we can only get the frijol and queso ones though because pork here can kill us apparently. yeah. so our apartment is pretty alright. we have a working shower and a semi working toilet so thats all we need right? oh and a fridge too. brianna wouldnt like it here because there are spiders probably in every corner but they dont do anything. im in the same district as my buddy elder harris here so its fun to be able to see him every few days for meetings or stuff. and sometimes he answers his companions phone when elder palacios calls so he can talk to me haha. our apartment is definitely better than elder harriss because they gots the bucket shower. oh and we ended up flying to el salvador because we were driving by bus for about 2 hours out of the ccm but then had to turn around and go back because there were some demonstrations goin on and it was causing traffic or whateva. we almost had to go back to the ccm but luckily the church got us some plane tickets so we showed up nice and late to el salvador like we are known to do. the coban missionaries actually had to go back to the ccm because there was no way for them to drive all the way there. i dont even know if theyve still left. i hope so anyway. alright well there are some major things that happened these last two weeks. super exciting stuff. i miss my old district and elder ostler but its also super fun here. there are scary geese on this one street! okay lets see if i can send some pics. les quiero mucho! salud!

Me and my comp--Elder Palacios!

Outside of our apartment ft. volcán!

maría leonor hijango de maza

Week 6 El Salvador San Salvador West/Belize Mission Home--September 3, 2015

MISIÓN EL SALVADOR

SAN SALVADOR OESTE/BELICE

Boulevard del Hipódromo No. 537

Colonia San Benito

San Salvador, El Salvador C.A.

Tel.: (503) 2524-4800, Fax: (503) 2524-4800

Apartado Postal #81 Correos Multiplaza, S.S.

e-mail: 2011271@ldschurch.org

 

                                                                                                                                                                   

September 3, 2015

Dear Abilez Family,

We are pleased to inform you that Elder Abilez has arrived safely in the El Salvador San Salvador West/Belize Mission.  We are excited to have him join our mission family, and can see that he is well prepared to start serving.

He is serving in the Layco Zone, and in the Layco Area, with his trainer Elder Palacios  from Columbia.

               

Elder Abilez will be able to e-mail or write to you every Monday.  Letters from home are a very important part of missionary life.  Please write weekly and focus on positive and uplifting things to help him maintain a healthy attitude.  The mail system in El Salvador is reliable.  If you wish to send packages they can be sent to the mission office.  Address them to:

Elder Bryce Jordan Abilez

Misión El Salvador San Salvador Oeste/Belice

Apartado Postal #81, Correos Multiplaza

San Salvador, El Salvador

We know the Lord will bless you and him as he faithfully dedicates this time to teaching others to follow the Savior Jesus Christ.

                                                                                 

Very cordially,

President & Sister Hintze