You will be able to walk where others will not, as you walk with the intent to do good

This past week has been INSANE!!!!! Let me tell you about the bummers, the miracles, and the hilarious experiences of this past week. You´re going to have to try to imagine them as I do my best to convey the unrealness of it all haha. 
So first the major bummer this week... We had everything planned and figured out and Carmen was going to get baptized on Saturday! She´s been golden since day 1 and everything was going to be awesome. We got permission to baptize her even though she´s only been to church once because she was out of town for the holidays so couldn't go the last 2, but she's been to every activity, and loves and accepts everything about the gospel. Well we met with her a few times during the week and everything was just dandy, met with her Friday night and it was all still perfect. Then Saturday morning, we got a phone call from her. Her parents i guess freaked out about the baptism that morning and wouldn't let her leave the house that night to be baptized. She's 18, but she lives at home, and her parents still have a pretty big say in her life. It was super lame. We visited her that night and found out that her dad is actually a member of the church, he just hasn't been active in like 25 years or so. Carmen is super bummed and she's gonna keep trying, but they didnt let her go to church yesterday either. We´re praying that the lord will soften her parents hearts. I´m sure he will its just a matter of time and lots of prayer!
OK now the ridiculous events of Saturday. Saturday morning at 10 we had a cita with Walter, the less active alcoholic. He's the one who we sang christmas songs with while we cleaned his house while he was wasted on christmas.... ok well he's been sober for 2 weeks! We've been trying to meet with him a lot to help him stay strong and keep going sober. Saturday morning we were supposed to meet with him at 10, but right before we got news about this stuff with Carmens parents so we had to figure out a bunch of stuff really fast. We called Lucy, walters super old decrepit little mother, and tell her that we´re going to be late but that we´re still coming. We get there at about 11 and Lucy is sitting outside and says that Walter left about 1 minute before we got there to go to the cantina, or bar, a couple streets over. We turn and go booking it to try and head him off before he can start drinking. All the houses here are built right up next to each other with no spaces in between, but sometimes theres still empty lots that you can cut through to get to the next street over. Usually, they turn into the neighborhood dump, full of all sorts of nasty rotting trash, dog crap, big nasty bones of who-knows-what animals, broken beer bottles, all that sort of stuff. Well, we´re haulin tail through one of these nasty empty lots of garbage, and, of course, my shoe catches on a rock and I eat it, hard, right in the middle of all that supernasty crap. I didn't stay down or think about it, haha, I just kept running as blood streams down my legs from my knees because we needed to catch Walter! A couple streets over we finally stop so Hermana Broadbent can grab her hand sanitizer, smear both my diseased knees in it, and we keep looking! We saw 3 drunks laying down in the soccer field by where we and recognize one as the homeless guy that we gave a blanket and a bunch of food to the other night, so we know we´ve got the "in" haha. We go over to them and ask if they know Walter, and where he had gone. In super slurred spanish, they told us he was in the cantina down the callejon (kai-ay-hone aka dirt road/ally) just down the road. So we run over and go down this super sketchy dirt ally but its deserted. There's just a few creepy cinderblock houses. Behind one of the doors we could hear weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, (I think a possessed lady was inside) so we went back to our drunk homeless friends, and demanded again where walter was. The one we had fed the other night sits up, and with lots of arm flailing directing us back down to to the ally, yells ¨MADRE, LA CALLEJON!!¨ (hahaha) Then his not quite as wasted friends inform us that you have to knock on the black door, and inside is where the secret cantina is. We asked him if it would be dangerous for us, to which he responded no, not if we were just looking for someone. "Well is it dangerous sometimes?" we asked, and all he said after thinking for a minute was, "mmmm, sometimes." So after a quick prayer, we went back down the ally and knocked on the black door (next to the door with the possessed lady inside) and it opened into a cement courtyard littered with wasted men, passed out on the ground or arm in arm, sharing woes and cigarretes. And there was Walter, looking extremely guilty and red-eyed. Hermana Broadbent saw him and simply said, Walter, VENGA! he stood up, head hanging, and trudged out to us. Unfortunately, he was already wasted, but we took him home and now we know his secret hideout haha. And yesterday as we sat down in church, Walter was already there, slightly sobered up, smiling and waving at us! He went straight to the cantina after church haha, but at least he put church first :)! Poor guy though, he´s awesome when he´s sober, he is just super lonely and super super addicted. He's probably gonna die soon, even though hes only 38. I don't think his body can keep going like that much longer, and he's super sick. I think that story is a direct fulfillment of the promise in my setting apart blessing, "you will be able to walk where others will not, as you walk with the intent to do good." 
So that was our crazy adventure this week, and here, really fast, are the amazing miracles...
At church yesterday, Nivia came! Even though she worked a solid 24 hour shift right before all the way out in Huehue over an hour away!!! And Jose came, the little old man who's getting baptized this week! And then 2 other investigators came on their own! And then 3 less active families came including one who was one of Hermana Broadbent and her companion before me baptisms who has been missing for a couple months! She came with all her kids and payed her tithing!!! It was a miracle. Then, last night, we finally met with familia Aguilar (the family who told us they didn't want to meet with us anymore, they were going to be Catholics), and, long story short, they´re coming to church this next week and we have another cita with them this week and they´re super positive again!!! It was amazing!
A few other quick things that happened: I was attacked by a parrot. Nivia wants to be baptized! I tripped again yesterday and landed on the same knee that is all scraped up from the junkyard.... and we met this guy who has the most twisted ideas of religion I´ve ever heard. He was totally blinded by Satan, it was kind of sad. Anyhow, that's been my crazy week :)! Sorry there wasn't more time to do pictures or write people individually but I'm already over on time. I love you all! Have a great week!!! 
Kailey

Hna Broadbents Take on the Week

Hello my Dearest and Wonderful Family,

I have not yet read your letters. Some of my friends wrote me and now i am low on time but i will print them and read them later. Well this week was fun adventure. Two of my favoritest memories in the mission probably of the whole mission happened this week.

I guess I will start out by explaining that we were supposed to have a baptism on saturday but it fell. We had to cancel and call everyone like 3 hours before. It was for Carmen the18 year old that had visited the temple. She has made best friends with the single adults in the ward and has been wanting to be baptised for a while. THere is no doubt in her mind of the truthfullness and she wants it so badly. She is so strong and is even sticking to it even when her grandparents and boyfriend do not support her at all. THe reason it didnt happen is because she apparently hadnt told her parents that she was planning on getting baptised on saturday till that morning. they had been supporting her in investigating the church but they kind of freaked out and told her she is doing it too fast. They told her they will support her in time. So we are on pause with her for a little, we are working with her to try and show her that it might get harder the longer she waits and that she might have to do what she knows is right even if her parents arent super fans of it. But there is no way they will disown her or anything. We ended up having a lesson with her that night with her friends in the ward and it went really well. Her faith is growing so much.

OK....now the funniest story of the mission....well remember our dear little drunk man in our ward (the one i dragged home a couple times before). Well he is a good friend and the missionaries have always been his like only friends and biggest support. Well Walter hadnt drunk for like 2 weeks and the time before he had drunk for 15 days straight (and probably stuff a lot stronger than beer) and was doing really bad with health. we were visting him a lot this week trying to keep him strong and halping him make goals. well we had an appointment saturday morning with him and his mother. when we showed up his mother was sitting in the son in front of their house and said walter had just left to go drink. Right when we heard that battaglia and i took off running in the direction she had pointed. we wanted to catch him before he got wasted. We were practically sprinting through an empty house lot. Here is when i should tell you that the people here throw garbage everywhere, especially in the empty lots next to their houses. Well we are running through a huge concentration of garbage and of course Hna. Battaglia trips and eats it right in the garbage with broken beer bottles, rotten food (something large and pumpkin looking) and everything else that is awful and disgusting. Well, obviously she got right back up and we kept running as she had blood running down her legs. after a few minutes of not finding walter we stopped and i got out my hand sanitizer and was just using my hands to wipe the blood off her and trying to disinfect her deseased open wounds.

We stoppend at a members house and cleaned her up but went right back out to try and find walter. Starting with a prayer we went back to where the general area i know Walter is alwasy at. We saw three of the same drunk homeless guys we always see and went up to them to ask where walter was. Now, dont worry. THese guys are harmless. We actually made friends with them the week before. We had given them a box of food ofa million patches and tamales people had given us for the new year. So we knew we had the hook up with the low life of Jardines. They told us that walter was in the cantina by the corner but down the callejon (dirt road). We went looking and couldnt find a cantina just super poor cinderblocked homes and we hard a woman screaming like she was possesed behind one of the doors. it was kinda creepy. We went back to the drunks and told them we couldnt find it. The main funny one (which was wasted) just yells, [MADRE! LA CALLEJON! haha we tried so hard not laugh. the other one not so drunk said it was the black door. i then asked , so there is no sign? he siad no. we then knew it was a sketchy cantina. i asked if it was dangerous they said not if we are only looking for someone. i asked if was dangerous sometimes. all he said was...sometimes.

haha. yep...well we went back...knocked on the door...and it opened up to a courtyard of wasted men. half smokin, probably more than just cigarettes and we see walter sitting there. he sees us and looks so ashamed. i just command him, Walter Venga!! And he comes with head down low. Sadly he had been drinking for more than 3 hours and was gone. we baught him some lunch and took him home, but we thought he was just going to go back since he was already so drunk. Well, that was a super fun adventure. We now know where the sketchy side of Jardines society all waste their lives. And we have a pretty solid relationship with the homeless drunks:)

Ok, so i dont know if you remember about Familia Aguilar. THey were our first family we taught together. Last week I think I wrote that they told us they just want to reactivate in the catholic church. It shocked us and we had a hard time with it because they had been so preaperd and opened to the church. well last monday night our citas fell and we realized this might be the moment to visit them. we made them cookies for an excuse for them to feel bad if they tell us to go away (and so that we could get our plate from them another day) They were doing some reconstruction on their house and couldnt but told us to come back on friday. Lorena was super friendly and it went better than we had hoped. We went back friday and Lorena and the kids invited us in. We ended up waiting for the dad, Luis, for an hour but had a good time talking with Lorena and the kids. We develped a lot stronger relationship with them and the kids LOVE us now! He got home but asked if we could come back the next day and teach. SO we went back but he had friends over and he asked if we could come back sunday night. We felt that maybe he was trying to just keep us away. We didnt know how to prepare for the lesson or knew what they would say. We just put all our trust in the spirit to direct our words. Well....it was incredible! They werent closed to learning more at all. They still are interested in learning more, they just thought since their son had done his first communion with his grandparents they didnt want to have the kids in one religion and them in another. We had such a powerful lesson about the book of mormon and that they can really know if the church is true or not. We realized that Lorena had been more open and friendly to us and interested because she had read and Luis hadnt. SHe even remembered everything, the importance of the priesthood and baptism. So even before we could invite them to church they said they were gonig to be there 5 minutes before 9 to come and learn and that they really want to pray to know for sure for themselves. We love this family so much and are so excited about them. Their little 8 year old girl, Sophi, is like my new best friend. She kept trying to play with my hair during our lesson. SHe is such a doll. It was cute when Luis and Lorena asked their kids what they thought. Sophi just said, Im with these guys! and pointed to us. haha

Ok. one last story. Sunday at church was incredible. Nivia and Jose both came to church. Nivia always is working in the hospital on sundays and she finally could come. She is SOOO golden and prepared and wants to be baptised. SHe was super interested in everything and was eating it all up. We are going to set a new baptismal date with her this week. Jose is the sweet tiny 76 year old man that is getting baptised this saturday. We have started calling him our pequeño novio. haha. he told us he is pretty attatched to us. he is such a sweetheart. As we are sitting in sacrament meeting i look over and see Estela walk in with her 4 children. I was freaking out. I told you that only like a week after her baptism she dissapeared because she got kicked out of her home and moved and we had no way of communicating with her. She now lives in the other ward area, but she came the 30 minutes here, with all the kids dressed and clean and she came to pay her tithing. I was more happy than you can imagine. It had been 2 months. I got an hermana in the ward to give her a blessing because her hand is still broken. I just absolutely love Estela and especially her little girls. Little Letty and Laura are the most beautiful girls. They have such dark indiginous skin. I love them in their corte and typical clothing. I thought i would never see them again. But she came after 2 months and she paid her tithing!! She has no money, but she did it!

Well, i have written another novel this week, well I love you and hope you enjoyed the stories. It was an exciting week. I am sorry it is written so ADD and junk, but i would rather ramble and get more out.

I will read all your letters later today. I love you SO much! I couldnt ask for the greatest family in the entire world. This week I have been really thinking of how perfectly blessed i have been to have you all! Thanks for your prayers, support, and for being such wonderful examples. I am still praying for you always!

Love Hna. Broadbent

!2012! 1/2/2012

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! so this last week has had some ups and some downs... some pretty lame downs actually. i think it was tuesday night we called familia aguilar (the first family that we met with after the temple who was super positive) to try to set up another appointment with them cuz its been forever. they had gone out of town and then some random stuff had come up so none of our citas worked out. anyhow so we called luis to see when we could come by and he told us that 2 weeks ago his son had his 1st communion in the catholic church and that they had decided to re-activate themselves in the catholic church and that they didnt want to meet with us anymore. it totally caught me off-guard and i didnt know what to say. so me and broadbent have been praying and fasting about what we can do and we really feel that we need to go over there one more time, that satan has made it easy and comfortable to just go back to the catholic church, and we cant let them go that easily. we still dont know how or when to go back over, but we feel super strongly that we need to sometime in this next week or so. so we´ll see how that goes! another bummer this last week has been the fleas... i think the flea population in my bed has boomed. so we took everything to a members house to wash all the blankets and everything in her machine which seemed like it helped, but then a day later they were back with a vengeance. i think they´re in my clothes too. my stomach looks like i have chicken pox and my ankles are getting covered in bites and scabs. its super cute! haha the other night i was saying my prayer before i went to bed and i tried to have a corrie ten boom moment and tell heavenly father that i was grateful for the fleas, but i couldnt get myself to say it! it was such a blatant lie that i just couldnt get myself to haha i fail! my comp told me that maybe i could just be grateful that i have feet that can feel... haha so maybe i´ll just start there. so hna broadbent and i have a problem talking to people in the street... its really really hard for us haha i dunno why its just not in our comfort zone... but we´ve been so blessed lately with so much work with references and everything that we havent really needed too. but this last week with some of our studies and then again in my interview with pres bautista it just keeps coming back up that we need to make an effort to talk to everyone, even if we have a lot of investigators or work to do. so we´ve started to make a little bit more of an effort this week... kindof... haha mostly it started yesterday. we were walking back from church and there was a family walking in front of us and my comp nudged me so we caught up to them and started talking to them. Really quickly we found out that the wifes brother in the states is a member, that this family met with missionaries forever ago and really liked them, and we´ll be meeting with them this week!! i was shocked haha. but i think it was just heavenly father giving us a heads up that theres a lot more people ready here than just the ones we´re already working with. anyhow so last night we made a goal that we´re going to try to talk with everyone, we´re aiming for 10 people a day outside of our plans. and we made some good goals for this new year, but we´re just focusing on a week at a time. i´m going to work on my language study a lot more, i´ve just kinda been taking it for granted that i can understand everything and say most things that i need to, but i really need to take advantage of this time to try to perfect my spanish and really understand the grammar. one of my goals is to read the book of mormon in spanish at least twice this next year, at least 2 chapters a day. it takes a while when its in spanish though haha. oh so we kinda had a babylon moment the other night haha. so we had a cita way out in el trigal, which is out at one end of our area and it has kindof a sketchy road going out to it. so we had our cita at 6ish and then our meeting with our mission leader was out there too at 730. so our cita at 6 fell so we walked around in el trigal a little bit but its kinda sketchy but there wasnt time to go back to closer to our house and then do anything productive and then go all the way back out there at 730 so we decided to just go visit a member, clariza, who we love. she´s an RM and has helped us in lessons a bunch. so we went over there and she gave us food and we kiiinda ended up watching half of high school musical while we talked to her and ate haha my comp was in heaven it was so funny. and then our mission leader ended up not being home and we got followed by some creepy guy so we ran back to clarizas house and called all the members we knew with cars till we found a ride home. it was another adventure! but we´ve been protected and i always have my pepper spray in my hand at night haha. anyhow i hope all of you had a great new years eve and all that! i love you all and enjoy these next few months since its the end of the world and all that :) i cant wait to hear about ryans call! email me right away in case i get online this week for references or anything!!!
love you! kailey

Chikabal 12/19/2011

Today was the funnest day ever! But i´m so skinkin exhausted!!! We hiked this volcano, Chikabal, and it was so gorgeous. but i´m extremely out of shape and it definitely kicked me in the butt haha. The whole thing really looked like something straight out of jurassic park it was so so cool. Really when i first got my mission call to guatemala, this is the kinda stuff that i imagined. unfortunately in the city you dont get to see it all that often haha but it was so amazing being able to see it at least today. it has been and i think will be the coolest pday i have on the mission. i´ll send you some pictures! basically we paid some guy to take almost our whole zone (22 of us) in the back of his pickup through all these dirt roads and little pueblos up to the base of this volcano where theres a trail head. Then we hiked up through gorgeous jungle to the rim of the volcano, then down into the inside of it where theres this beautiful clear blue lake (which is sacred, no touching if you dont want to get lynched or burned alive). We hiked all around the lake for a couple hours, then back out up this staircase of death. an elder counted he said there were about 600 stairs... i think there were more haha. then we hiked down all the roads and through the towns that the truck drove us through and now i´m half dead! but it was worth it! itll be the start to an awesome week... lots of fun christmas stuff! and i cant wait to talk to you all on sunday! i actually have to change my time though cuz church is only gonna be from noon to 1 instead of in the morning... so if you can i think we need to change it to 2. i hope thats ok! i cant wait!!! i still dont know about any of my packages haha i hope that they made it... i dunno how or when that family is going to deliver that other package? i really hope it comes this week so we can make that christmas stuff for people... ok so this past week has been fun and in some ways hard as all our weeks are haha. i sent you guys the letter that we sent pres bautista about all the work we{ve had lately. its been crazy. we actually were getting pretty stressed cuz theres sooo much to do and not enough hours in the day. and we were getting pretty nervous cuz pres told us at the beginning that we would probably only be together for one change and then we would train or something. that only leaves us 2 more weeks to work together with all these people, and then i think there would be a lot of people who wouldnt get taught like they need and i dunno we were just getting scared that the work wouldnt get done and followed through on like it needs. so we finally called president to tell him how things have been going, and he was way surprised and way excited about it all, thats why we had to write him that letter about our experiences. and he let us know that he{s not planning on changing us this next change!! i´m way stoked cuz i love being comps with broadbent, we have so much fun together and i feel like we teach way way well together. anyhow sorry this letter is kinda lame this time, i{m out of it and i spent a lot of time trying to figure out my pictures but they{re not uploading for some reason so i´ll put them up next week! k i cant wait for sunday! i hope everything is going well!!! and i hope and pray that you guys get a white christmas!!! i love you :)

kailey

Letter to Pres Bautista 12/16/2011

When pres bautista heard about our numbers he asked us to send some
experiences we´ve been having the past few weeks. Here´s what we told
him!

In the weeks since the temple open house, we have been witnessing miracles
on a daily basis. On the Monday after the end of the open house, we
received a reference from a family in the Garibaldi ward. They asked us to
have a family home evening with a family in our area who had visited the
temple and wanted to learn more. The father, Luis, is looking for a
religion to join and said that he was very impressed with the lds church
and the temple. We had a great family night and they invited us to come
back 2 days later. Our next lesson we invited them to be baptized, which
they said they desired but weren´t ready to put a specific date until they
received their answer that it was true. We were still extremely excited
about a very positive, complete family with so much potential. Little did
we know that that was only the beginning...

The next day we had an appointment with a teenage girl named Carmen. She
had sounded interested on the phone but we were unprepared for how
remarkable the lesson would be. We met with both her and her mom and taught
the Restoration. Both listened with jaws dropped and eyes wide as saucers.
That night we were convinced that we wouldn´t have another lesson that
powerful for the rest of our missions (little did we know). Within the next
week, Carmen committed to be baptized before the end of the month (she
actually wanted it the next week), and she made friends with several of the
single adults in the ward and has attended every activity since.

Two days later, we had a cita with another reference from the temple, a 27
year old woman named Nivia. Before the lesson even started she was asking
when and where church was, what she should wear, and what she needed to do
to go. She told us that she had grown up Evangelical but that she felt
there was something missing. She wanted to feel the same spirit that she
had felt in the temple. We explained the restoration and she soaked in
every word. The moment we handed her the Book of Mormon, she immediately
started thumbing through and reading. We left her house that night in
shock, sure that our day couldnt get any better. Later that night we went
to our mission leader´s house for our weekly meeting with him. He wasnt
home and wouldnt answer his phone, which is unusual, so we decided to see
if there were any temple references who lived nearby that we could visit.
We looked at our list and realized that we had talked to a woman named
Gabriela a week or so earlier who had sounded interested. We had put a cita
with her but couldnt find it in our agenda. We realized that it might have
been for that very night. We stopped by to check or at least to put another
cita, but she was expecting us and invited us in. After another incredible
lesson, she eagerly committed to be baptized the 31st of December.

These were just the first four days after the temple open house. Since then
we have continued to have similar experiences as we have met with more of
the references. We have also seen major progress with former investigators
who had little desire to learn, but now are taking initiative in
understanding more. We put 3 more fechas in first lessons with people, and
Nivia has also committed to prepare for the 31st of December.

Just yesterday we had another day of miraculous lessons. An appointment
fell through so we decided to look for some of the references that we had
still been unable to contact. We found one man who we hadn´t been able to
get ahold of for weeks, and he eagerly invited us in and asked us if we
could teach his whole family of 5 this weekend. He comes from a very
Catholic family, but his cousin is a member and he told us that if we can
convince him, he would happily jump on the baptism bandwagon. A couple
short hours later, we had another first appointment with a temple reference
named Erick. He and his cousin, Gerber, willingly sat on the floor so that
we could sit on the only 2 chairs they owned during our lesson. They
listened attentively and also committed to baptism at the end of this month.

So far we have 6 fechas for the 31st of December. We have several others we
plan on putting fechas with for this month or the beginning of January. In
total we have 18 positive investigators, and several others who we are
working with. We have more references still to contact, several of which we
believe are very positive, that we just havent been able to get ahold of or
meet with yet. With every experience, we have been able to recognize more
and more how little we have to do with this success. We know that Heavenly
Father has been preparing these people for this time, and we simply have
been blessed with the opportunity to be tools in his hands and witness the
love He has for His children here.

devils day and temple dedication 12/12/2011

This has been a really cool past couple days. I dunno if you guys got to watch it on the byu channel but the cultural night on saturday was way cool. my favorite part is that most of the outfits, at least the ones the girls were wearing, are clothes that people here wear all the time. cortes, the hand woven super colorful skirt wraps, are the typical clothing that the indigenous people here wear. and in the dance that had the horse race stuff with the guys in the red and white striped pants, the white and purple rainbowish shirts, and the straw hats... thats what so many men wear in huehue in my last area. they look like rainbow pirates or cowboys haha but they´re way proud of it. its not looked down on here at all haha it just sets apart the more traditional people here. also the very last dance was the one that my stake that i´m in now put on cuz the temple is in our stake boundaries. and that song that they played is the city´s hymn or something like that. its called la luna de xelaju and its about the moon here. they say the moon here is different from anywhere else and i have to admit its beautiful. its much bigger and brighter here, almost too bright to see the man in the moon (here they say its a rabbit in the moon haha). its like a giant silver plate in the sky. i love going up on our roof sometimes at night.. or early in the morning to run. you can see the temple, all the mountains around us, the giant volcano thats by us, and all the sky. the clouds here are incredible and they´re all sorts of colors first thing in the morning and at sunset.
also yesterday was a great day. we got to be at all three sessions of the temple dedication! we didnt get to be inside, it was just at our stake center, but still! it was such a great experience for us. i know that not many people get to have such an incredible opportunity as having a temple dedication during their mission. we´ve seen so many miracles already. we got to listen to pres uchtdorf, elder anderson, and a few from the seventy speak. the spirit was so strong and i just want to go to the temple all the time now! i dont think we´ll get to go through very often but i´m still so excited that we´ll be able to at least once or twice...
so none of our baptisms happened this last week... i think it was just a little too quick. but we have 4 planned for the end of this month! and others who we´re trying to get ready for then too! a lot of our appointments fell through this week... like on wednesday it was dia del diablo (devil´s day) so we couldnt go out. everybody makes these big scarecrow-dummy type things that look like the devil, then line the streets with them and light them on fire. we had a good view from our roof! but yeah we still had some really great lessons and cool experiences. also i´ve learned some way cool stories about some of the members here. some of them are seriously some of the strongest members i´ve ever met. especially this family ordońez. hno ordońez´s is one of 9 kids. every single one served a mission. then his parents served a proselyting mission. they collected soda cans off the street for a few years and filled their house with them, floor to ceiling, even up in the rafters, till they could barely walk through the house. then they cashed them all in and had enough money to pay for their entire mission. they didnt tell anyone, not even their family, until the week before they left. they didnt want to be a burden to their kids and have them try to give them money. then they served a full on proselyting mission for 18 months in the guatemala south mission. 6 months after they got home, she died. straight to exaltation i think haha. then hna ordońez´s mom is this little old lady who wears corte and doesnt speak any english, but she travels to salt lake every 6 months for general conference. i´m gonna try to figure out a way for her to take some stuff up to you guys for me next conference :) yeah anyhow the whole family is solid. they both are RMs, temple workers now in the new temple, and traveled every month to work in the temple in guatemala city before. i love them :) i really love the people here and i´m so stoked to be in this mission. i´m not the most impressed with a lot of the elders in this mission haha, but i really love the people and the members. these really are descendants of the lamanites and they´re flourishing like a desert rose, like prophesied :) i love you all and i´m so excited for ryan´s mission papers and to find out where he´s going!! ok so real quick, we can talk the 24th or 25th, i´m thinking 25th. but you guys decide what time and all that. anytime from like 1pm and on, cuz church goes till noon. but let me know next week and i´ll figure out the phone stuff and all! k i love you and cant wait to talk to you! thanks for everything!
love kailey

God is in the details, the devil´s in the dogs 12/05/2011

So basically this has been the most incredible week of my mission! I'm gonna try to write really fast so ignore mistakes. We got over 80 referrals from the temple open house so this week we've been trying really hard to contact all of them. I think we've managed about 50 so far. 
Monday Hermana Broadbent got 4 packages from her family and one of them had everything you need for a thanksgiving feast! A no bake/instant one at least!  We invited some of the other Hermanas in our zone and had a full on Thanksgiving meal! We had turkey (canned), stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, apple cider, eggnog, and chocolate pudding pie!  I know it was nothing compared to your food mom haha but it still made me happy (and a little bit sick...). 
She also got a cd from her mom called Popcorn Bopping. Its all these primary songs made to sound kinda like popular music on the radio. It's horrible, but it's been a lot of fun! I hope they call me on a mission is a gangster rap song! Sofie, Ian and Chase would looove that cd! You should check it out for them! Yeah, I think we've been starved for music haha! I'm not gonna lie, it's hard being in this country when they're blasting reggaetone (hardcore latin rap music) out of every tienda and in all the microbusses and not being able to bust a move in the street. We also may or may not have been ¨inspired¨ to go ¨contacting¨ down certain streets where houses or tiendas happen to be blasting good music.... :) 
Monday morning we got a call from a family in another ward that said they'd like us to have an FHE with a family that lives in our area that went to the temple open house. It was the only time they could so we cancelled our other citas and went to that because they sounded super positive. We went that night and met up with this girl Grecia who's 19 and she and her family (the members) took us to meet Luis and Lorena Aguilar and their 2 kids, Marcos who's 10 and sofie whos 8. We taught them the plan of salvation and answered their questions about the temple. It went really well, especially since it was mine and Hermana Broadbents first official lesson together! Luis said he's way interested in the church and they committed to reading the proclamation to the family and praying about it. They didn't seem to have any problems with the church or our beliefs and they accepted pretty much everything we told them really openly! Then they fed us Pizza Hut! Yeah, it's definitely different here from my old area haha. We were so stoked about that lesson when we left! A way super positive, married, entire family!! Little did we know that that was only the beginning...
Tuesday we spent the day contacting references to try to set citas (appointments) with them. We walked all our area a couple times over and nearly got eaten by dogs! One seriously almost attacked my companion as it came at her teeth bared and snapping when she walked around the back of a car. Luckily some guy ran over and saved her while I just chilled there and watched (I'm such a good companion). Then we had a cita with this girl Carmen who was one of our temple referrals. She lives right by that dog haha. So we get there and had a lesson with her and her mom, also Carmen. We taught them the restoration and I think it was the best lesson that I have ever had. They just sat there open-mouthed and soaked in every word. The spirit was seriously so strong and they were so prepared. Plus Hermana Broadbent and me are really good at teaching super simply because of the whole language barrier so I feel like everything really hit home. We gave them each a Boof of Mormon and committed them to read a chapter and pray about it. After the lesson the mom told us that she had met with missionaries a long time ago and received the 7 lessons and that she had learned about Joseph Smith but also some other man, Kimball! She still remembered the name of the prophet 30 years later... it was insane. They asked us to come back and teach their whole family so that they could all make the change together, implying that they were planning on changing. We left that lesson seriously in shock and ran home because we were late and nearly got attacked by that one dog again. 
When we got home, our apartment door was just chilling open (our apartment is inside a building with some offices in it, but ours is the only apartment. the main door to the outside was closed but still! creeeepyyyy) So after a minute or so of us just kinda staring at the door, I busted out my pepper spray and kicked open the door and inspected every corner SWAT style. All clear! Our cameras and everything were all still there! I think the lock just didn't catch but we've been kinda paranoid about it since then.
Wednesday we contacted and then had another cita with familia Aguilar! We taught the restoration and talked about baptism! They said that's what they want to work towards but they want to wait till they understand things a bit better and get an answer before they set a date. But I know they're going to do it and I'm way way stoked!
Thursday we had a cita with this girl named Nivia. We almost got attacked by another dog outside her house... we had to throw rocks at it! Nivia is 25 and a doctor and she is so ready for the gospel. Before the lesson even started she was asking when and where church was and what she should wear to go. We explained the restoration and all that and she was soaking it all in. When we gave her the Book of Mormon she immediately started reading it. It was awesome! She said she grew up Evangelical but feels like something is missing and she wants to know about what she felt inside the temple... yeah i know golden right? As we left her house, again just shocked at another amazing lesson, another dog came after us! I'm really starting to hate dogs! We decided that Satan is trying to get back at us by possessing dogs. Then, because of several random events and appointments that fell, we happened to stop by another referrals house, and, long story short, another incredible lesson and she has a baptismal date for the end of the month!!!!! This time we left the house with the pepper spray in hand, certain that this time the dogs would be coming for blood.
Friday we had some great lessons with some old investigators who I think are finally starting to make some progress... we'll see what happens with them!
Saturday was a little bit harder, we contacted referrals all day long because all our citas fell through. As we were walking down one street I was looking at our page of references when this car passed by and some guy stuck his arm out the window and grabbed my butt. Damn dogs! Pardon my french... we're being double wary of cars, dogs, and men now (i don't think there's much difference here between the last two).
And finally, Sunday! Somehow none of our positive investigators could come to church this week and the temple dedication is next week so we won't have any baptism's for a couple of weeks at best. We have gotten really good at teaching the 1st lesson this week and Hermana Broadbent's Spanish is doing much better. We don't know who the senior companion is but we fight over that sometimes (I've been in the field 3 weeks longer, she knows the area, I know the language haha) but it's been great with her! We have a ton of fun and I feel like we teach really well together. We are both horribly messy and disorganized though... and not very good with schedules. We're working on it though haha.
I can't wait to talk to you all in a few weeks! I love you all so much! Have a great week!
kailey