Surprise! Surprise!

Elder Crump here, happily reporting from.... Nahuizalco?? Say what!? Yup, I definitely got transferred this week! The day of transfers I’m just sitting in my apartment, studying, and the Zone Leaders send me a message. You have transfers. Be ready in 1.5 hours. Ok...? So ya, I pack all my bags and ship out! It was super rough for me because I couldn’t say goodbye to anyone from the ward or Christian and such. I just got up and left! So that was definitely less than desirable, but here I am down in Nahuizalco! It’s the hottest part of the whole mission but so far its all good down here!

So my companion is Elder Guzman from Peru. He has 20 months in the mission but still wants to work really hard and stuff so that’s good. He’s really nice and so far we have gotten along just fine. We have an apartment that is pretty dang dirty but I like it as well. Although I am planning on cleaning it for the next 3 hours, haha. In Nahuizalco there are 12 Elders that make up the zone and no Sisters…they were forced to leave awhile ago because it was too dangerous. Sorry Momma  ;) haha

So here in Nahuizalco there is a branch and a ward. We work in the ward. The area where we actually work during the day is out in an area called Pushtán. It’s like 30 minutes walking to get there but usually there is a pickup we just take real fast. The town is by far the poorest I have ever seen and the poorest my companion has seen as well. Like everyone there just lives in houses made of sticks and tin, but boy oh boy are they humble! We are out there for practically all day and just use flashlights during the night to get around. It’s super weird because literally there is one main road and everything else is just tiny mountain trails that you have to take to get places. It’s pretty jungley too, like if you look on Google Earth I’m sure it’s mostly just trees you would see. But yeah, in the past few months they have had a lot of success out there so I’m hoping we can continue with that pattern!

The past Sunday we brought 7 people to church, which was super awesome because, in the past, in Tazumal, our average was like 1 maybe 2. The investigators we have are all pretty positive and we are hoping to have at least three or four baptisms by the end of this month. One experience that was super sad from this week is I met a family that is super positive and was just getting to know them and everything right…well I shook the hand of one of the kids but it was super wet. So naturally I just kinda brushed my hands on my pants to dry them off when I sat down. Well apparently the mom, who practically has a baptismal date, saw me do that and took offense. She now won’t go to church and isn’t sure she wants to be baptized. She told all that to the neighboring family what I did and they told us later on in the week. So yeah, hopefully I can gain their confidence back this week because I feel super, super bad about it right now. Because for me it’s just a habit to dry my hands on my pants when they are wet...

Really though so far I like it in my new area. My companion is really good and the area is growing a lot. It really was rough to have transfers all of a sudden but it’s all good! Such is the mission life, right? That’s about all for the week. I don’t feel like writing more haha and btw Mom, I know you like pictures and all but here it’s really hard to take them. Just because of the area. So I’ll do my best to get at least a few every week! These two are one of my new comp  I took super fast and the other is of me with my homies from Tazumal before I left!

Elder Crump

His "homies" in Tazumal - no names, just "homies"

Matthew's new companion in Nahuizalco, Elder Guzman from Peru.