Week 16: Dia De Los Muertos

Today is dia de los muertos and the members decided to kill their pig in celebration. Elder Hawkins and I walked next door and helped them kill it. What an experience that was. I thought about sending the video, but I figured the gratuities of the event scream out louder through imagination than any audio files ever could, so let's just say it was everything I expected a pig slaughter would entail. 

After that, we cleaned our apartment and listened to some inspiration music. There's something peculiar about stabbing a pig and then cleaning your house. I can't really describe it... 

Actually I can't really describe anything lately. I feel like I'm living in a dream, but everyday I still wake up in a little house some 300 miles away from anything remotely American, and speak Qui'che to the passing Na'ans. Existentially, I suppose it makes sense: but something different has awakened in me. I've found something spiritual midst our temporal world, and I've come to a conclusion:

Life only has lasting importance if it outlasts death.

Else, our ''life'' is just a string of trillasecond memories: little glimpses continually losing precedence to the newest, most recent feeling until, ultimately, death. So... there must be something else. There must be an afterlife. There must be more meaning than an ever growing pile of outdated ''daily news'' and old photographs. Our eternal minds have skulls for cells and are ever longing for what the seculars say we can't have. We know there's something more, and thus the biggest question of life becomes: how can I obtain it? How can I know there is more? How can we obtain this glorious afterlife that millenniums of scriptures and sects have testified exists?

The answer to this question in Racana is

Elder Hawkins

Elder Young

¡Kakaj jacho untzi jonem, iwuk?

To think that we are responsible for answering this question is quite startling. It's overwhelming at times, nevertheless, it has proven to be a great source of motivation for me. It's what keeps my feet moving when we've walked for 5 hours already with no success. It keeps me on my knees when I pray and it lifts me up at 6:30 every morning. It drives me. There is no other experience quite like being a missionary in this area. 

Adios, 

Elder Young

Dia De Los Muertos Celebration

One of those Mission Stories!

Elder Young's room

Elder Hawkins

Elder Young

Lunch on Pday in Momostenango -Elder Hawkins

Elder Young in his apartment

Elder Young making Atol -some kind of juice made from corn -it is a traditional cornstarched based Central American hot drink -He says it's good but better when the locals make it.

Blake and his awesome way of cutting watermelon