Elder Jacob Stiles: One Year Down!

Elder Jacob Stiles
El Salvador San Salvador West/Belize Mission
P.O. Box 1123
Belize City, Belize, C.A.

jacob.stiles@myldsmail.net

Hey Everyone,

This week I hit my one year mark! A year from now, March 16, 2017, I will be home! It's so crazy how fast the mission goes by. It feels like yesterday that I was leaving my family for the first time! Every single day of the mission that goes by feels like nothing because we are always so busy.

This Monday we went to Cahal Pech again for those missionaries that have not seen it. It was super cool even the second time. The P-day was short because we had problems getting our food, and also with the internet, but it was good anyways. We also celebrated the birthday of Elder Hansen. We got him pizza, coke, and chips to celebrate. He was super happy we did something because he said plans fell through and it was one of the worst birthdays until we came along. We ended the celebration of his birthday with the traditional shirt burning to mark my one year.

This last week was mostly filled with me doing interchanges with the Elders in Cayo. As one of my duties as District Leader I have to do an interchange with the Elders, and I also have to go over to Cayo to do baptismal interviews.

My companion and I learned a magic trick with rubber bands and it's super cool because it doesn't matter how many times you do it, they will never see how it's done. So a lot of times we use that as a way for people to warm up to us.

Well, here is the miracle for this week. I went to go do an interview in Cayo and the other Zone Leaders went to Bullet Tree. When we switched again they came back and said Ernesto decided to get baptized and they did the interview for him. He was baptized Saturday! After six months the curse of Cayo could not hold us back!

Here in Bullet Tree we have to build a baptismal font. It only took us around 15-20 minutes to build it, but after we filled it up inside we had a question... "How do we get the water back outside?" It wasn't until we started getting buckets to carry the water outside that someone told us there was a pump to suck the water out.

We had 35 people at church this week, and Ernesto got confirmed so this week was good!

Love, Elder Stiles

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

Elder Osiek & me