May the Fourth be with you! Ha!

A "little" hairy friend we discovered (along with about a dozen smaller ones) as we were doing service!
Everyone scattered except the missionaries...we wanted photos first! haha!

Guess what? I get to see you all this week!! :) I hope you are as excited as I am!!!! :) :) Well, to get to a couple highlights from this week...

Highlights for 4/5/15:

Highlight #1: Devotional. Well, a sister in our ward invited us to visit and watch the CES Devotional yesterday....and who would you guess were the participating choir. YEP, Utah State Univestity Insitute Choir!!!!!!! So that was fun, being able to see some friends and Brother Salmon! :) Haha :) Lots of the same people from last year's choir participated again! Now, this is not to diminish the AWESOME devotional by Elder Robbins about the ladder to truly knowing God. :) :)

Highlight #2: Culture. They take Mother's Day SERIOUSLY here! I dont think I've seen so many fiestas announced for an occasion since being in Xela! I've seen flyers for probably 3 or 4 concerts, 3 or 4 events, and then the elders quorum is doing a ward activity and cooking for the women of the ward! It's a PARTY!!! :) :)

Highlight #3: Food 1: Guatemalan. So this week me and my comp helped prepare a traditional Guatemalan fiesta food called paches. Look it up on Google and begin salivating. They are AWESOME!!! :) (or maybe it's just because it's not rice and beans and tortillas ;) haha, jk) So this family that we were helping has been preparing and selling their paches for generations (i.e. the mom of the mother of the mother of the mother of the sister in my ward...haha. I jokingly asked the husband if it possibly was a recipe that was in the Book of Lehi that Sariah made her husband and was included in his records...haha :)) I didn't get any pictures, but to give you a picture in your mind imagine a room with 3 huge (and I mean HUGE, like I could bathe in huge) pots. One full of cooked potatoes, one full of cooked rice and the other for the paches to be cooked in. Then take and mash the potatoes and rice and these consitute the "base" for the pache. The pache also includes a chile, a piece of carne, and a veces uvas :) They are super good! And usually only made for special holidays (ie Dia de Madre).

Highlight #4: Dia de Madre. So unlike the States, Mother's Day is a specific date in May not the second Sunday regardless of date. In Guatemala la Dia de Madre is always the 10th of May...and do you know what?...that happens to fall on the second Sunday of May this year!! How cool is that?!?! I get to celebrate Mother's Day the same day as all of you guys!! :) But next year it is going to fall on a Tuesday (I think, because of leap year)...

Highlight #5: Food 2: My Food. So this week I made some BOMB lasagna for an investigator because she didn't believe me when she asked if I knew how to cook and I answered "Yes!". So she wanted me to prove I could cook, so first we made the brownies of a couple weeks ago (and they turned out mas or menos because of some things that went wrong with some of the equipment (i.e. oven))...so to redeem myself she invited us to make lunch with her today and make lasagna. Well, needless to say, she now has acknowledged I can cook! :) Mission accomplished!

Well, there you guys go! Some (SOME) of the fun highlights of this week! :) One more week till changes...and another comp...and the start of another new experience! :) Wish me luck sending off another comp ;) Haha :) Love you lots! :) Keep up the great work at home!! :) See ya'll soon!

With love and prayers and ganas to talk to my family,
Elder Flake

Typical store

Do you like my mask?