A more dangerous area to teach...but big lizards to eat! And LOTS of Pictures!

Hey Family!

So I had transfers this week. I'm now in Soyapango. My actual area is called Paleca 1. I don't have a whole lot of time, but here's a little about my area. I'm super happy because my companion is from Guatemala! They are always my favorite missionaries. So he's super cool. It's still pretty hot here but there are bigger lizards that are pretty cool to see crawling around. The people love to eat them. I'm still looking for my chance to get a big bite of one. There's a sweet lemon tree in our backyard. The only problem with this area is that we have to be in our house by 6:00 p.m.. I don't know why because this area seems to be way more calm then my last area. But if the President feels that way then I guess it's for a reason. This letter is quick so that I can send some pics. I love you and miss you all!

Love Elder Markham

This is from Garrett's first area that he was just transferred from.

Some ooey-gooey chocolate cake made for Garrett by the sweet Zepeda family.  One of his favorite desserts from home!

Garrett, Elder Custodio (trained Garrett) and Elder Golden (trained Elder Custodio)

Garrett's new companion from Guatemala Elder Mansilla

Garrett's new kitchen

Garrett's backyard lemon tree

Garrett's pila...."Yes Mom, we wash our dishes in there"

Garrett has a home gym! He's actually very excited about it since he can now do more than just pushups! I hope he doesn't get a sliver in his hiney!

A Letter From a Local Family of El Salvador

Querida Señora Markham:

Para nosotros es un gusto atender a Elder Markham y Elder Lowry, son jóvenes buenos y educados, con ellos  hemos aprendido mucho sobre el evangelio restaurado y tenemos muchas bendiciones de Dios. Elder Markham  habla muy bonito de su familia y lo mucho que les extraña. Todos en mi casa le queremos mucho como un hermano menor y estamos pendiente de el.

Adjunto algunas fotos

Roxana Zepeda

Translation:

Dear Mrs. Markham :
For us it is a pleasure to meet Elder Elder Markham and Lowry are good young and educated, they have learned much about the restored gospel and have many blessings from God. Elder Markham speaks very nice of her family and how much he misses them . Everyone in my house we love him like a younger brother and we are aware of it.
 
Attached are some photos
 
Roxana Zepeda

Garrett and his companion Elder Lowry learning how to make papusas from the Zepeda Family. He loves to eat them!

Learning how to make papusas!

Garrett and Elder Lowry

Maybe a new area? And a bit about El Salvador

Hey Family!

So everything is getting pretty hot here in El Salvador. I feel like I'm roasting...but anyway. My companion is going to train next this change so its 90% chance that I'm going to have changes. We got a call a little later that our zone was going to the temple but we weren't going to be able to go because of the meeting my companion had. But at 6 in the morning there was someone banging on our door and so we quickly ran to see who it was. Turns out it was our district leader and he said that I could go because another missionary was going to the meeting too so we were able to do interchanges and I got to go to the temple! It was a huge blessing! The El Salvador temple is beautiful! It was a great experience! So here's a couple stories to get an idea of the country here. 

1.So we went to a guys house to teach him and we knocked on his door. At first we didn't hear anything and he didn't come to the door. So we knocked again and all of a sudden we hear, "up here". I looked up and there was the little old man up in his tree picking fruit for us. Haha, he's about 50 something years old and maybe 5 feet tall. Later he came down and gave us the fruit and we had our lesson. 

2. Every once in a while we see these huge long horned bulls walking down our street with a tiny old farmer that's even older. He's probably 70 something and just carries a little stick to whip the cows every once in a while. You would love it Grandpa! ahah

3. So for the longest time there has been a huge hole in the middle of the road because the sewer lid is missing. Its super dangerous because most people have motorcycles. So after many weeks they finally fixed the problem. You would think that they would find a new lid or something....oh no...much better. They decided to plant a tree hahaha. Now theres just a giant tree randomly sticking out of the road and nobody thinks its weird or anything haha.

Well theres a little more about El Salvador. Have a great week and I love you so much! 

Love Elder Markham

"It's great to see the changes in peoples lives..."

Hey Family! 

This week was awesome! We had ten investigators at church yesterday! We have a ton that are progressing super well and only need a few more changes to be prepared for baptism. This week and the next few weeks are going to be super crazy with tons of work but I'm glad that we have all this to do! It's great to see the changes in peoples lives and see them have more desires to change. This week went by so fast! We had some more great lessons with Antonio. He's had a lot of stuff going on with his past life and the cops and stuff but he came to church again and said that he really enjoyed. He feels that he's still messing up and feels super down but we were able to comfort him and after I had talked to him for a bit and explained how these things are hard and that they happen but that we will never stop visiting him, he got super emotional and just started thanking us. He said the only thing is that he doesn't want us to stop visiting him. We said we'll always be here and he was super happy. The Zepeda family are all really worried because their 92 year old grandma that lives with them is super sick. They didn't know what would happen to her last night so we went to give her a blessing. Then we went by this morning and she said she was feeling better. It was great to be able to serve them last night. I don't know if you guys sent the 2014 family thing. I probably won't be able to know for a few more weeks because the mail is super lame but if it doesn't get here could you send it again in a bit? Thanks! I love you all! 

Love Elder Markham

Lots of Teaching and Pictures!!

This week was great! I'm going to have to be quick because mom wants me to send some pics. So first we went to an investigators house and we had taught him and his wife a little bit before. But his wife wasn't there and so we just talked to him. He then asked if we wanted to see his house so he started showing us around hahah. Then he asked if we were hungry and offered to buy us dinner and wanted us to stay the night. We told him that we had to go and that we didn't have too much time so he said whenever we want we are welcome to dinner and to sleep at his house haha. Then we were walking down the street a little later and Orlando was calling for us a little behind us. We stopped to talk to him and he had this huge smile on his face. He just got back from buying a bunch of food from the store and invited us to eat tacos with him and his family because he said that he was going to be making a ton that night. Well we ate with him and he's a great cook haha. But it's so great to see how his life is improving every day! Sundays are always the best days. At church we met a sister and a brother that we'd never seen before but they live in our area. The sister is about 20 something and the brother is about 18. The sister has been a member for 6 years but for some reason was going to another ward super far away. The brother isn't a member so she decided to introduce him to the church yesterday. We got their address and went to their house a little later to teach him. It was great! He is super accepting and while he was praying before we left he started to cry and it was super powerful! We set a baptism date with him for next month. If we can keep all the people that we have dates with then we can have about 5-7 baptisms next month!!! I'm so excited! I love and miss you all! 

Love Elder Markham

Here's us making pupusas with the Zepeda family and I started playing with my camera and taking awesome pics ahah. They park the boats kind far in the water and you have to swim out to them haha. I really can not describe where I'm living in email right now. It is amazing!

 Here's the pday when we went to the lake. I'm just standing next to some boats and there's a volcano in the other pic. Pretty cool huh? haha

Here's me and my district leader Elder Cajax from Guatemala. He is the BEST! haha he is a 7 year old in a missionary body. He always needs something to play with and his stories are great! Then the other one is a pic of a little band we found walking down the street. They were very nice to let us take pics with them! These are probably the last for a bit so enjoy them! haha Another elder helped me find a way to take smaller pics so they send faster. I will try that soon so that it's better!

Teaching the Gospel and more about Garrett's area where he lives

Hey everyone!

This week was a great one! We taught about 36 lessons in total! Still no baptisms for the next little while. We should be baptizing one teenager but he won't come to church and is having a hard time with work and school. We had 8 people come to church with us yesterday and it was awesome! Only, they did the YW new beginnings for sacrament meeting so we got a few....comments on some stuff from the investigators who came for the first time. I wish they would do that stuff on a Saturday or something. Nothing too crazy happened this week. This week with Orlando we were going to bring him to a members house and have lunch and stuff so they can get to know him. But the member had training for his work so it got cancelled. So me and Elder Lowry just bought pizza and took to the family and had a lesson with them. We are teaching the 19 year old that we found last week that has had problems with drugs and other stuff and we are helping him change his whole life and find happiness and faith in Christ once again! It is great. He came to church and said he liked the whole thing which was good hahah. There's a member in our ward about his age and talked to us about how amazing and crazy it is that we are teaching him. She went to school with him and never thought he would be interested. I have learned so much on my mission to share the gospel with everyone. We can't judge who will except the Gospel. We just need to invite everyone. I love and miss you all! 

Love Elder Markham

So mom wanted a better explanation of my area. It's called San Bartolo in El Salvador if you guys can look it up on google that'd be cool. I just found out that it's a little south of the city San Salvador. It's close to a super cool lake and a few volcanoes surround it but they are still miles away. There are little parts of jungle area but the part I am in is a very inhabited area. It's not the city city but it's got tons of houses. It's hard to explain what the houses are like. They are very small and very close. There will be a giant block of houses and in between them are little passages that you have to walk in to get to the houses. Which makes it super dangerous with the gangs and stuff especially at night. Unfortunately the gangs run this country and there's always....problems and other stuff. Like we taught a guy yesterday that some gangsters mistook him as someone else so they shot him seven times! I've never had any problems with any of them. There's lots of areas that the members have told us to avoid so we don't get into trouble. There's a quick story but maybe I'll have to tell it next week. All the other people are pretty nice. Many people just except us because they think we are teaching the words of God and that's it so I'm doing my best to make it clear that we are here to baptize and only that because the authority has been restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. But yeah it hasn't been too hot. I think it's because I'm used to it because I'm always sweating haha. Rainy season will be here in a few months so I'm excited about that! Try looking our house up on google maps and my area. Its San Bartolo, novena etapa, calle diagonal, casa 54 I think. It's a big house compared to all the other houses. 

Love Elder Markham

Busy and learning!

This week was great! We've been teaching lots of lessons! We had about 30 lessons this week with investigators and members! It was great to teach so many and help them! My Spanish is getting better and I'm improving every day! I got a bunch of the teachings from the prophets books in Spanish which is going to be great to read! And I'll try to bring a bunch of my Spanish stuff home for you Sara if you're interested! We took a bunch of food to a family this week. They have two sons who just left on their missions but the parents aren't members and they really don't have much. I felt so good being able to bring the food to their house and help them out. I've never seen anything like their house before. It was filled with things from the floor to the ceiling with a tiny path to walk to the back of the house into the dads room. We were able to teach him there. We are still helping Orlando get ready for his baptism. He is learning a lot I think. Every Sunday he comes to church with us which is the only thing we ever need our investigators to do but they never do haha. The last thing really is to help him get married. He wants to and his two daughters that are 18 and 11 want them to but the mother doesn't. I don't know why she just doesn't. We have a lesson with him tonight and we'll try to set a baptism date with him and talk to him and his wife or girlfriend about getting married. And just to let everyone know...I loved the cow foot stew!!!! haha it actually was really good! The only part that grossed me out is that they had fish living in their pila. Missionaries don't eat fish but it was super nasty because you wash everything in the pilas. Clothes, dishes, hands and if you're not lucky enough to have a shower...your pila is your shower ahah. Luckily I have a shower but many areas don't have showers. I love and miss you all very much! 

Love Elder Markham

**Pilas are small concrete tubs that they fill with water.  Garrett was concerned that the dishes he ate off of were washed in the pila with fish living in it.