HEY FAM!!
How is
Spring Break going? You just have to love that spring cleaning right? haha.
(don’t worry I appreciate those times now!)
Now don’t
freak out that I’m writing this letter at 11 at night. All the office Elders
are in the office working to get everything ready for the changes next week.
President Brough likes to give us time to work in our areas so we leave the
office at 3:30 in the afternoon to work in the field. Then if we need to work
on more things we can come back in at nine after we finish preaching the word
of God. For the last week we have been coming in at night because we have been
super busy with multi zone conferences during the day and getting everything
ready for changes by night. I’m having a good old time and learning a lot
working with President.
For the
multi zone conferences Elder Barahona and I had to come up with a practice of
our companionship study and do it in front of all the missionaries. It went
really well. We would practice in front of them and show them good and bad
examples of how their companionship study should be. Today was the last day of
the multi zone conferences and they all turned out great.
How was
General Conference? My favorite talk would have to be Boyd K Packer. What a
strong testimony he gave of Jesus Christ. Some of the others I really liked
were from W. Craig Zwick, and Russel M. Nelson. I was able to learn a lot from
all of the talks. Probably the most important thing I learned was that we need
to stay true to the Gospel of Christ if we want to have a truly good life. I
felt too, like it was directed to me. I need to always continue in this
path that I am now on. There is no turning back now.
Next week
I’ll have a new and my last companion of the mission. It’s going to be another
North American. Next week I’ll tell you more about him and send a
picture.
Love you
all and thanks for all the support and love you show for me!!
Elder
Rucker
This week was super busy!!
Monday we had a meeting with the new elders we'll be
training. Tuesday we went to the MTC in Guatemala to pick up all the new
missionaries. It was weird. It had been 20 some odd months since I'd been there.
It had changed quite. They remodeled it so it can
hold more missionaries. After we left the MTC we took them to President's house
so he could interview them. We had lunch there and then headed out to work. I
work with an elder from Nicaragua and one from Georgia. They had a great time
running around our area--up and down the big hills we have. As we were working, we saw a little old lady carrying some boxes. We went over and told her
we would help. As we talked, she told us she was basically blind and could
hardly see at night BUT that she could see that we were missionaries from the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! I thought I had heard bad so I looked to the elder from Nicaragua and he had this same surprised look
on his face. We didn't tell her we were the missionaries when we helped
her with the boxes but she new it was us. (I remember my first day of the mission, I had an excellent experience too!!) By the end of the day they were
pretty wiped out. 
First off, last Friday we had to go
to the Church area office here in Guatemala City. We had to get some tickets
for the missionaries that are going home in a couple weeks. We waited a few
minutes while the elevator showed up. Guess who was in the elevator when the
door opened??? Elder Ochoa! One of the General Authorities of the Church. We
got in the elevator with him and talked until we got to the floor we needed.
Now I can say I’ve ridden in the elevator with a General Authority! 
As a mission we had a goal of 400
baptisms for the month of March. We were working super hard to do our part and
to complete the goal my companion and I had set for our own area. On Friday it
looked like we were not going to have any more baptisms in March. But Saturday we
went out looking for a miracle. We were on diviciones with some of the zone
leaders. I stayed in our area. At about six at night we decided to go past the
house of a family who we hadn’t taught in a while but who could get baptized.
When we showed up, the wife, Evelin, told us they had been waiting all
afternoon for us! We taught them a short lesson. As we were leaving one of the
daughters asked, “Can I get baptized tomorrow?” I asked Evelin if she wanted to
get baptized too. She said, “Yes!” and so did their other daughter! Ricardo (husband)
still didn’t want to get baptized but said it was alright that they got
baptized. I called our district leader to see if he could do the interviews. He
was still at the church so we headed down around 7:30 at night so they could
have their baptism interview. Everything went well and they were baptized yesterday!
Ricardo also said he would be baptized the 13 of Abril! Pure miracles!!! 
