March 14, 2011
'Ello fam.
Well this week was really crazy. We're just so busy all the time driving around everywhere, visiting many people, and getting fed way too much. We've eaten so many beans, chicken, and tortillas this week that I'm sick of it all and feel as though I just want to eat salad for the rest of my life. Well as you can see in the picture we had a baptism. Daniel was finally baptized, we've been teaching him for a long time. It was amazing to see the change in him. When we first started teaching him he was a nervous wreck in the middle of an ugly divorce. After a month of teaching him he wanted to be baptized but he had some issues to take care of so we had to push his baptism back two months.
The two kids are a family that we took over after the other area was closed down. The mom, the blond lady, Rocio, is a less active member with two kids, Alexa and Kevin, 10 and 8. A long time ago the sister missionaries started visiting her after she had divorced from her husband and they got her to stop smoking and get rid of other bad habits. Alexa would have been baptized a long time ago but the husband didn't want the kids baptized into the mormon the church he wanted them to be catholic. Even though they've been divorced for a while now they still share the kids but I believe Rocio still has the legal guardianship. But she is still intimidated by her ex and so for a long time now the kids haven't been baptized. Well the elders we replaced got close and had their baptisimal forms filled out and their interviews done but they couldn't get Rocio to stand up to her ex. Well we came along and taught her about how we ought to fear God more than other people and that we need to do the right thing in the face of pressure. Well it worked and we set a baptisimal date and they were baptized. Now here's the cool thing, that man in the black is the ex husband. When Rocio finally stood up to him and told that they were getting baptized and that he had no say in the matter I guess he took it well and wanted to come. So he came and they were pretty happy to see each other. Weird...
The baptisimal service itself was very nearly a disaster. It was supposed to start at 7:00. Daniel was the only one who showed up on time, we had asked him and the family to be baptized to show up at 6:30 so we could get them all dressed up. Most everyone else started showing up at about 7:20ish. We know that MST (mormon standard time) is about 5-10 minutes behind regular time. But add MST to HST (Hispanic standard time) and thusly the service started at 7:40. Other problems were that the closet that contained all of the baptisimal clothing didn't have any clothes at all that would have fit a child. Everything was huge, apparently in the 3 wards that share this chapel nobody is ever baptized at 8 years old because there was not any clothes at all that were small enough for Alexa and Kevin. That was pretty stupid. And of the clothes they did have they had yellow stains and stuff all over them. It was frankly embarrassing as we were with them going through this closet looking for something that would fit them. Well we found the smallest clothes we could and rolled up the pant legs and we even used white ribbon to hold their pants up. Ridiculous. Oh and we realized that nobody from the bishopric was there. Our ward mission leader was supposed to have made all of the appropriate calls but nobody from the bishopric was there. When a baptism is performed you have to have the bishop or one of his counselors there to preside over the whole thing. Luckily, one of them was in the building. Every saturday night the stake has some sort of marriage classes in the building, he and his wife were in there so we yanked him out of there so he could preside over the whole thing. So we finally started and everything was going well until we got the portion were the ordinances were to be performed. Kevin was baptized, but Rocio wanted him to see his sister's baptism so we had to wait until he got dried off and changed. Then Alexa was baptized, then came Daniel's turn.
Well the other elders have been teaching Daniel's wife for a while now and they haven't seen each other in like 6 months, but they told her about his baptism and she was thinking about coming. We tought it would be really cool for her to assist his baptism and have both of them feel the spririt at the same time. Daniel didn't know she was coming. Well she didn't show up and Danile and Elder White were down there in the water when the other elders said to stop and wait till she got there, they had called her and she said she was on the way. She took 20 mintues to get there (she lived 2 mintues away). And there was a long akward moment as both of them just stood there in the water with everyone else in the room just watching. We closed the accordian wall and had some people share their testimonies, then there was a false alarm as someone thought she had just come in so they opened it back up. And it would have been even more akward to close it again so they left it open for another 10 mintues and everything was just akward.
Well she finally showed up and Daniel was baptized. Now I'm down to about 4 mintues so I'll have to go really fast here but. It was all good and we blew everyone away with a special musical number done by all of the missionaries, we had everyone in tears, even Rocio's ex, it was great. I'd like to describe what it was but I don't have time for that and I'm typing really fast so there's probably a lot of mispellings and things but oh well I'm oput of of time we're having a baptism this week as well sot hings are thgoing tgood. Peace out and have a good week I lvoe you all bye.
-- Elder Rice
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