January 10, 2011
Hello Family.
How's it going? I don't why I always put rhetorical questions that you all can't immediately answer at the start of my e-mails. Anywho.... This week was full of interesting things that happened.
But first I'll start with the pictures that I forgot to post last week. There's our recent converts that were baptized on the 1st. Marta Arevalo and David Reyes. Marta is this old, old lady from Guatemala who was passed off to us from the other elders when she moved into our area. She was probably one of the easiest people to teach and baptize ever. Usually I hate teaching old people, it's very frustrating and pointless but Marta is pretty sharp and she was instantly ready to do anything we told her to. Upon teaching the word of wisdom we challenged her to live it and she said: "Well I drink coffee but now I won't anymore." It was as easy as that, she was willing to give up anything to be baptized. I wish we could find more people like that. The other people in the picture are David, who's 10, he a sharp kid, his mother Juani, is on the left holding the Book of Mormon, she was a less active member who is now getting back in the game. The girl next to David is his best friend, Abigail, she's also 10 and she would have been baptized too, but her family wants nothing to do with us. She usually hangs out at Davids house and we've been teaching them there, she's only 10 and since we gave her a book of mormon she's already read up to Alma. We're hoping her family will open up one day. The smallest Child is David's sister Dora. We always call her 'Dora the Explorer'. Oh and that annoying looking guy next to me is my companion Elder Green. The other pictures are of some sweet graffiti and a Chihuaua that has the same fur color as our dog and the same 'give me your phud' look.
Okay, now for the FIASCO OF THE WEEK. Again it happened on Sunday in church. Funny how so many things can go wrong at church and always do. We had 3 investigators who were to be given baptismal interviews. One of them, this man who was also being taught by the other elders and moved into our area. Has some serious issues and was to be interviewed by President Cue. When an investigator has serious issues they have to be interviewed by the mission president. And President Hansen doesn't speak spanish but luckily one of his counselors does. So he was having that interview. Our other two investigators, a mother and her 15 year old daughter were to be interviewed by our district leader. Now the girl is pretty amazing, both of them have been taught a while before I came to the area and they're weren't really going anywhere. But since we got the girl to go to mutual one day it's been a breeze. She's really social and made instant friends with all of the youth in the ward. She surprised everyone and all of the YW's leaders thought she was a member from a different ward. So they were going good until sunday when the Bishop tells us that he wants to interview this girl. And we tell him, that he can't do that, non-members are to be interviewed by the mission not by the ward. He then told us that he heard some things from the youth and, oh man, what confusion and unnecessary madness came of this.
So to make a long story short, the youth were preparing to go on a Temple trip to do baptisms and during these interviews (reportedly) some of the youth told the bishop that this girl (our investigator) had bi-sexual tendencies. Which got him in a fit, so he wanted to interview the girl. (Why in the world would the youth be talking about someone else during their own interviews?) Now we had gone over the baptismal interview questions with our investigators before so they knew what would be coming and as far as we knew this girl was just fine. She had just dumped her boyfriend who was almost twice her age to be baptized. After I and some of the other elders haggled with the Bishop we struck a deal with him, President Cue, after he had finished with our other investigator would interview this girl. So he did and it was a rather long interview but Cue said she was good to get baptized this saturday.
We were rather exhausted during this whole ordeal. We never sat for more than 10 minutes in any of the 3 hour bloc meetings. We constantly jumping in and out of the hall way making phone calls tracking down people in the building and all of this nonsense. All of this and we had 3 additional investigators at church that day who we had to keep an eye on as well. Never-the-less w
e eventually pieced together the picture of what happened. We noticed that young women whom our investigator had become friends with, were avoiding her and wouldn't make eye contact or anything. Our hypothesis is that many of the young women in the ward got jealous of this non-member girl (she was, and still is stealing all of the young men away from them, you will all see why next week when I send pictures of her upcoming baptism on saturday). So to try and ruin her they started these rumors about her being bi-sexual and even went the extra mile of telling the bishop about it during their own interviews with them, and thus this whole mess gets thrown into our hands. (That's were all the messes of the ward usually end up). But she passed her interview and she and her mother are going to be baptized this saturday. We got home from church completely drained and I checked to see if I had any gray hairs, and my poor companion, still being new and not understanding too much spanish, didn't quite get what was going on during church and he was just flipping out the whole time until I filled him in afterwards. Now the remarkable thing about all of this, is that we went to visit this girl and her mom the night after and they were still happy and excited for baptism. I'm still quite surprised, after having her new best friends stab her in the back she still wants to be baptized and come to church. We were afraid that she'd never want anything to do with the church ever again. Heck I'd probably feel like that after something like this happened to me.
So I'm really mad at the stupid youth but also very amazed and humbled that this girl still wants to stick with it even after such intense opposition from the very people she's going to join. I'm really frustrated with the youth, they very nearly came close to ruining a couple of people's chances at salvation, and someones salvation is pretty serious. This is serious stuff, bunch of morons, the lot of them. For the rest of the day I kept singing a line from that one hymn 'True to the Faith' which goes something like: 'Will the Youth of Zion falter? something something something.... and then I'd substitute 'no' for 'YES'. The youth of zion spectacularly faltered yesterday. Epic fail. I always remember being in church and hearing that spreading rumors was bad but I never really understood the importance of it until I've been out in the mission and seen such destruction it can cause. I had heard this ward was very ineffective before I got transferred here but I'd never thought that some of them would be working actively against us. We only barely escaped from that destruction and they're still good to be baptized this saturday.
Okay I'm tired of typing now so I hope you all have a good week and.... Yeah. I love you all. Peace.
