August 25, 2014

This week has been an exciting one. 

Our little Martin has become quite the problem. He's always had a problem with stealing and lying but it seems this week it escalated. He stole money from the restaurant where he works for 10 hours a day and later stole a phone out of the purse of one of the other employees. His baptism date officially fell and we have no idea what to do. How can you help a young boy who either doesn't understand the principles or has no desire to change? Yeah, we're not sure either. However, on the bright side, he has officially given up coffee. =) So that's a perk.

Actually, like Martin, we had 4 other dates set for the 30h of August and every single one fell through. Sabino and Alma, the parents of a recent convert, have to be married before they can be baptized. The problem is that Sabino is still married to another woman and definitely won't be divorced before next Saturday. They are both so excited about the gospel and to be baptized. We don't know how long it will take before they can enter the waters of baptism but we have no doubt that one day they will. The only thing that worries us is that they will become disheartened and lose their excitement. We're going to keep working with them though and continue to pray for their testimonies to stay strong.

Naim, the son of a recent convert, had his date fall through because he drank coffee the day after we talked about the Word of Wisdom and he had committed to keep it. We're pretty sure he had no idea how serious we were about it until we told him that he couldn't be baptized on Saturday. However, we're hoping he understands now just how important his commitments to live the commandments are, and that they're not to us but to the Lord. At least, that's what we tried to explain.

On Saturday we had an interesting experience when I tried to turn Lesson 3 from PMG (Preach My Gospel) into a science experiment. Lesson 3 is about faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. I used a boiled egg and drew a face on him. He was named Senor Huevo. He has always had lots of faith and has always wanted to enter the Kingdom of God (Wine Bottle borrowed from recent convert who was visited earlier in the day) and although he did some things wrong he repented, lost his hard outside shell, and was baptized. However, with all that he still needed to be baptized by fire (match and rubbing alcohol meant to suck him into the Kingdom of God), however, he was baptized with a large spurt of fire and although the Kingdom of God was trying very hard to suck him in, he was still too fat to be sucked into the Kingdom and just sat there, unimpressively. He obvious did not endure to the end.

I had tried it earlier with a regular coke bottle and 1. the opening also was too small and 2. he decided to exploded because his guardian angel (hermana Parslow) tried to put him into the Kingdom of God too early. When the match and alcohol become friends, Senor Huevo the First was no more. It really startled my companion and made her a little worried for our lesson, especially since we were then using a bottle that once held alcohol. Not gonna lie, I was a little concerned also that the bottle was going to burst however, it was just a small pillar of flame that startled everyone else.

After that lesson, which was the shortest lesson we've had with them, we ran out into the rain to catch a bus ride home. Two buses that we could have taken refused to stop when we tried to flag them down. We stood, waiting in the rain, praying for a bus and resisting the call of nature. Finally a bus passed and stopped. We agreed to contact the bus. My companion gave her introduction and it went really well. We began to contact the people on the bus by passing for each person. I was in the middle of waiting while someone wrote down their address when my companion decided to get of the bus. We watched in surprise at each other (I was surprised because she had gotten off and she was surprised that I had not left the bus with her) as the bus continued to move with her outside and me still on it. I finished the contact, got off the bus, and began sprinting for my companion. We met up in the street having both ran to the other and hugged. Then, we laughed....a lot. 

What an exciting week. =)