Great weekend!

Paola and her Dad

So this was a good weekend! We had three baptisms that all went well for the most part. The Morales family was on Saturday. Paola is a nine-year-old, and her dad was able to get back going to church and baptize her which has been a process over the past couple weeks. They are a great family. They did a good job of setting up their program so Elder Salazar and I didn't participate except for the missionary presentation while they are changing (we just teach the restoration). Brother Morales went to baptize her, and I think it took him almost a minute, because he was crying so hard… and he really isn't an emotional guy. 

Setting up for all of this was kind of a nightmare without a ward mission leader. We had someone in our bishopric do it, but then the day before he called and still hadn't done anything, so we did it all: programs, building, font… That's ok; that's always what I have done. It worries me too much to let other people do it in case something is done wrong, or they forget towels or something. Finding baptismal clothes was the biggest nightmare. Our bishopric was going to get some, then the morning of the baptism they said they had nothing and to send the Morales family to DI to get their own. Ugh...so we went to another stake and made like 1,000 calls to different people (it seemed like) and found some clothes.

 

Things just keeping better!

Happy Birthday Elder Salazar!

 This has been a good week! They just keep getting better; even more lessons than the week before. We had Elder Salazar’s birthday this week. So there is a lady that lives here that tailors our clothes for free, and it was her birthday, too. SO we went over in the morning to sing her happy birthday and give her a cake as a zone. Then I drove straight to the other elders’ apartment, and they had a sign for Elder Salazar’s birthday and a cake, and they shoved his face in. Then we went to Olive Garden for lunch for his birthday. He had a great day and got a few packages from some friends (thank you!). Then that night we went for a lesson at the Salazar’s house, and they somehow knew it was his birthday and had bought him a cake and a new tie, so that was cool.

SO the Salazar’s: they didn't come to church this Sunday. We went over to their house last night for dinner since they have been dying to feed us. They made a huge meal and invited some member families over. It was getting late, so we had to leave before a spiritual thought. I don't know if we could have gotten them all to quiet down. But we taught them another lesson. They hadn't read in The Book of Mormon, so we read with them. They seem kind of interested. I mean, they say they are, but I'm not feeling a lot of real intent. I think they do it just to be classy, so they can tell their friends they are religious and study with the missionaries or something. We will see what happens.

Surprise!

Fred Kenney was in Logan and ran into Elder Bassett. He was one of Taylor's former YM's Presidents.

...the happiest I have ever been.

So before I get started on my area, I can update everyone on Ana and Angel. Ana won't get baptized, and Angel had a baptism set up for this Sunday. Then on Sunday morning, his boss sent him to Arizona for four weeks, too bad. So much stress with that family. I found out Vanessa is moving to Vegas. I think it's probably so Liz can make more money working in clubs, so I think that means she isn't getting baptized anytime soon.

So missionaries do dumb things sometimes. We cleaned “The Sink” again this week. We went for lunch, because Elder Ward said he and his companion had cleaned it in 12 minutes. (It's like a gallon of ice cream, two bananas and a lot of toppings..maybe a little more but around there.) So I texted a few members our zone (building zone unity), and we cleaned it in 10 minutes. Elder Salazar is still new, so he can't eat very much, so I ate about 75% of the ice cream; you can all be proud of me that I learned how to be a gluttonous pig in the mission field. I don't think we ate sugar for two days afterwards. I just couldn't make myself do it.

We went to an 8-year-old baptism on Saturday. She turns nine years old in a month, so it was almost a convert baptism, ha-ha. Oh well; it was still good to go. She had asked me to confirm her, so I did that. Utah baptisms for kids are funny. They do it the first Sunday of every month. There were like 12 kids that had to get baptized. All the people filled the whole chapel, and they send us into the font room by ward. (They send the Spanish ward in first, because we are incapable of waiting reverently.) I realized more this week that I was sent to the Spanish program, so I can learn to chill out and not get so stressed and ocd about what others are doing. I kind of thought about it and was surprised when my heart rate wasn't even raised when we didn't have one single investigator show up until ten minutes after the meeting started.

Life is Great

Last week was great, it's not all about numbers but last week we had a ton of appointments, more than ever in a my mission and it just felt great. Things are moving well, and we are loving it. I guess this week I can just move on down the list of the people we are working with.

 

The temple this morning

The first would be Hernan Zavala. He got back, and the worst of all his work is over with so no more big trips that he knows of. If all goes well, he will get baptized this Sunday. He is kind of iffy about the time, but knows it's something that he needs to do. He went to church on Sunday, and in elders quorum, he was introducing himself again and someone called out asking when he was getting baptized. He laughed and said, “Probably next week if I can't convince these elders otherwise.” They all laughed, because that was them in his shoes within the last five years or so. He is great; he has read all of the Nephi books and is in Mosiah I think now.

I remember how much I wanted to be a missionary, and it's finally happening....

So we had two new missionaries living with us for about five days, and they are already moved out. They are Elder Franco and Elder Olsen; they cover English for the Logan stake (our more southern stake) even though they are both Spanish missionaries. Elder Olsen is waiting for his visa to go to Argentina. They just moved out last night to a nicer apartment across the street. We kept the not so nice one, because I didn't want to pack, and we get free milk sent to our apartment from the dairy in Logan. AANND Elder Coronado moved out so I promoted myself to the queen size bed...living like kings in Logan in Utah.

 

These are those three kids I told you about that I talked to for a long time about disneyland..they have these birds, chinchillas, a shitzu...also I met a lady this week with a malti-poo named Lucky. 

So this week has been awesome. Things are just changing for me generally. It's kind of hard to explain, but mainly it’s my perspective and confidence in the Lord being able to just guide me and tell me how to be a missionary. I'll come back to that, but this week we had kind of a funny dinner appointment.

We called the night before like always and then showed up the next day, and the mom was asleep; she had forgotten. Her kids said sorry, and we said no worries we would eat at home. She called thirty minutes after that when we were eating at home bawling her eyes out asking us to come back and eat with her. We said it was fine, and we didn't have time, but she really wanted to give us money to go out. We said seriously it's fine. She just cried harder and said, "Please come back! I have rejected the servants of God! I’m so sorry!" It was really hard not to laugh; we couldn't figure out why she was being so hard on herself, but we promised to go back for dinner another day, poor lady. I wish our investigators felt that bad about missing appointments.

Well I made it through another transfer!

The Zone

My zone leaders

Elder Salazar and I will both be staying in Montevista and absorbing the other half of the area that was previously covered by another companionship. In the past, for English missionaries there was only one companionship for every two stakes. Through the past couple transfers, our mission has been trying to work towards having one set of missionaries for each stake. So on Sunday, the transfer board was all done then President Hiers went to lunch with Elder Perry who told him that they wanted it done now. President Hiers went straight to the transfer room and changed everything up moving about 80% of missionaries to different areas and white washing a TON. It is a big and exciting change; a lot of stakes will be happy. It will also be more tough for those English missionaries to focus only on baptisms which is good; it will force a lot more less active work.

This transfer I plan on getting our ward council more involved by inviting them to set us up less-active lessons and hopefully that will be a good start to where we can eventually transition to having them set us up lessons with potential investigators. We will see how it goes; it'll take some time.