3/30/15
Hi family!
Thanks for your letter. I'm glad things back home are going well. That's
funny you said you had a long week, the week here was kind of long as well,
that's just because it was a crazy, and difficult, but really good week. I'll
tell you about it in a minute. I'm happy to hear your talks went well.
Congratulations! I was thinking about you guys yesterday since it was Sunday
and I knew you would be speaking
I can't believe next week is general conference again, for you guys at
least. For members here, the conference will probably get here 2-3 weeks after.
It's going to be Easter too! I saw the new video that the church released,
"Because He Lives". I liked it a lot. We'll download it in Portuguese
and show it to the members here. That's crazy that you had not much of a winter
there. Here I thought it was supposed to start cooling down a bit, or at least
not be as hot as it was in December and January, but it continues super-hot.
And I imagine we'll have a pretty hot summer in Utah in just a couple
months as well. It'll be a while before I get to experience cold weather again
haha.
Now about our week...We had delayed the wedding and baptism of the couple
that had been working for weeks to get ready, as you know, so it was marked for
this Saturday. We spent most of the week focusing on them and on the other 5
people to be baptized this week. It was all going pretty normally until
Tuesday. That night we found out that one of them, who had previously had
problems with drinking, had fallen into temptation and got drunk that
night. There were other details about what happened, but I don't think it's
necessary to share here. We were shocked, to say the least. So close to the
baptism too, we were caught off guard. The next day a member couple who are
close friends, went to visit them and talk about what happened and how they
could help. Later that afternoon we went over there to talk to them. The man said
he felt bad about what had happened and wanted to repent and be forgiven by the
Lord, and by his wife. We were worried that given the circumstances they
wouldn't be in a good situation to get married and be baptized. After much
prayer with them and for them and feeling inspired, we decided that he wouldn't
be able to be baptized on Saturday, but if they wanted they could still get
married. This was on Wednesday and it wasn't looking like things would work out
for the wedding, so we called the members to tell them the wedding would be postponed.
Then the next day on Thursday we visited again and talked some more and they
understood that they couldn't get baptized on Saturday but they still wanted to
go through with the wedding. So we had to call up all the members again
and talk with the ones that were helping to organize it and tell them the
wedding was back on. So we spent a lot of the day on Friday helping the members
organize the wedding and baptism and little party that would happen afterwards.
We also had to visit the ones that would be getting baptized and have them
interviewed and approved. It was a crazy day. Saturday we spent the whole day
at the church. The wedding was at 15:00 and the baptism at 16h, the festinha
(little party) was right after.
A bunch of members came over to help clean up the chapel and decorate it
for the wedding. A bunch of women came over to start cooking the food.
At the same time we had to fill up the baptismal font, but there was no
water coming out of the faucets. It's something that happens a lot, but it
happened at the worst possible time. So we gathered together a few members to
help us and we filled up the font with buckets of water from a well next door.
It took a while.
The wedding went really well. There were probably about 50-60 people there
and the baptism afterwards was really good as well. We baptized a total of five
people. The next day I did the confirmations of two of them, Luisa and Venepa.
The party afterwards was good. There was a ton of food and a big mess left
behind afterwards. It all ended at 20:00 (8pm) and the next hour was spent
cleaning up. Others came over early the next morning before church to finish
cleaning the kitchen and sacrament meeting room.
Church was good, the attendance was over 70 and we had 12 investigators
come. We received a lot of referrals this week from some people who were
invited to the wedding and baptism. As far as the month of April is concerned,
we're hoping to marry and baptize 1 or 2 more families. Considering the setbacks
and challenges that we experienced, everything turned out really well this
week. We were super tired on Saturday
night and all day yesterday.
Baptizing families is not easy. But I'm enjoying the work. I feel tired
as I go to bed and get up every single day, but considering this will
be for 5 more weeks it should not be a problem.
Things in the branch are going well too. We've been working a lot with the
home teaching program. This program has not been working here, but now all the
companionships are organized and we're hoping that the branch can have their
visits done during April. I keep learning a lot every week about the
organization of the church and the importance of all the church programs. These
are things I took for granted before the mission. In Utah, there aren't many
problems getting all the organizations positions filled and for the most part,
everything runs smoothly the way it should. Here it's not like that at all. The
branch is still relatively new (since 2011) still small but growing and
everyone is learning how things need to be organized and run. It's a great
learning opportunity.
I'm glad you're all well and things are going well. I hope it
continues that way during this next week. I wish you have a good
Easter!
I love you!!
Josh
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