Anyway, these past two weeks have been intense. I'll try to remember what happened.
Interesting
food story: one of the sisters in the ward who was assigned to feed us
lunch one day called us the night before we were supposed to go to her
house and asked if we liked sushi. Yes, sushi. We said yes (neither of
us having had sushi before). She said that she had never made it before,
but wanted to experiment. She has made good food for us before, so we
trusted her and went to her house for lunch. Sure enough, we ate sushi. I
find it funny that the first time I ate sushi was in Mexico. It was
really good, don't get me wrong; I just thought it was funny.
Also, we had divisions last week. For those who do not know the
missionary life, this is where the leader of our district and his
companion basically swap companions with another companionship for 24
hours. This is for training and a kind of inspection in each area and in
each companionship. I went with the district leader, Elder Bingham (an
American! Someone who speaks perfect English!) in his area, while his
companion, Elder Medina, stayed with Elder Bonilla in our area. Here I
am with Elder Bingham in his apartment:
We went to visit an investigator who was about to be baptized:
This week, we have been
doing a lot of finding new investigators through street contacting and
referrals, because all of our investigators seem to be "freezing up".
None of our investigators came to church this Sunday (argh!) and an
investigator that was going to be baptized on Saturday NEVER SHOWED UP.
We called her several times without her answering, but eventually we
found out that she had regressed into some old habits she had before
meeting the missionaries. She has been fighting to overcome all her
addictions, and she is a super amazing investigator, so it shocked us to
see her fall back, on the day of her baptism, no less. We've been
visiting with her a lot and trying to help her overcome her challenges.
We're going to try for baptism again. We're not sure when yet, but we'll
try again.
Also,
I've decided to do a weekly segment called The Contact of the Week.
This is basically the funniest, scariest, most spiritual, (or whatever
else) contact or lesson of the week. Yesterday, after being very
discouraged after the fallen-through baptism and the fact that none of
our investigators came to church, we were contacting in a colonia far
from our house. We had little success there, and decided to head back to
our colonia. While we were biking along the highway (which is really
super duper scary), we found a woman with her two little kids wating at a
bus stop. We decided to talk to her, and we found out that her spouse
basically just recently kicked her and her kids out of the house. My
otherwise absolutely amazing Spanish communication skills were hampered
by the noise of the thousands of semi trucks screaming along the highway
4 feet away form us, so it was hard to hear exactly what was going on,
but she was walking with what stuff she had and her kids to a friends'
house, and she was really needing some help from God. She was never
really terribly religious (not much more than the average here, which
seems to be "I'm Catholic because all my ancestors were Catholic, and I
believe in God, but I haven't been to church in years" kind of a thing),
and she has been really questioning what God has in store for her, or
if He even exists, when we came. She started crying, and we basically
just talked to her for a couple of hours. This is Contact of the Week
this week because I realized what the role of missionary is: someone who
litereally represents Christ and tries to befriend, help, and genuinely
love people just as He would. It was really humbling to realize that
that was what I was doing (or at least rying to do, what with my amazing
Spanish skills). Anyway, she was really open to meeting with us and
learning from us, and we are going to meet with her again at her
friend's house this week.
Oh,
yes, one last thing before I end: The misison president called me this
week. (Cue scary music). The mission president rarely calls specific
missionaries who aren't in some kind of leadership position, so it was
all rather scary. It got even scarier when, after Elder Bonilla answered
the phone and talked to him for a little bit, handed the phone to me
and said that President wanted to talk to me. (Cue more scary music).
What the Presient wanted to talk to me about was a conference between
the two Monterrey missions on the 23rd, and that he wanted me to play
the piano for the congregational hymns and for a special musical number a
choir would perform. Apparently, a little birdie at the CCM had told
him that I played the piano for the CCM choir and that he could use me
for piano-related purposes. There would be all 300 missionaries from the
two misisons there, and also PRESIDENT NIELSON FROM THE QUORUM OF THE
TWELVE APOSTLES IN THE FLESH presiding at that meeting and giving an
address. Yup. In a week, I'll be playing that piano in front of a
real-live apostle. I'm really excited because, hey, I like to play the
piano, but I'm also a little bit nervous. I'm mostly excited, though. It
will be really cool to see President Nielson. He's cool.
Anyway, I've rambled enough for today, so I'l let you all go. Thanks for your love, letters, and support.
Lots of love from Nuevo Laredo!
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