Okay, here we go!
So, I guess there was some confusion about last week. Let me clear some things up.
1. Elder Porter is my companion (he was in the picture with Eduard, the 91 year old man we baptized).
2. Elder Bauman WAS my companion for 2 days while Elder Porter was in the hospital.
3. Now Elder Bauman is in Los Tuxtlas, a few hours south of here, and my companion (see number 1) is back. He's feeling a lot better and has medicine, but he'll be going back to check things up in a couple months, and I'll probably already have changed areas.
Hopefully that's all good with all of you^^
As for the random Spanish I throw in, now you all know how I felt my first few days in the MTC^^ And there is this wonderful thing called the internet you can use to translate the Spanish (except when it's slang I guess) through google.translate. Just search the words 'google translate' on any search site and you'll get there, no worries. Mmkay? =)
Aaaalright then, let's get into the good stuff.
So this week was pretty interesting.
Let's see, let's see... We've been getting a lot of investigators and lessons lately, which is nice. Gotten some good references and we're working with them, which takes a little time from contacting people, but we're working hard and getting it done.
There's this funny little 2 year old kid of one of the families that always says, 'El Elder!' and points and me and high fives me every time we drop by, and that includes when he saw me during the sacrament on Sunday. Pretty funny. Haha
With all of our investigators, we're kind of working on similar things. A fear that we often find is that after making the huge step of baptism, they won't be strong enough to follow through, and they'll get greater condemnation. It seems like every person we have with a baptismal date has this same fear that we're working through. So we've been focusing a lot on the topics of receiving the Holy Ghost, and how that helps you to absolutely be able to endure to the end. It doesn't mean we'll be perfect. That's why the scriptures talk so much about repentance. That's why after king Benjamin's people take a covenant to follow the commandments in all things, he doesn't just leave it at that, but he calls priests and teachers to teach them and stir them up in remembrance of their covenant.
We will slip up in this life, inevitably. Too many people think that when we slip up, that's it, game over, but it's not. Especially not after baptism. What's better, never being baptized and continually sinning, or being baptized and thus receiving the Holy Ghost to help you better yourself and most of all help you GET BACK UP when you fall down. Because you will fall down.
So that is what we taught this week. We've had a lot of spiritually guided lessons and specific commitments placed with each investigator to his or her needs, and we're already seeing the fruits of that. They are beginning to understand that after baptism, they aren't required to be perfect, they're required to try their personal best, and repent when they don't. Repentance isn't easy, but it's always worth it.
As a missionary, I constantly have to repent for things that I've done or haven't done. People may think that being a missionary means being a better person, but it doesn't. Being a missionary means acknowleging your faults even more, and, through repentance, giving as much as yourself to the will of God as possible. To be honest, I still make a lot of the same mistakes that I made before the mission, but I've learned what to do when I make them, what to do to not make them as much, and with some mistakes I've learned to just absolutely cut them out. You really learn to prioritize out here.
But anyway, I do know that you back home can apply this as well. We know we aren't perfect, let's just accept that, repent and move on. Repentance means confronting the mistake, feeling bad, confessing to God or a leader, asking forgiveness, and strengthening yourself to not repeat it again. True repentance takes time, but God accepts our best because Jesus Christ paid for our sins and our transgressions.
I also want to mention that before any big decision or moment in life, Satan works hard. When we're feeling the greatest, he's working the hardest, don't doubt it for a second.
This great lady that we have a baptismal date for this Saturday had such an experience last week.
We had commited her to baptism with Elder Bauman. She accepted that and the date, which was amazing enough as it was. Then later, she asked about the law of chastity after we had finished teaching a lesson once. We told her we'd come back the next day and talk about that. When we came back, she'd already somehow encountered scriptures about it in the Book of Mormon by herself, and broken up with her boyfriend of 22 years because she knew it wasn't a good relationship as far as standards of the church go. Then, we talked about coffee. Her only problem as far as the Word of Wisdom goes. She loves it. Drinks it every day. We talked about the blessings, applied scriptures to her and everything, and in the end she would not agree to quitting it until baptism. She said she would get baptized and THEN stop drinking it, but we know that wouldn't work. So, we asked her to set a goal with us, but she wouldn't go any earlier than 2 days before the baptism. Well, we finally, after a looong discussion, got her to agree to 4 days before the baptism. Then we came back the next day, and she said she already just felt wrong drinking coffee, so she was throwing away the rest.
So, a woman like this, who talks about her baptism with excitement, has cut out relationships, coffee, and bad habits so quickly and with resolve, well... What problems could she have?
Well, we found out when we dropped by a couple days ago and she told us, ''I'm not getting baptized anymore''. We had a loong discussion again, and it was all about some misunderstanding with the Bishop, who is also her neighbor, and at the end she still wouldn't give up. She just didn't want to be baptized. She said that if there's someone like that as a leader in the church, better to go be baptized with the Pentecostals or something.
We felt horrible. We tried our best, we read scriptures, we explained that the church is perfect, but the people aren't, that we shouldn't judge, that the baptism is her decision and has nothing to do with anyone else but her, and nothing worked. So we left, feeling horrible. We went and talked to the bishop, but we didn't say anything about the misunderstanding, we just wanted to see if he'd mention things on his own. He did, and we found out the exact reasons of the miscommunication. It was absolutely the spirit, because we said nothing, and he, not knowing that our investigator had any problems with him or anything, explained every little detail in a round about and conversational way. After we were done talking with him, we returned to the investigator, explained things, explained that this confusion is just Satan working his hardest, because he doesn't want the baptism to happen, and we left with her again agreeing to the baptism and as excited as ever.
Now we know that it's never easy. We had thought that this woman would be baptized without an issue in the world, and we were humbled. We must always be aware that Satan works his hardest when things are going fantastically. We must always strengthen ourselves and others, in good times and bad times, to get past these moments.
I know the church is true, I know Jesus Christ loves all of us, and he knows exactly what we need to be happy. I know that if we follow him, we will all return to live with him and have more happiness than we can imagine.
I hope you're all doing great, I think about you all and I pray for everything to go well, love you all too. Time flies, I'll be seeing you all soon enough. Have some pictures!^^
1. Aww, nice dog!
2. NOT NICE! NOT NICE!^^
3. Yeah, I'm takin' some muscle stuff. Not really though^^
4. Ah, tropical weather.
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