Hectic and Kinda Weird Week

Lets see. Let’s begin, as usual on Tuesday. I remember the house being COLD when I woke up and went downstairs, I realized one of us sad freaking missionaries had left the front door open all night so yeah. Anyway, later that day we walked to go teach a less active guy. He’s named Axel. He’s super nice but I guess he’s had some weed problems so naturally, I wanted to teach him the Word of Wisdom. So I opened up good ole’ D&C 89, explained some context, and read the classic verses 18-21. No big deal right? Those verses are words DIRECTLY from the mouth of God, AND they explain exactly what blessings you’ll receive if you live the commandment.

Pero bueno.

After the lesson as we were walking back to the church, me and my companion had an um, discussion cause apparently "D&C 89 isn’t the really that good to use in explaining the Word of Wisdom". I’m sorry I don’t care what anyone says that is literally the Best way to teach that commandment. I know there’s some obscure verses in the old testament in Daniel and in Judges, but literally the clearest and easiest way to teach it is section 89. Anyway no one wanted to read that rant. We bought some tacos for lunch. We eat out a ton here cause when its the members turn to feed us, they usually Just have us come to their house to pick up some money. I think it might be cause Covid’s coming back, but it could also be cause the people here are really busy, but anyway the tacos were pretty dang good. We had a lesson on the phone with good old Elizabeth Fuentes after that. (I’ll talk about her later) to close off the day, some lady were teaching named Inez came to the church for a lesson with her 8 year old son. We wanted to invite him to be baptized so I was trying to talk to him and idk why but every time I’ve tried to teach a kid on my mission it’s like talking to a rock and I cannot for the life of me, get them to respond. To rub salt in the wound after I finished talking, the kid turned to his mom and whispered "no se inglés" so I guess after 6 months of being a missionary, I still don’t speak the dang language. A fun Tuesday huh? 

Wednesday was zone conference. I don’t need to go into much detail but we were informed about Covid coming back and stuff and I’m starting to wonder if its only a matter of time before we go into full in quarantine. But Who knows? When we got home from a long conference, we went to go visit a part member family. They weren’t even home, but the memorable part was that we were walking and big, clumsy me was walking fast and I accidentally bumped into a poor old woman and almost knocked her over. I turned around to apologize. She was SUPER nice and so I started talking to her. She was, like mentioned, very old. Her name is 'Maria de Los Ángeles' and her husband had died about a year ago. I gave her a little booklet on the Plan of Salvation and she said she wanted to come to church with us. That’s all that happened, but it was really nice to meet her, and it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been all clumsy and almost ran her over in the street, it wouldn't have happened. We also called one of our investigators (whom we’d only talked on the phone) and found out he’s the guy we buy tacos from and we want to baptize him super bad so we can have free tacos.

Thursday. We had some good ol’ exchanges with the zone leaders. It was our last exchanges for a while cause the day after, We got a notice from the boss (President) that due to covid they’re gonna be shutting down exchanges for a while. I was with Elder Gonzales (theres 5 E. Gonzales in the mission). It was good. We tried to visit some people, we knocked some doors with absolutely no success at all, we ran into some rude people, and an extremely intoxicated man, so pretty much a normal day. Later, we went to go visit Elizabeth Fuentes. I mentioned her previously, but I should describe her. She’s an older (ish I can’t tell) woman and she’s really weird. She lives at home by herself in a very disorganized house and she randomly starts laughing at weird times and says strange things. However, I actually have a ton of respect for her because out of all the people I’ve taught in 3 weeks in this area, She is the only one who I feel like is doing this simply cause she wants to. The other people I’ve taught have had member friends and some pressure put on them and a ton really just don’t understand. They’re all for it when we talk about faith and stuff but when we start getting down to it, they start to get very hesitant realizing they ain’t just going to heaven if all they do is believe in Jesus and pray to the Virgin every so often. Elizabeth comes to church every week, reads the Book of Mormon, and prays and all that. She also once payed tithing, and mentioned that she wants to help and be involved in the ward. She’s just not so sure about baptism yet which is fine as of now. But she is really doing all this (I feel) simply cause she wants to and she’s interested in the Church, not for any other reason, which isn’t always the case with people. During the lesson we had with her, we were sitting outside, and all of a sudden about 5 large dogs just start attacking another dog pretty dang bad so Elizabeth got up and chased them away. After the lesson as we were walking away, I saw one of the dogs walking around like all was normal but it had a large gaping hole in its neck. Freaking animals bro. Later that evening, Elder Gonzales and I, were walking around the area trying to find some grey dots in the area book. We walked past Duke (the crazy dog who loves the missionaries) and so naturally he started following us. When you’re trying to contact, a large crazy dog following you is hard, cause literally he will follow you into any building and then he’ll bark super loud if you don’t throw him a rock to put in his mouth. This proved difficult as we were contacting a lady at her door and Duke didn’t have his rock so he barked, I backed up to kick him one so he’d shut up, and I bumped into a drunk man walking past, and he dropped some chips he was eating. Luckily he was much too drunk to care but, yeah, I feel like Duke one day may get us killed. 

Friday morning we were leaving the house with the Zone leaders, some lady came up to us, SUPER excited cause she saw two of us four were white so she knew we spoke english. She INSISTED that we come into her house and help her daughter practice her english for a test in school. We went in and helped her for a bit. It was a little awkward but it wasn’t too bad and the lady was really nice. It’s kind weird the way you find people huh? Not too much else happened Friday. I gave away a Book of Mormon and we taught a few people on the phone/video call. In my opinion, it’s a lot harder to teach virtually, but we didn’t visit a ton this week cause everyones sick.

Saturday was a bit interesting. We had to prepare the baptism of Inez. I don’t mention her a ton, because I feel like I really don’t know her too well and I almost feel like some pressure was put on her to get baptized so soon. We started filling the font and surprise we couldn’t get the hot water to work. We left to go and buy some paper to print out some programs and we got Duke on our tail. He followed us back to the church as he so often does, and this time one of the two gates was open to the church, this gate you can’t close without a remote, which we don’t have, so Duke was able to get into the church grounds. We didn’t let him get into the building, but I guess a member who was at the church accidentally did, so duke started running around the church halls and jumping on us and stuff. We finally got him out but he literally waited for us outside for hours waiting for us to come out. 

Now for the baptism. I did the ordinance of Inez. I got in the cold water and warned her it was cold (she didn’t like that) I explained to her that she needed to plug her nose after I said "amen" and I warned her it would be very fast. I said the prayer, said amen, put her hand on her nose and put her in the water. The problem was that for some reason, when she plugged her nose she opened her mouth so when she went under the water she inhaled a ton so when I brought her back out of the water, she was choking bad, and coughing and I think crying a little. I felt super awkward and like it was my fault. My companion assured me it wasn’t and that she, for some reason, just decided to open her mouth under water, but yeah I felt a tad bit awkward that a woman nearly drowned on my watch. The rest of the day was pretty normal. Duke following us, and a bunch of phone calls. 

Sunday, we had Inez’s conformation (she left right after for some reason), we ate with the bishop’s family, and we got some heavy rain. Thats about it. Anyway Thats all from me,  I Just spilled a bunch of water so I should go clean that up. Also forgive all my typos. 

Pics (I don’t have many) 

1. The Baptism of Inez (the lady I almost drowned)

2. I’ve never mentioned Chocoleta but she’s another crazy dog in our neighborhood.