P-Day update week 76, 07/31/2023
Muy buenos dias a todos, espero que se encuentren super bien!!
This week absolutely flew by! I'm not entirely sure what happened haha but let me fill you in on what I can remember!
So I want to spend some time just updating y'all on our friends in teaching! First off our friend Eddy, we've been teaching Eddy pretty consistently over the past couple weeks and have seen a great desire to do what is right! He reads the Book of Mormon and wants to go to church! But it hasn't been easy for him, his family is inactive and many aren't ready to go back to church, he's still pretty young at 13 and can't travel all the way to the church by himself. And one of the biggest trials is his dad. His dad is technically a member of the church but he says that he got baptized because he felt obligated and that he didn't want to do it. He says that he doesn't believe in God and he doesn't want Eddy to be baptized. His mom wants Eddy to take this step and so does he! But without the permission from his dad, him being baptized could be a problem. So we are shooting for getting his permission. This coming weekend is fast Sunday and we will be fasting with their family that the Lord might soften the heart of Eddy's dad. Please pray for Eddy and his family that he can be baptized the 20th of August!
Another friend is a big family I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the mom is named Rachel. This is the family where only the parents are members and none of the children or cousins or parents or uncles that live with them have been baptized! We summed it up to 9 people in the house that are in the baptismal age but haven't been baptized! It's awesome because when we go we get to teach a pretty numerous family, but the hard thing is that every time we stop by there are always a few that are missing, and getting everyone gathered up for the lesson can be a little frustrating! But we've seen that it really is just a great family!! We'll call them the Carter family to make is easier, but the Carter family had a big desire to do what is right and follow the Lord, but it's been hard for them to stay on the track and keep pushing forward! We haven't had a while lot of lessons with them but the ones that we've had have been great! In fact let me tell you about the first lesson we had with them. Well we arrived to their house at about 7:30 and were met by a million little kids running and screaming (think of the movie "Daddy Daycare") and their mom trying to get control of everyone, she was a little embarrassed but told us to come on to her patio. As she was wrangling up the kids we set up the chairs and the stools for everyone and eventually got everyone sitting down. But we know we could lose them if we didn't play this right. So as we were walking up to the house a few minutes before my companion had the idea to tell them we would start with a prayer and teach the first lesson, the message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in one minute and then finish with another prayer. Teaching lessons in one minute is an exercise we missionaries do pretty often to practice our abilities to teach clearly and concisely, but it's never really something I've done in a real lesson. But we went in and tried it. And it worked great!! We were able to finish the lesson, give them copies of the Book of Mormon (a copy of The one for children too) and leave them with and invitation and a prayer in less than 5 minutes!! And the bets thing is that when we came back they had all read alerts a little of the Book of Mormon!! Honestly I see such a desire in this family to come back, but the trials and need of working to make money to feed so many mouths is very real! Please pray for them that they might find peace and happiness and faith as they start on the path once again!!
I'm not sure if I mentioned last week that our friend Carmen, who was baptized about a month ago, brought a kid with her to church last Sunday. Well if I didn't, I just did haha!! Anyway this young man she brought (we'll call him Sam) is Carmen's grandson who just started living with them last week! He has 10 years old and is a little bit of a wild thing! He comes from a hard family situation where his parents treated him poorly and spent most of his days in the streets. One little fact about Sam is that he loves to serve! He has a big heart but has been forced to be a little crazy due to his environment. In fact it's been a little hard to teach him well and really see if he understood. He has a lot of fear of saying the right wrong thing and those around him chastising him for it. We actually brought a member with us in our last lesson who is an elementary school teacher who has some psychology knowledge. We spent about and hour with Sam teaching him just two principles. And after the lesson our friend told us that this young man needs some serious help! He told us that due to the abusive environment he was in before he no longer feels like he can express himself and run the risk of being wrong. He said that we can teach him but it's going to be hard and probably take a while for him to open up and really learn! It's sad because like I mentioned, he's a great kid! We're going to keep teaching him and try to help him the most we can but we really need the healing power of The Atonement here with us! Please pray for him as well!
So those are some of our friends we've been teaching lately, we have a lot more out there but these have been some of our focuses as of late! But now I want to mention this idea my companion shared with me to help the members invite more of their friends to come and see what the church has to offer. So when I first got to this area I saw that on the announcement board thing in the church there was a little tree with this different colored spheres on them and the baptismal fotos! I didn't really understand what it was but I just kind of ignored it haha!! But when my companion Elder Beltrán got here he explained to me that he is the one who did that activity in another area he was in a few months ago. He explained to me that every time a member gives us a reference we put a green "apple" on the tree with the name of the member who gave us the reference, once they come to church the apple turns yellow and once they are baptized it turns red and is placed next to the baptismal foto! He said it worked well for them in his other ward, but that our current tree was a little ugly and it didn't make much sense thanks to the lack of explanation! But we decided we wanted to revamp our tree and start again with a clear explanation and a tree not so ugly! But we aren't exactly artists, so we asked a member in the ward who is really good with this kind of stuff to help us out (His name is Angel)! So we blocked out an afternoon and went over to his house with all the ingredients for our tree! He started working his creative magic and just told us what to do to and he started putting it all together! It honestly took longer than expected but turned out really cool! We're super excited to get this activity rolling again and we hope to see a lot fruits...haha get it? Fruits? Apples? Anyway I'll keep yall updated on how it goes!
The last thing I wanted to mention is the baptismal service of Daniela Yesterday (Sunday)!! So I've talked about Daniela a lot lately, she and her family have such a wonderful story and it's been amazing to be a part of it and see them start, in Daniela's case, and come back, in the car of her parents, to the path! So to start off it was pretty easy to get the program set up and get the white clothes which made the process easier, and she quickly passed her baptismal interview (which she was super nervous about so I'm sure she studied the questions in the Gospel Library app!). And from there is was just filling up the font yesterday morning. We got up at our normal time and headed out to the church. But we arrived and realized we didn't have the key to the outside gate!! We realized that as we were cleaning the font the night before a key fell off our Keychain and we had forgotten to put it back on, and of course of all the keys that could have fallen off it was the key to the church! We didn't really know what to do but we decided to head home and check the house for the key! After about 10 min and no luck we chose to go to the church again and find a way to get in. When we arrived I started to remember about something someone once told me, that the neighboring kids had found a way to squeeze through the poles in the gate to get in and play soccer. So we thought we would do the same. After a quick review of all the poles we found one that was slightly bent open, enough that it looked like we could squeeze through! My companion is a little skinnier than I am so we had him go, and with a little bit of grit he was able to make it through!! But I honestly did not think I was going to fit so I started explaining to him the process of closing the drain and filling up the well and then filling up the font itself. After having sufficiently confused him and myself I decided I would just try to squeeze through the bars as well. So I threw my bag over to my companion, took off my suit coat, sucked in my gut and successfully shoved myself through the gate! After a few seconds of rib pain shirt cleaning we went straight to it! Once everything was flowing smoothly we got the chairs set up, turned on the air conditioner and started to study as we waited (we decided that we didn't want to squeeze through those bars again!). But at some point the water stopped flowing from the tank and the font was only about half way filled up! We went and tried to get the well going but it didn't take. We just had to leave it like that and hope for the best!
Once everyone arrived we changed into our white clothes, took some fotos and started with the baptismal service! We heard some really great messages and felt the spirit very strongly! It was especially cool because Daniela invited two of her friends who aren't members and her grandma who has been viciously inactive for a long time! And once we were ready we headed to the font to complete the ordinance! As we entered I realized that the water only got up to my knees and that this was going to be fun! This wasn't exactly my first rodeo so i knew more or less what we needed to do to make this work, she needed to make sure she just sits down and she lets me push her into the water to make sure she is fully immersed! And just as I had planned she sat down and I pushed her a little bit into the water, but the act of me pushing her caused her foot to go flying out of the water! Okay now for try number two. The same thing happened, and for try number three and four! On the fifth try I was about ready to just sweep the leg and karate kid style the baptism, but we gave it one more try and she was successfully baptized! Daniela was a little mad at me because either had mentioned to her that it was one quick immersion and everything was over in like 10 seconds haha, oh well, I did have to apologize for that!! After that we finished the baptismal service, she was confirmed and everyone was happy!!
Well that's it for this week!! Thank you all for all your support! I love you, God loves you more and I hope you have a great week!!
-Elder Garnica
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