Friday, April 15, 2011

Week 11 in the Mission Office

In which we learn of another baptism, another new investigator, and the important rules for bible bashing….  Still no pics.

Subject:  “Looks like we’ve got a Mexican standoff. Only we don’t got no Mexicans.”

I’m trying to think of how I can start this email in an interesting way, but I can’t. So here goes my email for the 15 of April, which, thanks to Mom’s mathematical date calculation formula thing, I have realized to be a Friday.

I had a baptism on Sunday, which was very exciting. I even had a few pictures and stuff to upload from it, but I forgot my camera cable, so I will have to do it later. Sorry about that. But her name is Marlenyc or something crazy like that. It’s hard to spell. She’s a twenty-one year old single mother of a four year old boy. Not unusual at all in this country. The service was really awesome, and it went smoothly. The only problem that we had was that Elder Perry didn’t fill out a baptismal record for her when he interviewed her, so we had to do that ourselves yesterday. It was kind of fun.

We have still been teaching the Diaz family, who is now getting ready to get married on the 27, their son’s birthday. And then they will all three get baptized. I’m pretty excited about that. The only problem with them is going to be keeping them set on that for the next week and a half. It’s a kind of far away, so we’ll have to be careful with that. They live right above a member family which is helping them. We had a mixed FHE with them on Monday and talked about the family and that whole proclamation thing.

We found a new investigator named Ana. She is also a single mother, although of slightly more age, and her son is really crazy. He’s got some ADHD and is hyperactive and I’m sure could easily get diagnosed with bipolarism, not to mention being allergic to more things than the Bennett family. Basically the only things that I know of that he can eat is rice with milk, cheese pupusas, and chicken. And fish. Oh, and all that milk and cheese has to be the special dairy-free kind, as ironic as that sounds. Plus he’s four, so it’s just hard. Teaching Ana is generally pretty tough. I went on divisions with Elder Oliverson the other day, though, and he taught her while I was off to the side keeping Daniel, the kid, entertained with some magic tricks. And then we tried to have a dinner with her and a family in the ward, but after a quick lesson when we were about to eat, Daniel started freaking out and they had to go home. Oh well. She, at least, is really positive. She came to church on Sunday, although she barely missed sacrament meeting, and she said she really enjoyed the classes. Cool beans.

Maria Caminos is so ready to get baptized it kills me. But Manuel still won’t just marry her! It’s irritating. The other day we went to visit her and didn’t even teach her a lesson. She spent the entire visit telling us about what she had learned in her two hour Book of Mormon study that morning, and then after when she had had some questions about why babies aren’t baptized, so she read that whole chapter in Principles of the Gospel. Investigators just don’t do that. Members don’t even do that.

Denis still has a date for Saturday, but I don’t think that’s going to go anywhere to be honest. We haven’t interviewed him, and last time we talked he had super serious issues with the Book of Mormon. The hard part is that we can’t teach him very often because of his work.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. Dad gave me a pretty entertaining story about confounding some kid who basically came just to argue. That was fun. Now you know what my day is like. But in times like that, I like to turn to what President Hinckley said on the matter. Paraphrasing him, he said: “You should not Bible bash. It is not productive, and the spirit can’t be there if that’s what you’re doing. But, if you do it, make sure you win.” I like that a lot.

Funny story that shows how powerful our position in the office is: Elder Ballard, one of the assistants, thought that he saw something on Elder Oliverson’s computer that looked like connect four or something, so he called President and told him that Elder Oliverson had been playing video games on the computers. That’s a very serious thing that would likely make him lose his computer, and his position as records secretary. So President came in with a rigorous investigation. The investigation went something like this. “Elder Oliverson, Elder Ballard says you’ve been playing games on the computer. Is this true?” “What? No, that’s kind of absurd.” “Okay, thanks. Keep up the good work.” Ha ha yeah, President definitely trusts us more than the APs. And he’s told us that. That seems like the kind of power that I will end up misusing. :)

Alright, time to wrap this up. I hope that all of you have a fantastic day, and that the choir tour goes well. Dad, I have to warn you that when I went we ended up playing Xbox all night, so watch out for that. Teenagers are crazy with all their raging hormones and rap music and afros.

I love you all!
Elder David Arrington

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