As we approach Christmas, we’re clearly getting ready for the long-awaited Christmas phone call. Or Skype.
Subject: That's not true. I did call Slurpee Heaven. They said they didn't want you. Heard you had an attitude. Said you weren't "Slurpee" material
Before I forget, our plan is to call home (phone call, since we still aren't sure if we'd be able to use Skype or not) at 2:00pm our time, which should be after church there. If we find out in the next couple days that we will get Skype set up, I will probably not be able to let you know until Saturday night or Sunday, but I will definitely try to. It'll probably be by email, by the way. But if you don't hear from me until Sunday afternoon, just assume we're using the phone.
Okay, here we go. This week was really kind of slow, to be honest. We've basically become super stealthy ninjas about getting dinner appointments, which not only fills our little bellies with delicious food (pupusas mostly, but we even made hamburgers a couple days ago), but it also make our ward relations way awesome because, let's face it, I'm hilarious. Just kidding. But the members all kind of really like us two, which is always a great thing.
On Tuesday we didn't really work in the area at all since we had yet another training meeting in Santa Ana, and it went kind of long. Wednesday we had district meeting, and Thursday we did a huge long but not very difficult service project which took a big chunk of the day. And Friday we had the Christmas multizone. So we didn't get a ton of time to work in the area. But we did alright when we were there.
The Christmas multizone was really fun, by the way. And it was run just like a day at EFY, which makes sense because President and Hermana Cordon are basically the founders of EFY in Central America. So we played some good EFY type games and had a talent show, which actually turned out really good. And then we had a more spiritual section after, where I was contracted to sing an a capela quartet (which was supposed to have a piano part, but our pianist forgot his music). We practiced it literally twice right before, but we did a fairly good job.
Also, I don't think that I have mentioned this before, but I play the piano here all the time. Every Sunday I play the hymns in church, and just about every multizone or training meeting or meeting in general I play the songs. It's a good thing that I learned to do that before the mission.
Now on to my investigators. The ones that are progressing the most are also the ones that are most evangelical, which is normally not the case. We have a woman named Esperanza, who is older, and loves to read. She's very open to everything that we teach, and is reading a lot in the Book of Mormon. But she still hasn't come to church, although she says she wants to. When we gave her the challenge to pray about the Book of Mormon, we didn't even get to the actual explanation or challenge. She just straight out said that she would have to pray about the Book of Mormon to know if it's true. I like that. And she's super nice.
Another woman that we're teaching that's like that is named Lidia. She lives with some kids, two of which we are also teaching. They are very humble, very nice people who are also very open to what we teach. The kids haven't been keeping commitments, though. The mom tries to read the Book of Mormon, but her sight is bad so she has her kids read it to her instead. We've only been teaching her a week and she already says that she knows it's true and that she'll get baptized the next time we have a baptismal service. Which will be on the first of January, since she has to go to church first.
She was actually going to go to church this week, but because of miscommunication with the member that was supposed to go pick her and her kids up, he didn't go, and so they never went. It was kind of lame. But still good.
Alex and Delmi are getting way closer to being able to get married and baptized. Delmi is finishing up her job, and Alex just needs to start working so that she can drop her job completely and come to church. She's an old investigator (he's an innactive member) that already wants to get married and baptized. It's just this stupid work thing.
The Siliezar family had this huge problem with us because they had a baptismal date and marriage date before, but the missionaries ran into some problems with them (the six of them), and stopped teaching them. The dad, Oscar, told us he wouldn't progress because he just couldn't accept that we do baptisms for the dead. So we went and had a super awesome lesson where we taught it so basically and clearly that he couldn't hide behind it anymore. He said that now he just feels hurt because the other Elders left them. So once we work past that I think they'll make some good progress.
And to finish this up, we had a lesson yesterday that was really interesting. It was with an inactive man who apparently left the church despite his strong testimony of the Book of Mormon, a modern prophet, Joseph Smith, etc. because some people at church had hinted that Christ probably got married. He just kept telling us that he believed that Christ was a perfect being, and he just couldn't accept that Christ would do something as evil as get married. He was a very good man, and I could tell that he really does have a deep love for Christ, but I thought that was really interesting. Obviously there is no doctrine about that subject, but we need to help him remember that Christ was perfect, and that marriage is a sacred, eternal law. We don't know the answer to that question, but maybe we can help him learn a little bit more about the eternal nature of families.
Alright, I'm out of time, so I have to wrap this up. Thanks again for all the support you guys give me! I haven't gotten that package yet, by the way, but I'm hopeful for this Wednesday. You are all awesome, and sorry I couldn't re-upload the pictures from last week. I didn't bring my camera or memory card. But next week I will!
I'll talk to you all next Sunday!
Elder David Arrington
PS: I had a bet with a member's little brother (who only hasn't gotten baptized because his parents won't give him permission) where I said that Real Madrid was going to beat Barcelona a couple weeks ago. I lost. So he got to dump an egg on my head. Pictures next week.
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