July 1, 2013

Rut's Baptism

Baptism of Rut 

This is a cockroach!

First of all, like I said, changes were this last week... and... I'm in... NARANJO! Still! With Elder Brindis, still! I'M GOING TO BE HERE FOREVER!!! I'm going to complete my first 6 months in the mission field in my first area... But I guess it's alright. Other answers to questions. It's been pretty dry this last week, it's hardly rained, but everyone says it's going to start pouring any day now. We were able to have 2 baptisms in June, and no, right as of right now we haven't gotten the baptisms we were hoping for, but we will! (hopefully). Yes, my shoes are still working okay. And no, I don't have requests for my birthday... about the only thing I want right now is another pair of shoes, just for walking around, and I can buy those here. So yeah...

Also, congrats Carter, mom hadn't told me that you guys had taken 3rd, that's pretty sweet! And have a fun 4th of Julyeveryone... I'll be here, doing normal things, cause it's not a holiday... And I'm glad to hear, once again, that everything is going good now that I'm gone...

Anyway, now to my stuff. To start out, I was almost 100% positive that I was going to have changes, so I had started to say goodbye to people. And at the same time, we were preparing Rut for baptism. On Tuesday I went to San Ramon with one of the zone leaders. They have such a nice área... it's a Ward, not a branch, it's flat, it's cold, the members help a lot, and buy food for the missionaries... it's sweet. So we went and me and my companion for the day got to play marriage counselors for a couple in their 50's... that was interesting. And other than that we taught normal lessons. But when it came time to return to the house, I actually got cold. I had goosebumps for the first time here in the mission! And then a member that was doing visits with us bought us hamburgers, and another member bought us candy! I love San Ramon! Then in the morning we got up and made chocolate pancakes, ate candy, and ice-cream. How's that for breakfast =) Then I came back to Naranjo and went to lunch and had Shepherd's Pie. Yes, sometimes we eat gringo food. And then we made some other visits and in those we ate in 2 houses. I stuffed myself and almost puked... so naturally, I got sick the next day, and I've been sick with a cold since that time (Wednesday-today). We good news from those divisions we did, Rut passed the baptismal interview! She decided to be baptized on Saturday. So we were working for that, to get members there, to have to church clean, etc. So on Saturday, we were there, Rut was there, and her mom... and that's it... we had a baptism with 4 people... I directed the program, the hymns, I gave the 2 talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost, I was a witness... I did everything but baptize! (Elder Brindis baptized) One funny thing from that is that Rut got in the wáter and was shivering so bad that she couldn't tell us her full name to be able to do the baptism, we had to ask her mom what her name was haha. And then yesterday at church we confirmed and in the church we had an attendance of 40 people... the worst I've ever seen here. So we'll keep working to get more people to go to church. Also this week, we were able to have a lesson with an investigator named Bernardita, and she has a daughter and son-in-law who all seem golden. She has 3 titles in the evangelical church, but left cause she doesn't like all the noise that they make all the time. It's pretty cool, so seems awesome and had already started reading the Book of Mormon before the second visit. Hopefully she will be baptized in the coming weeks.

Well that's my story for this week, hope you all like it. Tune in next week for more.

Random thing: that photo in dropbox... that's just a big, ugly cockroach that was in our house.

Love you!

Elder Black

         Elder Black         

 Costa Rica San José  

          2013-2014