Okay I have been hearing my letters have been a little boring and undetailed so I am going to go through and try and write a Little bit at the end of every day and maybe then my letters will be a Little more detailed because I will be able to remember better!
Monday: We didn't really do anything. I have visited a lot of the main tourist sights and because we aren't allowed to go to the beach and everything costs a lot of money we usually just stay home and sleep all day which personally I have really enjoyed because oddly enough when you are walking around all day every day you get a little tired.
Tuesday: Rain, rain, rain, rain and when it looked like it was going to stop, it rained even harder. It was kind of crazy the rain started flooding into our house and it was dripping into our ceiling, no joke it looked like it was raining in our house haha. Pictures will be attached.
Wednesday: Our branch started a domino tournament. If yall didn't know the game domino is the biggest game here and everyone plays it.
Thursday: Wow Thursday was awesome! We had Zone Conference. We could all tell that President is starting to feel that he is going home soon. These Zone Conferences aren't like the rest of them where they are only focused on missionary work and our goals as a mission but more focused on like life in general and how we can stay active after our missions and it is super hard to explain but it was the most spiritual zone conference I have been to on my mission! Also Digna and her 3 kids, Treisi, Joselina and Jose passed their baptismal interviews!!
Friday-Sunday: I will write a long story about what happened in these days…
Alright so Friday through Saturday were some of the hardest, best, worst and just straight up craziest days of my mission. There were so many things that we had to do that I decided to make a check list of everything and I wish yall could have seen it. Every day it was soooo long! So starting on Friday we had a pretty normal morning. But then I had to walk like 25 minutes to the other area to do some baptismal interviews. Those took sooooo long because it was with a mom and three of her kids and they all live in a one room house, like where in one room they have their beds, kitchen, bathroom and everything in one room that probably was about as big as my bed room. So everyone was waiting outside while I was inside doing the interviews. But the problem is that it kept raining on and off and so everyone had to come back inside and I kept having to pause the interviews. No joke the whole process took about 3 and a half hours which put me wayyyyy behind schedule especially because it all ended at about 7. And still on my list is I had to walk 40 minutes from where I was to look for all the baptismal clothes and then I still had to fill up the font because the baptism was the next day and it always isn’t a guarantee that there will be enough water so I wanted to do it in advance. Basically there were just so many things I had to do and just not nearly enough time.
I ended up only being able to go get the clothes and then run home. But the people were sooo awesome and I love doing their interviews and just seeing how converted they were to the church made me so happy. Walking home with the clothes I turned to my companion and just said, "It's days like today that I love being a missionary."
The next day we started earllllllllly. We basically got up and showered and headed for the church to clean and set up for the baptism. We did a ton of things and in the end ended up passing by Digna and her family at about 3 (two hours before the baptism) Treisi told us that everything was good to go and that they would be ready to leave at 4:30. But this is where everything started do go wrong. When we came back they told us that their mom had hurt her hand pretty bad and was sleeping and they weren’t going to be able to be baptized that day and we were going to move it for another day. At this point I was freaking out because one of our goals as a mission is that everyone baptized in April and they were so ready to be baptized. I asked if we could talk to her mom and she said that she had been sleeping for a while and didn't want to come to the door. I could sense that something was odd about the whole situation. (Quick side note, I have really missed my ukulele a lot and so for my birthday I found a 15 dollar one and bought it for myself for a birthday present and it has been amazing. We were planning on doing a special musical number of that song When I am Baptized that is like I like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain ect. So I just so happened to have it with me at the moment.) So basically I had no idea what to do and I called my zone leader and he just said to do what I thought was best. So I did the only thing I knew would work for sure; pray. I just said a really quick prayer and asked for help to know what I needed to do. I had a SUUUPER strong impression to just start playing my ukulele. I thought it was odd but I just pulled it out and started strumming some things super quick. As soon as I started doing that the entire family came outside, including the mom so we had the chance to talk to them all. We kept asking what happened and what we could do but the mom just kept telling us it was nothing and that we would just move it for another week. But I knew something was up. We kept going on and on asking what was happening and them denying anything that we were just on the point of giving in and letting it go. Because at this point it was late and there were the other three people who were getting baptized so we just told them to start.
We were about to leave until I got another impression to what? Play my ukulele again, but this time it was to sing the song that I had been preparing. Now I was just going to play and let the other two missionaries in our branch sing because they are both amazing singers and when my companion and I, not so much. But I asked them if it would be alright and they said yes. So we ended up singing it for them and I could see in their faces that the words to that song really touched their hearts. When we finished everyone just sat there in silence. After a few minutes I asked how they were feeling and they opened up and told us how nervous they were and how recently they had been having a lot of doubts including a few people saying things to them about our church. We then had an opportunity to bare our testimonies about the power of baptism and how really it is something that is so amazing and how they were going to feel exactly like that song describes, clean. It was such an amazing sweet experience and my testimony grew so much. Although by then it was way too late to do it that day, we called the other missionaries and told them not to drain the font and they were able to be baptized on Sunday after church. I will never forget this family and the impact they have had on my life. It was kind of funny because we first met them when they were looking for a lost chicken in a field, we offered to help them and then it just took off from there. Digna, Treisi and Joselina (Jose the 9 year old wasn’t able to make it to church today so he will be baptized next week) have been huge blessings in my life. Thank you for letting me go on about that but that was the story of the best but craziest weekend of my life!
I will be able to skype on Mothers Day, it will probably be right after my church at like 12:30 my time. Will that be okay?
I love yall soooooo much!!!!!! Go have a great week!!!
Love,
Elder RobertsonWeek
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| Rain, rain, and more rain |
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| Zone conference |
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| A baptism |
