Week 37 (Nopal)

This week was pretty good.

Well first off I went to go do interchanges with an area called Tacuba. This is a little pueblo which is an hour by bus out of the town of Ahuachapán where I am at. To get there it is like a canyon drive, except in a bus, that is so full you have to stand up and are packed like sardines, without space to put your backpack on the luggage rack, and the bus driver being crazy and driving way faster than he should on roads like that. It was pretty interesting. 

Then we had a pretty normal day until it came time to go visit one of their investigators later in the day. We had to take a moto taxi to get their which is basically a small buggy with 3 wheels. When we got there we started walking to the house of the investigator, and then that’s when I realized I wasn’t wearing my nametag. Which I knew I had it on earlier during the day because nobody can ever say my name unless I show them my tag up close. 

Well we ended up not finding it which is sad because now I have to order a new one, but it won’t be the same cause since I went to the Provo MTC, the letters were bigger and engraved more deeply. 

(Giving service of building another house out of adobe. It doesn't show in the picture, but my face was covered in mud. I am now an expert in albañileria. or the art of building houses.)

Well back to the lesson, we went to visit a 14 old girl who is the daughter of a recent convert. At first she wanted nothing to do with the missionaries, but over time she had been opening up, and now she has started going to church, but she still kept saying no to be baptized. So we went with the hopes that she would accept a date. 

We get there and we just start to get to know the family and they are really cool, then we try to have a lesson with the daughter but it is super hard because her older sister who is like 25 and her mom were sitting against the wall behind us making all sorts of comments at the things she would say and were laughing really loud. Which in that setting is pretty hard to maintain the spirit. But we just told her to ignore them and kept teaching, and eventually they left. But the lesson was really good because we started off talking about her reading the Book of Mormon and what she learned. She said obedience. 

And so we were asking about that trying to tie it into baptism but she was avoiding trying to say baptism, so I read Alma 7 vs 15, and we just sat there for a moment, and then we asked her what the scripture says, and she said that I need to be baptized. Then we started talking about the temple cause she had expressed her desire before to go into the temple. And we told her to enter she needs to be baptized. And the whole time the spirit was super strong, and she was crying, and I was almost crying, but in the end she accepted to be baptized the 28th of this month. 

Then we went on to have a normal day. Then the morning comes and we call my comp and his comp to tell them to come back up here so we could change back. And then an hour later they call us and tell us a bus still hasn’t passed by, and then my comp for the day realized that the day was Holy Friday. And that there would be no buses going to or from Tacuba until Monday.   

Well we started freaking out cause I didn’t want to stay in Tacuba until Monday haha, and I needed to get back to my area. Well we start searching around town asking people if it was true that there weren’t any buses and they said yeah it was true. So we started looking for a member to see if they could take us back. So basically we have no idea what to do. because we can’t hitch a ride because we can’t be in the back of trucks and that’s the only thing people have here. They pack the back of trucks with people like sardines.  

Well halfway into the day the branch president finally called us back and told us he could take us, but for 12 dollars. Luckily I did not have to spend my weekend in Tacuba.

Also we got one of our investigators to accept a date. He is a 12 year old D...... He is the son of an investigator who was going to get baptized but then couldn’t because her husband didn’t want to get  married. This kid already has been to church 6 times, but in this mission, kids need to assist church 12 times before they can get baptized. He is almost there haha.

My comps alright. He is super prideful and not very obedient, but it’s going along. District leader is super stressful, but it’s going along good too.

Hope you guys have a good week