Hey there family!
Here I am back on the computer! So some
interesting crazy things this week.
First of all, Mom you would be happy to know I
made friends with the old 80 year old lady who walks around with a broom and
yells bad words at us. Well, I like to think of us as friends. We started the
day on Thursday by going to the phone. Elder
Pyne was calling someone and I saw the lady. Everyone has told us about her. Her name is Raquel. I told Elder Pyne I was going to talk to her,
but I told him I wanted to make sure I was in sight of him in case she started
whacking me with her broom. I went up to
her and told her I was a representative of Jesus Christ. She asked why I was here and I said I was here
to learn a new culture and help people develop their faith in Christ. I asked what her name was and she asked why. I said because I want to know more people
here. She asked if I was a gringo and I said “yeah.” She asked again why I was here. I told her
because I am trying to help people come to Christ and also to learn a new
culture and Spanish. She told me to go
to Spain to learn Spanish. I asked her
what she spoke and she said Mexicano. What
a nice lady... Elder Pyne was laughing really heard and so were the people in
their taco stand behind us. They were signaling that this lady is crazy. That
was probably the highlight of my week. I
would say we are friends now.
Another thing that happened this week was there
is this member named Pebbles. She is older (in her 30s) and has 2 cousins one
is 8 and one is 13. The two little girls
hadn’t been baptized. The 13 year old
said she would get baptized, but the 8 year old was scared of water and of us. Elder Pyne said I needed to gain her
confidence because I am better with kids. I started off showing her pictures of Oscar
and Eddie (thanks so much for the photo book, Mom! I love it). Then I showed
some pictures of temples and then of baptism. She still said no to getting baptized. Then Pebbles said something about princesses. Jackpot. FINALLY, all my Disney knowledge was
really coming into use. I talked about Tangled (Enredados-learned that word
from Those girls from MIT whose dad was with Dad in school), Frozen, Lion King,
Aladdin. Everything. And I pretty much
had to put on a show for them. I sang so
many Disney songs. Kinda awkward, but at the end she said she warmed up to me
and said she would get baptized. We were planning on them getting baptized this
Sunday but the mom wouldn’t let them go to church this week. We’ll see this
next Sunday what happens. Young kids
really need their parents support.
We are also working with this one lady named
Betsebe. She is sooooo ready and has
such faith! She was going to get baptized yesterday, but she wants her parents
to be there. She wants them to become members too. She had no problems with anything we taught
her. When we told her we can´t drink coffee she was like “NOOOO!” It was so funny, but she agreed to get rid of
it and she hasn´t had it yet! She is going to be baptized by her friend this Sunday!
It’ll be great!
We also found this other lady who is 22 and has a
little girl. She lives with her parents. She accepted to be baptized in a few
weeks, but later she told us she couldn’t because her parents said if she was
to live in their house, she had to be Catholic. It’s hard when family members have such strong
biases and influences. This would the
best decision she would ever make and I feel she can make her own decisions! I
think we are going to try to talk to the parents this week.
Another little 10 year old who is friends with a
member wants to get baptized. Her mom
doesn’t believe in God and thinks people only believe in God when they are
weak. We are trying to teacher her such good principles so she can be baptized.
Darn! Some parents here... Thank you Mom and Dad for the good parents you are!
:)
We went to the temple last Wednesday! It was
really pretty. I wanted to go inside, but it’s still closed. The visitor’s
center is open, but we didn´t go in because we had to get back to our area and
work.
Conference was really good. I think...I couldn’t
really understand it. I was really looking forward to it. I could maybe get the
topic of the talk, but they use vocabulary I haven´t really heard. I was frustrated
watching it and just wanted to watch it in English. The music was so good
though! I saw some of my friends from BYU in the Priesthood session and Michele
Scott. So much fun to see them :) I was glad the music was at least in English.
It was kinda cool to hear some talks
from other languages. Hopefully when we get the Liahona I can read the talks. They are a lot better hearing them
though. The speakers have a lot more emotion than the translators.
So there is my week! I am excited for my birthday
this Friday, but I shouldn´t be expecting too much because we still have to
work. I am SOOO excited to open my packages. They are right next to my desk.
Miss you all! Thanks for your prayers and
support.
-Elder Thomas
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