Nate's Letter Home - Jan 15, 2018

Well, it might be somewhat of a surprise to you that I had a baptism on Saturday. It was to us as well haha. Last monday night, we visited familia Flores again (the family of Gabriela). They were much better this time. The parents were really calm and we had a nice talk with them. Then out of nowhere, they asked us when we were going to baptize Gabriela. That definitely shocked us. We told them to pick any day and we´d baptize her then. They said that Saturday would be the only opportunity where they both were off work so it had to be then. It wasn´t ideal for us because usually the ward likes us to anounce our baptisms in sacrament meeting the sunday before, and we still had to plan everything and find clothes for her, but we were not about to turn down an offer to baptize her.

However, more drama was to follow. On Friday we had divisions, and my comp and Elder Jones visited them that day. Apparently they showed up to the house just after the parents had a huge fight and the dad left in a rage. The 17 year old daughter also left too. Anyway, the mom and the kids were pretty upset, but she told my comp that no matter what, we are baptizing her daughter on saturday. Well saturday finally came. I didn´t really know what to expect, I figured it would probably only be the mom and the younger daughters who came to the baptism. Well 3:45 came, the baptism was supposed to start at 4, and they hadn´t showed up. So we decided to walk to their house to look for them. We were about half way there when we saw their whole family (except the oldest daughter) come around the corner. That was about the greatest sight I´ve ever seen, and a huge relief.

Anyway, the baptism was really awesome. It was a really special feeling to be in the water with Gabriela and see a smile on her face and the faces of her family. Also right after the baptism, I went with one of the zone leaders to our investigator Karina for her baptismal interview. She passed and we are going to baptize her this saturday.

Sunday was an even crazier day. We had to make sure Gabriela came to church to get confirmed, and also that Karina came, because she needed her second attendance to be able to be baptized this next saturday. Also we needed to find another ride for Victor, our investigator who is on crutches. Well we went and clapped at Gabriela´s house and saw another one of the greatest sights I´ve seen. The dad came to the window  buttoning up his white shirt and told us that they were on their way. We were really excited about that and immediately after we started walking to Karina´s house to make sure she was coming. I need to mention that Sunday was a more chilly day, and it was raining in the morning. So when we clapped at her house someone came out and told us that she couldn´t come today because of the weather. We told her we had umbrellas she could use but the person said that Karina was worried about her two little daughters getting sick, one of them is about 5 or 6 months I think. Well we didn´t really know what to do, and we were already a little bit late, so we walked back to the church. We were really disappointed on the walk back because if she didn´t come that meant that she couldn´t be baptized this saturday. 

By the way, our sacrament meeting is at the end now. We have elders quorom first, then sunday school, and then sacrament meeting. We basically missed all of elders quorom because we went with our ward mission leader in his car to get Victor. While we did that we tried texting Karina to see if we could come pick her up in a car, but we didn´t get an answer. So we just got Victor and came back to the church in time for sunday school. We were in gospel principals with just, us, Victor, and the parents of Gabriela. We were pretty disappointed that Karina didn´t come. Then halfway through the class I hear the door swing open and someone say ¨Permiso¨ and Karina walked in with an umbrella and her two kids bundled up like it was the dead of winter. It was yet another of one of the greatest sights I´ve seen. It was such a great feeling to see that she was dedicated enough to bundle her little kids up and walk 20 minutes in the rain to come to church.

Well, we were able to get Gabriela confirmed in sacrament meeting. It was definitely a cool thing to see their family together in church. I think it´s been about a year since their parents have attended. We´ll be baptizing Karina this saturday, and now also we will be baptizing a guy named Gaston on the 27th. We are also hoping to baptize Victor on the 27, but he is saying that he doesn´t quite feel ready yet. We´ll see what we can do with him. We really want to meet our goal of 4 baptisms this month. We´ve put in a lot of work, and we are seeing literal miracles in the lives of the people we teach.

Hopefully all is well at home, and the next time I write I should have another baptism to tell you about.

I attached some pictures. You can blame my comp for cutting off my head in one of them haha. Also the third one is some mate that we made using a watermelon. It was some good stuff. We´ve experimented with a lot of different stuff while making mate haha. I pretty much drink mate on the daily.

-Elder Shelton