Mecklins,
How goes it? I’m glad the week was filled with all the goody, goodness
of everything in Utah Utah
Yes, it was a grand week here in the Yuto, we had a baptism! Yay! This
kid named José that we just call "Super" was just baptized. Although we had been hopeful it was a surprise to us as he´s told us “No” to baptism upwards of 15,000
times. We were just working Saturday morning around Pres. Angel´s neighborhood
and he says "What’s up guys? Oh hey, Super says he´s going to get baptized
today!" We were like, "WHAT!? When did he say that?" Pres. Angel
says, "Oh, just yesterday when I saw him. I just totally forgot to tell
you guys." So we booked it to Super’s house on the other side of Yuto,
found him and said, "Is this true Super?" He´s like, "Sure, why not?" So we
said "Ok, so we´ll have the baptism at 6:00 p.m. Saturday, ok?" He
said "Cool, at 6 O’clock then."
We had to affirm it over and over with him saying, "Ok, we are
gonna have it at 6 and that’s gotta be for sure because we´re going to call a
bunch of people right now to get things set up, ok?" He said "For
sure Elders, no worries, at 6 I’ll be there".
We went to go hurry and
do last minute baptism preparations: Cleaning the font, setting up chairs,
calling people to give talks, etc. It was difficult because President Angel
left to go to San Pedro for a conference and Elías left to go fishing with his
dad so we had like, zero priesthood. Luckily, we had this guy Mario who helped
us so in the end so there was sufficient priesthood for the baptism.
At 5:30 we
headed over to Super’s house and, when we got there, said to his family "Alright! Are you guys ready for the baptism?" They said, "But
isn't it at 9:00?" We looked at
them and said, "No it’s at 6:00" The mom says, "Well Super thinks
it’s at 9:00.” That’s what I love here
in Argentina
Once we
realized we were about to have a baptismal ceremony with no one to baptize we
started to panic. "Where did
Super go off to?" we asked. Mom
said, "He’s at a party that’s kind of by your pench." We booked it
over there and about pulled a Will Ferrell scene from Old School. We looked
everywhere but he was nowhere in sight. There are some members who live across
the street so we went to them in hopes maybe they’d seen Super—no such luck. I looked at my watch, it was 5:55 pm and beginning to look like all was lost until Super came walking around the corner. We almost
applied the same tactic demonstrated in 1 Nephi 4:31. We were like, "Dude! Where were
you?" He looked at us surprised, "Elders! You told me 9:00 pm is the
baptism!” (I am patience!) "No way che.” I told him, “It’s right now! Let’s go!" So we all ran
to the church and got there just in time.
We held his baptism with about 7 or 8 people there. It was very, very
nice. I’ll have to have Elías put up the pics on Facebook because we tried to
put the pics up on my e-mail but pictures won’t upload. Anyway, we got him
confirmed the next day and he was super content in his weird "Super"
way. He´s a good kid. He is 13 and is a really good kid.
Both Paola and Gabriela (the Hermana who was baptized last week) gave
talks In which they were brought to tears for how grateful they were for the
Savior and the Holy Ghost. The Hermana Paola talked about how last week her son was
in arrested for some mistake he made in his business. He called her for help so
she went to Ledesma frantically looking for someone to handle the situation but
couldn’t find anyone. She was in her car praying to know what to do when the
name of a lawyer came to her mind. She doesn’t know how she remembered the
lawyer’s name but somehow found his number and he was available and helped her
son out of the situation.
Gabriela talked about how she felt the Savior has been on her side ever
since she started going to church. She was so grateful for the Book of Mormon,
how it’s giving her great strength and comfort. President Angel is thinking
about calling her to the primary as well. Man, it is just so boss to see the
gospel working in action with those Hermana’s—they are so cool. That, and
Gabriela is gonna make us fat, she is always giving us food: Chocolate milk,
cake, pizza. Goodness sakes, it’s awesome! We are going to baptize her son
Gabriel this Saturday in the other river, I think. They are super excited about
the gospel.
We have an awesome group of members who follow us to all our citas:
Gabriela, Alicia (Gabriela’s best friend), Gabriel, Sara (Elias’s mom), Elías,
Vanessa, and Mario Cortez (Vanessa’s dad). It’s so great; they help us out a
ton. They basically teach the lessons
for us which is fantastic because that was pretty much the whole purpose of
that worldwide capacitation in June (for the members to do the missionary
work). We hope to keep going with that and,
yeah. That’s pretty much it for the week; not much else to report on.
But yes, quezstionsz?
- Is Elias ready to go on his mission?
Yes and he´s pretty stoked. He´s coming out with us like almost every
day. He has his passport type papers all done and I gave him a bunch of my
stuff. He leaves on the 30th to go to Salta then
takes an airplane to Brazil
- Do you have to set up the baptismal font or is it already set up? How do you fill it and how do you drain it?
It’s a big, blue tarp tub about 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 6 feet long
with a drain attached to a lever. It is
supported by trampoline-type metal bars to help support it up. There is a
faucet next to the font and you hook up this makeshift hose to fill it up. Since
it is a cold water faucet you have to equalize it with hot water from the
kitchen so do a Chinese fire drill of filling it up, carrying, and dumping buckets
of hot water all the way to the back of the building where the font is. To clean it, (which it does get dirty a lot because
the roof is made out of what I can only describe as a sort of Styrofoam which
deteriorates and covers the bottom of the font with gucky, white stuff). So you
hop in the font and clean it out with a sponge. To drain it you take the
makeshift hose from the faucet, jerry rig it up to the drain part of the font,
and put the end of the hose near the drain—Count your blessings.
Well, that’s about it. I have my last zone conference this week which
means I will have to share my "final" testimony which is the custom
for all the elders and hermana’s that are finishing up. I never thought the day
would come, it’s unreal and sad. I just
never, ever thought the day would come. I remember looking up at the first zone
conference and saw all these missionaries going home and thought, "I’ll
never get there". Alas, it’s about
to happen to me. Just more of a reason to work harder and harder I guess. Do
pray for us that we can do exactly that: That we’ll have a baptism this
Saturday, that we can keep using the awesome members, and that all will be
good. Well, I best be going to get a haircut. ‘Til next week, peeps. Have a
most amazing week. I love you. It’s all good.
Con Amor,
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| "Super", Elder Allan, me and the travelling baptismal font. |
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| Gabriella's Baptism |
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