9 Noviembre 2015

9 Noviembre 2015

One year ago was my first baptism in the mission. And we just baptized again!

Maria Esther was baptized on Saturday (twice, her hair came up out of the water the first time) and confirmed on Sunday. It was super special. Alejandra Castro (who just came back from the mision in Tabasco) organized the baptismal service and decorated and everything and it was beautiful. And Esther's Brother, his wife and their daughter came and apparently they liked the service and felt the spirit, so we're going to have to hunt them down to start teaching them as well. Mayte as well came to the service and Jocelin, so we had a full house.

We don't know exactly what's going on with Jocelin, but she says she knows it's all true and wants to be baptized, but something is holding her back. We had a lesson with her where she just started crying and cried for 20 minutes without looking at us and didn't tell us anything. It was highly uncomfortable. We know she has a boyfriend, so we think he might be influencing her, but I hope not. She also just got a new job, but it sounds like she'll be able to keep coming to church.

Gilberto is SO ready to be baptized. He's just about ready to cannonball into the font, he just needs a little more teaching and the interview with the president. Great quote from him this week: "I need to get baptized so I can seal myself with my family in the temple and get to the Celestial Kingdom with them." We hadn't even taught him that part yet. He's awesome :) In Gospel Principles, he mentioned that he had dropped his cigarette usage down to 3 a day (he had been smoking up to 30 daily two weeks ago) and a less-active member struggling with smoking pretty much attacked him (something about Coahuilenses: everything is taken personally. EVERTHING is misinterpreted to be a personal attack. "We testify that the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored." Response: "Get out of my house because you're saying I'm going to hell." So "I dropped to 3 cigarettes a day; In Christ, everything is possible!" Response: "You're lying and you think I'm stupid.") But Gilberto apologized to the man and afterward said he wanted to find out where he lived to go and visit him to help him get off his addiction as well. (But the other hermano had already left angrily, partially for that and partially because the subject of the class was Family roles and he got offended because he's separated from his wife and thought the teacher was attacking him personally.)

Leopoldo as well has a baptismal date for the 21 of November, but we've gotta make sure he actually understands the doctrine. We found out this week that he's been praying still to Joseph Smith to heal him from his blindness. Good grief. But he keeps coming to church.

We found identical twins this week, Jesus and Jose. They're 19 years old and Jesus is Christian and Jose is Catholic. They seem really interested in learning more. We'll see what happens.

We also found a kid named Brandon and his sister Luz. Brandon is 12 and Luz is 8 and they're both pretty pumped to come to church. We also started teaching their mom, Beatriz, and she accepted everything we said, but we've gotta get her coming as well.

We've actually found quite a few people this week more that are pretty interested, but I'll let you all know what happens once we start teaching them.

This week we went to the Consejo de Liderazgo de la Mision. It was fun to see Elder Flores and Elder Briggs again. Elder Flores is in Monclova now and I asked him how it was going and he told me that everything that I told him was right and he was pretty "desesperado." (I don't know how to say that in English.) People don't believe me when I tell them about Monclovenses: THEY NEVER STOP TALKING. It is seriously actually hard to get a word in edge-wise there. You need different teaching techniques and need to know how to rudely interrupt someone without offending them. Elder Flores laughed when I first told him that. He's not laughing now.

Well, I think that's it. It has started to be really cold recently and has been raining off and on, so while I'm now good in the belly, I've got pretty darn sick of the cold. Oh well.

Se me cuidan mucho!

Elder Taylor