21 Diciembre 2015

21 Diciembre 2015

LAST LETTER BEFORE CHRISTMAS!

Yarik was baptized and it was a very special experience. His great-uncle President Sierra of the Stake baptized him and then gave his testimony afterward about how forty or fifty years before, his brother, Guillermo (Yarik's grandfather), baptized him. I especially loved Yarik's prayer at the end: "Thanks for allowing me to enter your true church and thus one day qualify for eternal life in your kingdom." It was one of those moments of "Wow, you hardly said one word during the lessons but truly understood the teaching." His dad came to the baptism as well and seemed to like it, so we'll have to see how we can get to him to teach him as well. Eternal families are AWESOME!

Leopoldo couldn't be baptized this week. We saw him on Thursday and he was smoking but saw (or rather heard) us coming up and threw away his cigarette. But oh well. We explained to him AGAIN about that and went by for him on Sunday. He asked me "When are you guys going to baptize me?" I rolled my eyes and told him "As soon as you stop smoking." Good thing he couldn't see me roll my eyes....

Some SUPER funny things he's said: I'm going to say this is Spanish because it doesn't make sense in English:

"Quien va a hacer la primera oracion? Usted, hermano, escoja."

"No soy coja, soy cojo."

"Hace mucho frio, entonces me la paso todo el santo dia tapado en mi cama. Bueno, cobijado, porque tapado suena feo."

"Antes tenia una novia bien bonita."

"Y como sabe?" (We implied "Como sabe que era bonita?")

"Rica."

Good grief. This guy has us laughing every time. Except when he's sad. He just found out that he has cataracts AND glaucoma. Good side (here I'm going to drift into politics, sorry conservatives): medical care is free. Bad side: he has to find someone to take him to the hospital at 7 in the morning for the operation. He can't stop a taxi because he can't see them and doesn't have a phone to call for one. And finding an hermano or hermana from the church willing to take him at 7 in the morning and be with him until he's done on the 30 of this month is going to be something SUPER hard to find.

Karen and her dad came to church! They left in the middle of sacrament meeting without an explanation, but she sent a text to Alejandra telling her that she loved the church and that she can't wait till we go today to teach her and to come next week as well. Her date is for the 16 of January, so we're praying really hard for it to work.

The Rocha Family didn't come to church this Sunday, but the hermana told us this last time that she has been feeling her life change little by little and that she might be ready by the 9 of January for a baptism. It's really a lot like teaching Karen Sanchez from Monclova a year ago. They just kind of listen and come to church sometimes and sometimes read and sometimes not but they're always praying and say that they'll be ready for their date. Kinda weird.

Gilberto is gone. And we are very sad. We are hoping that the missionaries in Monterrey will treat him well and that in one year he can go to the temple to be endowed and sealed.

We fasted for Maria Esther's family this Sunday so that the members of the family that haven't accepted the gospel fully yet (Tia Eliza, Mayte and Maria Esther's husband) can feel the need to do it. We'll see what happens.

We've received a TON of references lately and have gone to contact almost all of them and a TON of awesome-looking people have come out of nowhere, so we'll see what happens. There's one guy named Jose Navas who is from El Salvador and looks like a small, skinny version of Obama and sells Herbalife for a living. There's another young couple that apparently the wife used to go to church all the time and was reading the book of mormon and everything but her dad said no. But that was almost a decade ago. We're going with that family tonight.

Well, I THINK that's it...We're going to go make Mexican-street-style hot dogs today for lunch. That should be good.

I read the 12th chapter of Ecclesiastes today and broke my head making sense of it, but now it makes sense. Read it, it's pretty darn cool.

So, as far as when I'll be calling...it will be at around 3:30 Piedras Negras time. that would be 2:30 ish Boise time? I think...I don't know. We had a SUPER confusing two weeks when Coahuila time change for Daylight Saving Time, but for some reason everything north of Zaragoza DIDN'T change and so we were an hour off of everyone else in the mission. It was even worse because it coincided with transfers and the leadership council. We had to try and guess which salida times and llegada times were for Coahuila and which were calculated for Piedras Negras, and some of them were calculated and some of them not....it was fun. I don't think anyone missed their bus but a few people ended up in the stations an hour early or getting there an hour later than planned.

Los estoy viendo en unos diítas!

Elder Taylor

Jesucristo es Señor de Piedras Negras