28 Diciembre 2015

28 Diciembre 2015

Well, gee. I don't have a whole lot to say this time.

For those who missed the video chat, my companion sat on a nail this week. That was pretty funny.

Also we ate Christmas Dinner with the Castro family. It was really good and we played UNO but with strange mexican rules that kept changing. Oh well. I won anyways.

Right before going to dinner, we found ourselves with about 40 minutes with nobody specific to visit, so we decided that we were going to go knock doors in a colonia where we'd never been before. Before we went, we said to each other, "It's Christmas Eve, everybody's busy and the only people that aren't are going to be Jehovah's Witnesses and they're not going to want anything." We laughed and kept walking. We saw a man sitting outside his house on his patio and decided to try it. He said he wasn't busy and let us pass the gate. Turns out he's Jehovah's Witness. And didn't want to listen. Oh well. Maybe we should have had more faith, but at least I think we were graced with the gift of prophecy, even if for one moment.

Leopoldo was baptized! Yay! Another show of our lack of faith: nobody thought he'd actually make it. But he did!

More miraculously, he came to church the next day to be confirmed. We woke up on Sunday morning and it was frigid cold, about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, I think. And super windy and raining a little bit. He'd already told us that if the weather was bad he wouldn't come to church. But we prayed a lot, had more faith than we had before his baptism, and went to go pick him up. We just barely get there and he comes bouncing out of his house, ready to go.

But nobody else came to church. Less than half the members came and almost no investigators came. None of ours, but a new family came from the other area of the ward.

Then after church we went to eat with a member family and then went out to work, thinking that it was going to get a little better. But it didn't. It just got worse. Nobody wanted to come out of their house. Something REALLY annoying with this part of the world is that if it's cold, people don't open the door, often even if they know you. We went to go contact a reference, we saw the reference's kid inside dancing around in his pajamas. Nobody answered. We go with a contact we'd made a few days before that hadn't been there for the appointment we'd set with him, he wasn't there but his mom came to the window and opened up. Here's how the conversation went:

"Hello, we're Missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ.......We'd like to share a message with you and your family."

"I can't right now. It's really cold outside."

"....Actually, that's precisely why we'd like to share this message with you. It's really cold."

"....Oh. No, I'm busy taking care of a child that's sleeping."

"Okay. Well, thanks anyway."

We're all speaking Spanish but we're definitely not speaking the same language.

Well, that's really what's going on with Piedras Negras right now. We played basketball and bump this morning at the church with the missionaries from Cumbres and two of the converts from that area, Jorge of about 20 years old and Kleever (pronounced "Clever") of about 9 years old. Other young men from the ward were invited but showed up with standard Coahuilense punctuality. In other words, just as we were leaving. It was really fun.

We started teaching a mom and her daughter this week named Dulce and Ceydi. They are VERY interested and VERY smart. Ceydi it turns out is Yarik's friend from school, so we already have a built-in friendshipper. We were just getting ready to leave and asked the mom to say the closing prayer and in her prayer she asked for God to return her husband to her soon. So we asked her where he was after. It's super normal for mom or dad to be working in the States whether legally or illegally. But it turns out it's not that. She just started crying. Turns out he's in prison in the States. We didn't ask why. She said she hasn't told her younger two children yet, one of 6 who obviously has aspergers and another of 4 who she thinks is too young to understand. I know that this gospel is exactly what they need for their life in this moment. They just need to know it.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Birthday and sorry that I'm not sending pictures and not responding to people individually very much. This ciber's internet has become pretty darn sluggish.

Elder Taylor