Holy smokes, time really is flying by, and we had a way eventful week!! Sadly our baptism that we were supposed to have last week got postponed, and hopefully that will still be happening sometime soon, but we'll have to see how it goes. We have two more investigators with a baptismal date and we're trying to get a couple more. It's so important that people know how critical baptism is, and that it's so much more of a beginning than an end. Heavenly Father wants to bless everyone and help everyone, but He can't fully do that when we don't have the gift of the Holy Ghost. Hermana Amparo is still just super strong and has an amazing family. They are way hospitable and do everything they can to help us. She reads out of the Book of Mormon and prays every single day, and really is just an inspiration for me of total faith.
We did have an experience this last weekend that really made me think about how important it is that the members are always an example for everyone. One of our investigators, Paula, has family in the Church (husband and daughter - somewhat inactive) and the reason she is not baptized is her husband's family in Mexico. They work in the temple and apparently treated her and her kids horribly. It's sad when something like this keeps someone from baptism and it's so sad that there are people like that. The Church really is true and perfect, but the members have so many imperfections. We told her that baptism, and her religious experience is between her and the Lord, and nobody else. She says she still has desires to know if it's true, so she is going to continue reading the Book of Mormon and going to Church. She has been really faithful in that and we're always excited to see them at Church. We want to introduce her to more members here, and more families, so she can see what they're like. The members here are all so gracious, friendly, and inviting.
We have another investigator, Maria, who is another super amazing person. She is already a better missionary than almost the entire ward. She is bringing friends to sacrament meeting and sharing the Gospel with her family. I don't know if any of the others will get baptized, but she is really strong and fun to teach. I did my first baptismal commitment this week, which was a little nerve-racking. It was Wendy, who also has a husband that's an inactive member. She has been doing really well with everything, so I committed her to be baptized September 11th and she said yes! It was way cool, and I didn't think she would respond as positively as she did. She sounded sure, and has such a desire to do what's right and follow Christ. She came to all of the classes Sunday with her crazy little boys and everything went really well.
Well, there's been a lot that has happened this week. I had my first experience with super spicy food! We went to this place called Buffalo Wild Wings to do this crazy hot wing challenge. Since I've never been one for spices I really didn't want to do it at first, but I decided I've got to be able to handle hot stuff here if I'm going to be eating all this Mexican food. The challenge was to eat 12 of their hottest wings in under 6 minutes. So all of these people like gathered around me and another greenie who was also doing it. They brought out wings that were literally soaking in a pool of the ridiculously hot sauce. I started in and didn't stop to realize exactly how hot it was - it was hard to breathe because of the spiciness in my throat, but I made it through (you couldn't use a napkin or have water or anything until afterwards), and then thought I was going to die. They took a picture when I was super messy and I guess it will go up on their wall sometime soon. The next few minutes were torture but a LOT of sugar packets and eventually cups of water later, I was fine. I felt accomplished tho - even tho I refuse to ever eat something that hot ever again - I finished in just under 4 minutes.
The next thing that was way exciting was that we had a MASSIVE storm on Thursday night!! We had a late dinner that night and we were walking outside when we saw tons of lightning and some crazy wind. I got super excited because Alaska doesn't get sweet lightning. I totally felt like a little kid, just enthralled by the sweet lightning. Anyways, we were driving to someone's house when the rain started POURING down and the wind got incredibly strong. All the lights went out of houses while we were driving, including the traffic lights!! It made everything pretty sketchy, so we went home as the roads were flooded, and there were small tornadoes in places. Apparently the storm was the worse they've had in like forever - at least 15 years. Trees were ripped out of the ground and winds were around 100 mph. We had to drag a tree out of the middle of the parking lot and in those short seconds I was as wet as if I had just jumped in a lake! It was literally like someone just dumping a swimming pool on top of us. It was pretty wild and we didn't have light for some of the night so that was kind of exciting. The lightning was just out of this world, and there were huge strikes like at least every second.
We got to go up to Tempe this last weekend for a talk by Elder L. Tom Perry to our mission! It was super cool and I got to shake his hand and talk to him for a bit. He came up with Elder Hallstrom from the Quorum of the 70 and they gave great talks. They gave tips on teaching and talked about the organization of the Church. This Church is not led by any man, but by the Savior. He gave an amazingly powerful apostolic witness of Jesus Christ and His restored church. He is definitely a man of God and we were so fortunate to get to see and hear from Him.
Sunday was also a pretty eventful day, and I got to talk and sing quite a bit. Somebody was listening at our missionary fireside Friday night, and found out that I could sing. She then decided that I was going to do a musical number in Sacrament meeting so I ended up singing "Llevaremos la verdad al mundo" - We'll Bring the World His Truth. I also gave a talk on faith in sacrament meeting, so it was fun practicing my Spanish some more. Everything really relates back to missionary work, so of course I had to include some of that. I think it all went good - I had lots of comments about the song and everything.
Later in the day, we got a call from our Elder's Quorum President, whose son was getting baptized that day. Apparently somebody bailed on the talks so we ended up giving them (we found out like 20 minutes before the baptism), singing a musical number (a duet with both of us), and being the witnesses at the baptism. Oh, and we also sang a musical number (4 missionaries) at a baptism the day before. Everything went really good, and everybody enjoyed the baptism, so we were all happy.
Oh, and it was pretty wild - there were 4 people randomly at Church who we had never seen before. A couple were friends of members so we have a couple appointments set up, but a couple were totally random. These 2 older ladies had been wandering outside and told us that they were "looking for God and looking for help" so we took them to classes and apparently they really enjoyed Church. Hopefully we can teach them sometime soon and something will come from this!
So yeah, the work has been going good - we never can get enough done in a day as we want to. But the members are starting to get more involved, and we're starting to work with them a little more. I can't believe how fast time is flying by. It seriously felt like I was just writing everyone yesterday!!
But I'm doing great, working hard, and learning so much every day! Hasta Luego!
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