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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

First Baptism - May 16, 2011

This week as been really great. The more I accept the will of the
Lord, the more I feel a genuine welfare for the people, and the more I
forget about life back home, the "easier" things get as being a
missionary. Easier meaning that I´m not as downtrodden, upset, and
time seems to absolutely fly!

The rest of Pday last week went by just like normal, that's about it.
Although I did buy some Peanut Butter at Hiper Paiz (subsidiary of
WalMart and now officially WalMart) and it was the best purchase of my
life. SO good! I have made many a fine sandwich with my Jif Crunchy
Peanut Butter and it was worh the Q38 (about $5).

(THIS IS THE GOOD PART)
Tuesday morning was absolutely terrible. Okay, slight exaggeration,
but it wasn't great. For one reason and one reason only. And it really
only lasted for about 10 seconds. After breakfast I went to go brush
my teeth. Background. Usually I just leave my toothbrush case on the
counter, but we have a lot of bugs on the counter and I was worried
about bugs crawling into the holes of my toothbrush case so last
Monday night I decided to put it into the refrigerator. Story. I went
to brush my teeth on Tuesday morning. I got my tooth brush case out of
the fridge, opened it, and a cockcroach came flying out(not that
cockroaches fly, but the force of opening the case apparently it came
out onto the counter). That was gross enough, having a cockroach in my
toothbrush case. It got worse. There were cockroach larvae ON the
toothbrush head. Clearly that toothbrush went straight to the garbage.
It was absolutely DISGUSTING. Elder Nelson said that he would have
just cleaned it off really well and then used it anyway. I said HE-ck
no. I think that the cockroach crawled into my toothbrush case while
it ws open the night before and I was brushing. That´s my only guess
as to how it could have happened. The rest of the day was just
missionary work as usual. But there was a nice downpour on our way
home that night. It was pretty sweet.

Wednesday, the 11th - Happy Birthday DJ (that was the first thing in
my Journal entry for that day). On Wednesday morning I could actually
see my breath while I was doing exercises up on the roof. But it
wasn't really cold, I just thought it was cool that I could see my
breath. We did a lot of contacting this week! especially on Wednesday.
We talked to a 21 year old and a 12 year old (at the same time) about
the BoM and I think we may have sparked an interest there, let´s hope!
Things after lunch kind of fell through, but that's missionary work,
so we did some more contacting! Which is okay, because in order to
teach people you have to find them! We had a nice little chat with
Mynor and I think things are sort of progressing there, we need him to
get married though!

On Thursday I did splits with the District Leader because I had to
take him to Santos´ house to do the interview. I had a ton of places
planned to stop by and every single one fell through. Not a single
person was home in the 7 hours we were together! (With the exception
of Santos, which took up nearly 2), so we spent the majority of the
time walking to and from these appointments and doing some awesome
contacting! One of whom I ran into yesterday and she was very upset
that we didn´t pass by the day before (because of zone conference) but
Santos´ interview went well!

On Friday I had my first Zone Conference. We had to wake up at 5 to
get ready and travel to the Conference. It was a long day! But Zone
Conference was way good! My Spanish has improved a lot and I
understood almost everything that was said! And obviously almost all
of it was in Spanish! (with the exception of the small portions of the
talks directed only at Nortes). The rest of the night was pretty much
shot. Actually, that's a lie. We went to Santos´ house to go over
everything for the baptism and after we went to a Less Active families
and found an investigator there! We hadn´t been able to find her house
in the much time we spent looking and so we were able to teach her
again! We talked to her about the Restoration and invited her to be
baptized. We haven't set a date yet, but I'm hoping that we can work
with members a lot and set a date soon!

Saturday was a LONG day. I spent the whole morning in bed not feeling
well at all, and slept for an hour or two and read while Elder Nelson
got everything settled for the baptism which was awesome! We went over
to the church at noon to fill up the font and ended up waiting until
almost 2:30 until we actually got the keys so by the time we actually
got it filled up we had to go home to get ready to come back for the
baptism.

The service was really good! The talks given were absolutely fantastic
and I don't think they could have gone any better. The ordinance was
slightly... more difficult. As you may remember, Santos is 77 years
old. So, I was the one who performed the ordinance, but I made a few
mistakes. First of all, I raised my left arm instead of the right arm.
Duh, Elder LaPray. 2nd, when I got the arm situation fixed, I messed
up the words. 3rd, when I finally got it all right, I couldn't get him
under the water. Santos is an old man and he doesn't exactly bend so I
basically had to break the man´s back and almost trip him to get him
under the water. I felt so bad and stupid about it, but eventually it
all worked out and things worked out for the good. The rest of the
night was spent in the house because I still wasn't feeling very well.

Sundays are Sundays, and the morning goes pretty much like it would
for any other person in the world, except bringing people to church.
So we went to try to bring some investigators to church, went to
church, and stayed at church. After that we went home and at lunch,
went out and worked, and then studied for the rest of the night. It
was all in all a good day I suppose. Sundays are usually, not relaxed,
but different because we have 3 hours of church, so we don't get in
studying in so basically we got 6:30-12 with church, and then we have
lunch for an hour at 1 and we still have 4 hours of studying that we
have to do as I am being trained and so we really only have about 4
hours of proselyting work on Sundays.

This week is going to be good, I hope! We'll be working with what I
hope to be new investigators and setting baptismal dates for June! No
more baptisms this month, but that´s ok! I'm doing fine here in
Guatemala and enjoying the work!

Love,
Elder LaPray

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