It was the first time in my life that I have seen a 40 year old man hide under a bed. It was pretty sweet.

I got a package this week from Christine and Dad! I learned quickly that you don’t open packages when there are other missionaries; it is the quickest way to lose your stuff. We had a baptism this week for C------ She has been an investigator for years, but the missionaries always dropped her. When me and my companion came to teach her, I guess things just clicked with her and she wanted to be baptized. I don’t have any pictures because I couldn’t get my camera to work for the baptism, but she also got married this week and I have a bunch of pictures of that (Guatemalan people don’t smile when they take pictures). We also have a girl named C------ who wants to get baptized this week. She has a lot of problems with her husband, and that prevented her from getting baptized in the past. This week she just got fed up i guess and one day we stayed up helping her move out of her house while her husband was at the bar. No one else is really progressing but i am hoping that we can get some more support in the area with these baptisms because they will be the first baptisms in the area after years since the last one. Our next changes are December 10th, but I have no idea what will happen. I think the mission president might want us to stay in the area for longer, but my companion has one change and a half in the mission and I think he will change since he has been in the area for 6 months now. 

Cool story: this week we went with a kid in the ward to a reference in Siquival. It was late at night and the path we took had a lot of trees so we didn’t have the light from the moon. My flashlight stopped working so the only light we had was from the fireflies (which was super cool). The path was also filled with a bunch of dogs (which is never a good thing), but we just walked with rocks in our hands and we threw them at places where we thought there were dogs). When we got to the house, all his lights were on and he was cooking, but as soon as we called his name, he ran under his bed to hide from us. It was the first time in my life that I have seen a 40 year old man hide under a bed. It was pretty sweet.

The work is slow in my area (well at least that is the rumor about my area), but at least we got a baptism this week and are planning to have another this week. We give a lot of priesthood blessings but I usually only do the anointing of the oil because my Spanish isn’t good enough to do the sealing part. The ward is good, but it is hard because it seem as though a lot of people on the edge of being a member. For example, we use to have around 300 people at church but a stake president gave a harsh talk and now we only have 75 people coming to church. We started to teach a family English (because they wanted to learn it) and while we were at their house the father called and wanted to talk to us. He said (in English) that he is in the U.S. right now building a house for his family (he builds houses for a living) and that he was super grateful for us because we were teaching them English because he couldn’t do it. He said that because he was so grateful, he is going to give the house to the church so the missionaries in the San Antonio Area (my area) don’t have to pay for housing. It reminds me of our Heavenly Father. He wants to bless us and give us stuff because we are doing something that he can’t do right now (not saying that God cant preach the gospel himself but it would be harder for people to walk with faith if they knew God existed). In return, we get a reward that is much greater than our efforts should have given us. Hey, why isn’t Joey doing the face-offs now?

Love, Bret