Email sesenta y ocho: Homeless for a weekend

December 4, 2017

So you would think that after 60 P-days in the mission field, I would know how to better manage my time on Preparation Day, but no. Here I am, again, writing my email home at 5:30. Sorry guys. I will repent. We learned a lot about responsibility this week, so I need to start living that principle a little better.

This weeks headliner is true: we were indeed homeless this weekend, or shall I say, we were locked out of our apartment for the weekend, but thankfully we have some loving Zone Leaders who took us in. I'll explain that further on.

First: we had a baptism this week. It was actually a huge tender mercy because at the the beginning of
the transfer I prayed that Elder Diaz and I would be able to baptize his first transfer. If someone doesn't attend church twice, they can't be baptized. As we entered week five of the transfer, I was feeling a little down that we hadn't baptized, and that it appeared that we weren't going to baptize this transfer. How ever, a week ago, a member in the Branch, Hermano Gámez, gave us a call and said that his daughters baptismal record had been lost and that she needed to be baptized again. After verifying that her record really was lost, we began teaching her, starting Monday night. I called President Hansen, and asked if she could be baptized this Saturday, and he was all for. Since she already comes to church, she didn't have to come two more times to be baptized. So we taught her all five lessons Monday through Friday, and had her baptismal interview, all in time for Saturday.

Almost everything went smoothly with the baptism. Elder Díaz had to baptize her seven times because I hadn't filled the font super deep, and he couldn't quite get her all the way under, but hey, as they say, seventh time's the charm.

Also, somewhere in all the mayhem during the baptism, I lost my keys. Yup, they were gonzo. I searched that church building up and down, still have no idea where those keys ran off to. So I spent the last 60 hours wearing the same socks and garments, (don't worry, you better believe I took a 30 minute shower when we finally got to our comlex's housing office today and got a spare key). And wore the same suit, white shirt, and tie for 4 days straight. Good times.

We slept with the Zone Leaders Saturday and Sunday night. Saturday night I took the couch, and Elder Díaz slept between two padded chairs. I felt bad because I knew he didn't sleep well, so I swapped him places Sunday night. Except my enormous body was not going to fit comfortably in those two chairs. So I slept on the hardwood floor. Tender mercy: I've learned how to sleep anywhere on the mission. Insight on the Book of Mormon: so I've read the story of Nephi and his brothers who knows how many times. But what blows me away as I'm reading 1 Nephi right now, is how much I see Laman and Lemuel in myself. I think we grow up in the church believing that Laman and Lemuel were "the most vilest of sinners". But really the more I study them, I think they were just ordinary guys who gave into the natural man. It's scary to think about. But that's we must "pray always, lest (we) enter into temptation."

The Church is 100% true. Love y'all. Have a wonderful week!