Oi Everyone!
Alright here is the lovely deal with my companion. I love her and she is a great trainer. Too good! Two sister trainers are going home this transfer, which means next week two more will be called, and a rumor is going around that it is going to be my companion sister Ramos because when Presidente asked Sister Lima (one of the trainers) who would be a good replacement, she said Sister Ramos. We get the phone call next Sunday to see what the transfer will be. Haha, I don't want to have had 3 trainers!! I'm only halfway done! But tudo bem, I think that the fact that I don't want her to be a Sister Trainer means she would be a really good one haha.
So here’s the deal with the rain. I was so excited because I love rain, but little did I know what would happen after the rain. Oh yeah, lots of spiders. And I don't mean like little spiders, I can handle those no big deal. But these are thick boys. I don't have any photos but one of the elders was like picking it up and stuff. I was not about to get close enough to take a picture. And then my companion assumed I would be scared of snakes cause I'm scared of spiders. We had a dead snake in our backyard and she was trying to scare me with it, but failed haha. Its stopped raining so I guess I'm okay with that because no more spiders, but it's really heating up here.
So we had a baptism this week, which is good news. It was the baptism of Nicole and Lucimar, which is awesome!! However, it was pretty stressful. Basically our LMA (Ward mission leader) is 'new' to his calling and hasn't really figure out what to do, so the responsibility rests on us to do his calling, and our work. This is super hard because we usually get 25-35 new investigators every week. We are stressed because we haven't met with him yet. Anyways, he is supposed to plan the baptism because our job is to get them ready. We worked so hard on getting them ready, fasting, visiting every day, etc. This was super important to us because when we first started teaching, Lucimar was not really interested in our message and we ended up just teaching her daughter. Throughout these past few weeks we have seen her grow so much. She looks forward to our visits, refers to the members as "we" (she said "we don't drink coffee" when someone asked about it), etc. It's just awesome! Unfortunately, our LMA didn't prepare for the baptism. We went two hours early to check on the font and it was not full so we started hauling buckets of water - but it's not doing much. Some members popped in and just watched us and then left haha. Then the LMA shows up and tells us to just move the baptism. We say no because that would reflect badly on the church if we aren't prepared, and our LD said that we could baptize them lying down as long as they are submersed. At this point we are super stressed because we are late to go pick them up. We run to their house, and we end up waiting on Nicole who hasn't returned. Both Sister Ramos and I realize that since our LMA didn't plan the service, we are going to have to do that now. We start planning a musical number and the talks we are going to give. I call every member on the list, asking them if they could come because we want them to feel loved and supported. I reach the bishop and he asks "oh that's still happening?" The LMA had started letting everyone know he cancelled the baptism. So then I realize we won’t have any witnesses so I start calling trying to find members willing to come. We show up to the church and the water is fine, they just have to lie down but tudo bem because it's not about how weird it is it's about the covenant right? Apparently not, the witnesses and the priesthood holder who would baptize say they don't feel comfortable with this.
So we have to walk Lucimar and Nicole home and tell them it's not going to happen today. We got home and just cried and screamed we were so frustrated! But, it kinda turned into a good thing. We baptized them the next day on Sunday (which presidente doesn't like because then they have to wait a week to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost) but the blessing was that almost all the ward attended because it was after sacrament meeting. The Relief Society president spoke and the YW president too so that was a blessing because they had a lot of support. Definitely turned out better than expected, but shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. We have decided to have a meeting with our LMA next week because we think the only problem is he isn't sure what he is supposed to do with his calling and since this area is super ready for a lot of baptisms, we need to help him.
Besides that whole stressful thing, this week was good! We worked really hard to make up for the week I was sick, and at first everyone was refusing us, which is super abnormal for this area. We usually have no trouble talking to people. Sister Ramos said a prayer and we surpassed all of our goals and then some!
It's really heating up here and the tan lines are beginning to happen. This week will be hard to work because we don't know about the transfer until the night before it will happen! Whatever happens will be for the best, but I really like Sister Ramos! She's from the Philippines and is 24 years old, and has already finished college in chemical engineering! She's super smart, and was a trainer the first transfer out of training.
Things are good here, we are just gonna have to work harder on getting help from the ward.
Love,
Sister Cecil
