Rules & Baptisms

Good afternoon all! Another crazy, long, busy, week just finished. Today we have a 4 hour p-day. Yikes! Laundry, grocery, internet, and not much else! President Watrous is definitely a very stick to the rules kind of guy. He is probably not the most dynamic business type guy (which I'm thinking the last president was) but he's more humble and just full of faith, though also a little goofy. And as a result, all of our rules are becoming a little stricter and everything we do is much more by the book (the white handbook!). As a mission we're really trying to increase our faith and teach a lot more and get a lot more new investigatords and baptisms! And honestly, though it's hard for some people to get it (mostly those who don't have a lot of time left in the mission, so change is hard) I know that all of these changes are really going to improve the mission. I think things are already getting better and it's pretty exciting. This is an opportunity for great things to happen. Hooray for me being here the whole time! Last week was crazy. We didn't teach Eulalio once. We had a couple of citas that got cancelled; he's not being the most reliable right now. But we're still working on it. Basically we're trying to reschedule his baptism for Nov 22. We also decided to outright ask our most solid investigators if they are even willing to be baptized when they found out the truth. So we asked two of our "Marias" last week.
One Maria has been sporadic in our teaching her, but every time we do teach, and she reads, she says that everything is "claro." Everything is clear. And she said yes, that she will be baptized when she knows. And I think she will know. She then told us she wanted to come to church, and if her husband can't come with her, could we find a way for her to get there? Yes! So our ward mission leader picked her up and she came to church by herself. Afterwards she said she said she liked 100% of church. Yes! We brought a member with us to her lesson and I think they had a lot in common that really helped Maria feel comfortable. There's another testimony of the importance of members in missionary work (which reminds me-read those quotes from all the presidents in the first chapter-my purpose, of preach my gospel. It's at the end. I love the quotes).
We asked our "miracle" Maria the same thing about baptism that day too. She's turning out to be not as miraculous as she seemed to be. It's been hard to get a hold of her to teach, and she can't seem to come to church, and we always leave feeling a little confused about her desire. It seems like she just likes having these young girls come to be her friend. She didn't say yes to the baptism question, but I don't think she really understood what we were asking. We'll see what happens with her.Then there's Araceli. Last Wednesday we taught her and Cibelly. They are probably our favorite (can you have favorites?) investigadors. We just love them! Cibelly is just darling. Araceli somehow always seems like a big sister. She reminds me of Leigh. But we taught about Christ and baptism basically and just flat out told her we'd been really thinking and praying about her and think she would be ready for baptism by Nov. 8. When we asked, Cibelly threw her arm up in the air and really wants to be baptized. Araceli, I don't think, was surprised by the question but kept saying she doesn't know enough to be baptized. But we kept telling her we have plenty of time to keep working with her and she knows all she needs to and she is SO ready. She knew we were right. We said we'd just plan on that date and she could pray about it. We know we will have to get permission from the dad to get Cibelly baptized, but we think we can do that without it being too hard. Araceli came to church on Sunday (Cibelly was sick so she stayed home). H. Ochoa was talking to her and after church told us she had bad news. Totally unexpected. Araceli isn't married! Ah! She's always referred to her husband, as, uh, her husband. They have Cibelly-8, and Alfredo-almost 2. Apparently they've been afraid to get married because they're afraid that then everything will get hard. And she said she couldn't get baptized because they'd be living in sin. Guess what-already living in sin! Yikes! Oh man, so now we have to work with that. And Araceli is so ready and now we know why she's been kind of doubting it. At least Cibelly can get baptized anyway, but we want it all to happen at the same time. So now there's a new challenge for us!Lupe is an investigator the elders gave us and we asked her last week to be baptized the week after Araceli. She says that yeah, when she's ready she will be. That's the point. In a month, she also will be as ready as she can be. She said she'll pray about it. Her daughter Lulu is also 8, so she could be baptized. We have an appointment with her family and brother (who the elders are teaching and committing to baptism this week!) at 3:30 to do a little FHE, so we'll talk to her then. Then Saturday we committed another investigador-Cleotilde to baptism. A year ago other sisters were teaching him and he had a fecha bautismal, but then I guess he didn't think he was ready or knew enough, so it was cancelled, then he sort of "disappeared." But Saturday he was asking us what someone needed to know to be baptized, and we asked him, and he said he'd be baptized Nov 22. He's a crazy little 70 year old Mexican man that half the time just talks about social security. He'll take a little more work, but again, there's time to do it!So in conclusion, we have a couple for sure baptisms and some sort of and basically we're working really hard to teach and get everybody ready. That was the week. Other stuff happened too, but it's all sort of a blur. We're also trying to commit again the Mendoza kids-Stephanie and Danny, to be baptized. Hopefully that can happen this week. The mission's on fire! Hopefully!What else? Thanks for the e-mails family! That's so exciting about all the family history! I love it! I'm actually sitting in the family history library here e-mailing. We can't go to our library anymore, or do laundry by Disneyland because everything we do has to be within our zone. We don't even live in our zone! Oh well. Hey mom, that primary song you were talking about-if the savior stood beside me, I just learned. The kids here are singing it for the program coming up, and being the pianist, I learned it! Con el Salvador al lado! It's so cute, but probably for a while I will only know it in Spanish. I'm glad Alex got to Peru alright. For some reason I was thinking that she wasn't going there until January. I hope it will be good for her too. There probably isn't anyway you could get her address, is there? I would love to try to write her. Peruvians are funny. We have a Peruvian elder here in our district and he's kind of random, but makes me laugh. And we ate with the Peruvian family last night.What else? I ate mole twice last week. It's the chocolate sauce stuff they put with chicken. Thought you should know.
Also, we did our exchanges last week too. Hermana Moore-the sister "AP" came up here with H. Ochoa and me. She was H. Fatkin's last comp and is now with H. Chriswell, so we could compare our comp experiences. I really like H. Moore, I wish I could've been comps with her, but she's leaving next transfer. I'm glad that all the "Handy" family had fun out here. I wouldn't mind seeing family, but in terms of my being "private" really, it's just not allowed. So it's okay. It's good to not have the distraction.
Mom, if I ever see Tina Nielsen's friend/family then I will definitely convert her! I'll see if I can pass on the info-maybe.Oh yes! Thank you muchisimo for the package! I got both packages last week! Hooray for knee highs! They are wonderful! And all the FHE ideas are so fun, thank you so much! And the treats and drink mixes and everything was so great! And the CDs! Wonderful! My comps were thrilled to have new music! So we've only been listening to Motab and classical and basically church and some CDs are already scratched, so new stuff is great! Thank you for making the blog public mom! That will be helpful because some friends were e-mailing me because they couldn't do the blog thing, but I'm not allowed to e-mail friends anymore, so they'll have to use the blog if they care.Sounds like all the family is happy and doing well! Beautiful fall weather, lots of squirrels, bike riding, Thanksgiving plans, all kinds of fun things! It is a wonderful season, but it always goes by really fast!
Things are still going great. We are busy and still trying really hard to get the ward members more involved and trusting us more and trying to find all the people who are ready to be baptized and be happy! It definitely is hard to try to think of how best to help all these people and know who is progressing and who needs to be "dropped." But I guess it's best to not think of it as dropping, because they'll be taught later, and it gives us time to find people who are ready. Oh missionary work! Another week and another long e-mail for you all! Tomorrow is my two month anniversary of being in CA-it definitely feels like it's been two months, but I can't believe it's only been two months! The language is still coming and everything is wonderful! Muchisimas gracias por todos las oraciones y cartas y amor y apoyo! Les amo muchisimas!Love,Hermana Emily!