Week 85: Super Baptism

Buenos Dias a todos!!

This week was a really long stressful week but now that it is over it was actually a fantastic week! It was full of trials, stress, hard work, no work, and the spirit :)

This week we started strong and well! We worked hard preparing our investigators to be baptized and to be interviewed. On Thursday we had the interview and all of the kids passed the interviews! The interviews were really fun because while our district leader interviewed one of the kids, his companion, my comp and I, and the other kids played pass the pigs! One of the elders received pass the pigs in a package so we played while we were waiting for the interviews and it was so much fun ha ha :)

That same day was an interesting day because we didn't get to work at all. We had planning in the morning, then ate lunch. During lunch the sister leaders called us to tell us that they had finished splits with the sisters from our zone and thought that something was up and that we should have interviews with them. So after lunch we went and had interviews with the sisters.

I interviewed one sister and my companion interviewed the other. I interviewed the senior companion who is new. She has only been in the mission for 5 months. It came out that she had a strong testimony, but was really stressed, tired, felt alone, didn't know what to do, and was not happy or enjoying the mission. I felt so bad for her because everything she described was how I felt or the situation that I suffered in the beginning of the mission. In the end we helped her understand what she should do to work hard and to be happy. It was a great interview and the spirit was very strong. I really did feel guided in what to say and what to do. Before the interview I had a feeling what she was going to say so I took my journal to the interview and read her a few of my entries sharing the same feelings that she had felt and then explained what I did to get out of those feelings. It was a great moment.

After those interviews our investigators had their interviews and after that we had to run and take some strong medicine to the other sisters in the zone who were really sick. Being a zone leader is fun, but at the same time sometimes it is frustrating not having time to work in the street ha ha.

On Friday instead of having splits with some members of the zone we had splits with the assistants of the mission president. They were good, they are my friends so I really enjoyed it. I was with Elder Gutierrez from Chile who was my companion in my first day in the mission when we had to give a Book of Mormon to someone in the street and find the mission home. We taught and worked hard and contacted. It was a pretty normal day but the night and morning were fun because we were all together joking and laughing and doing exercises.

This week we had our Super Baptism and it was soooooo hard!!!

The night before we had a lesson with the kids and the mom and everything was good to go to church. On Sunday we had to look for a different investigator who wanted to walk to church with us. We got to church and had to go straight to class. After class we went to look for the kids and their mom and they weren't in the church. If they didn't go to church they wouldn't have the required attendances to be baptized. We found a member who has a car and flew with him to the house of the kids. We found out that the alarm hadn't worked and that they had woken up late and were getting ready but wouldn't have made it to church if we hadn't gone in the car to look for them. But in the end they made it to sacrament meeting and we got ready for the baptism. I can't explain how many problems and things didn't want to work to get the baptism ready. But in the end we got it ready and everything worked out.

After the baptism we went to the house to eat but we were so exhausted that instead of eating we took our hour lunch to sleep. It was just what we needed. After so much stress and thinking and work it was fantastic to not have anything on our mind and to sleep.

It was a great baptism because our 3 investigators got baptized and I had the opportunity to baptize the youngest who is JM. He has problems walking which is why I am holding him in the picture, but he is so awesome. The little girl is super awesome as well. One week when her older sister couldn't go to church she decided to go to church alone (She went to the closest church which was an evangelical church but it is the thought that counts right? ;) )

But it was a good week! We are going to keep working!

I love you all! Stay Golden!

Love,
Elder Nielson :)