19: San Jorge 10

Hey—

Okay, so it has been a crazy week and we’ve been teaching lessons like crazy.  But here’s a couple highlights that I’d like to point out.

First, we survived the end of the world.  Apparently it was supposed to be on Saturday at 6:00.  Yeah, well that church guessed wrong, or the Volgons messed up again.

Another highlight is that we found tortillas in the grocery store.  The normal tortillas here in El Salvador are bland, thick, five inch in diameter things, and really don’t taste good (except when they have stuff inside, then they’re called pupusas!).  So we found real tortillas, and wow, are they good!

A few days ago the cook told my companion that he looked kind of angry a lot of the time.  I guess he just has that angry looking face, but he came up with a solution.  Every time we’re walking and he looks angry, I can punch him.  A little ironic, I think, but it’s actually working.  He looks kind of happier.

I also got some speakers.  Elder Delgado left them behind when he left, so I snagged them now.  So I have speakers.  Now all I need is CDs and a player I suppose.

On Saturday we had a marriage for Nelson and Abigail, and after a baptism for Abigail.  They’re a family that we found at the very beginning of the change.  Nelson is already a member, and Abigail was basically ready.  Also, Nelson talks really fast and slurs his words, so I don’t really understand him.  So they got married, and Elder Urbina baptized Abigail.  There are no pictures of me with them because I was running to find soda for after, and apparently they didn’t wait...but there’s Elder Urbina with the family, and also Elder Brown.  The other guy is Benny, the Mexican.  We’re going to baptize him this week.  He’s way positive and has already read to 2 Nephi.  He’s a lot of fun to teach because he’s always got good questions and he speaks English.  He’ll be baptized this week.

But the baptism for Abigail was really good—way spiritual, and a lot of their family was there too and wanted to learn more about the church after.  Yeah.  Awesome.  I gave a speech about baptism at the beginning, but didn’t really know what to say and didn’t know all of the words, so it was kind of like...

"Baptism is a very important step.  After this, you can progress and become more like Christ.  It’s a very good... (everyone in the audience whispers "decision") ...decision.  Good job!"

Yeah, didn’t really work out.  But after I sang a song with Elder Brown and Elder Rabanales (the zone leaders).  We sang “The Spirit of God” and harmonized, it was pretty sweet.  The bishop loved it so much that he had us sing in sacrament meeting on Sunday too (it was ward conference, so the zone leaders came to our ward).  That was cool too, except the last verse Elder Brown decided to sing in English and we were singing in Spanish, and honestly, it sounded kind of messy.  But yeah, it was cool.

Oh, another cool story.  We got a reference this week for this guy who really likes to play the violin and viola.  It was an AWESOME contact because I was able to talk with him for like 15 minutes about classical music.  I felt so cool to have known so much.  I guess it’s a good thing I took that class at BYU.  But he really likes to play (which is rare for a Latin).  I told him I’d see if I could find some cool music. 

So it’s going pretty well here.  My Spanish is improving.  I’m getting better at teaching clearly.  I still can’t teach amazingly yet and persuasively, but it’ll come.  Till then, it’s all good.  Better and better every day.  I’m getting better at cooking, especially now that I have real tortillas.  Still haven’t tried conejo.  But I’ve been keeping busy, definitely learning a lot.  Goodbye.

Enjoy spring,

Elder Bailey