Monday, May 30, 2011

20: San Jorge 11

Monday we had a family night with Hermana Fernandez. And we ate boleadas. It’s a dish from Hondurus, so my companion was in heaven the whole night. He kept telling me how this is something that would change my life. Turns out boleadas are just tortillas with beans, cheese, eggs, a meat, and avocado. Not really anything that spectacular, and I kind of ate that a lot in the states, but that’s okay. They were still good. We also had Elder Brown and Elder Rabanales over, and it was a lot of fun. Here’s a picture of us with Hermana Fernandez!

Hermana Fernandez, the cook

Starting the service project


Tuesday we did service with the ward. We went up to San Jorge to repair the house of Nohemi (my first convert). Turns out her house was pretty much destroyed to begin with, so our service project ended up taking the whole day. But it was pretty sweet, and I got to build a house (okay, it’s more like a shack, but for San Jorge it’s a mansion). Also, Benny came and helped out too (the investigator). He is so awesome. He has so many good questions. He’s prayed and received an answer, and is so cool. We just have to put a date with him now, but he doesn’t want to commit unless it’s 100 percent. He told us that if he commits, he doesn’t want to just drop the religion after 10 years, he wants it for life. And when he goes back to Mexico and the states, he wants to help his family have it too. I think that’s so awesome and respect it, but I really want to put a date with him before this change is up, cause I think I’ll be leaving.


So hello!

Oh yeah, so that adventure. Turns out we have to leave our house (it’s pretty dumpy), so we were looking for a house to live in—but a really big house, where they could put the assistants and some of the office tambien [also]. So we found the perfect house (referral of Nelson). It’s huge, has six bedrooms, a backyard where they’re going to put a basketball court and a hammock, and hot water in all the bathrooms. Basically it’s the best house in the mission. We found it, knocked the price down 200, and then the president told us that we couldn’t live there. My companion was devastated. I was really surprised. To me it was just a house, but apparently it meant a lot to him. So he was pretty grumpy about living in our house still. But wait. It gets better.



Let’s just say that this week has been an adventure.



The Road to San Jorge



On Friday it rained. Hard. We went on splits and I went with Elder Brown to San Jorge so he could do a baptism interview with a bloke named Tiburcio (88 years old!). I ran with Elder Brown through the rain and through huge puddles of water and we stopped by the house to pick up the baptism forms. Turns out the house has a major leak—basically the whole wall (see pictures). Our floor turned into a swimming pool, and my desk was soaked. My English scriptures, PME (Preach My Gospel), notebooks, etc. were totally soaked! Well, what happens happens, as my dad always says, and I just put my stuff somewhere safe and hooked that fan up to them. Luckily, only the index of my BOM got water damaged, but my notebook I got at the MTC is pretty bad. I’ll keep using it (but if you want to send me some pages sometime that aren’t water damaged, it’s cool), but my PME is destroyed. Have to get a new one of those. Well, I just kind of laughed and got on with it, but when I returned there in the night with my companion, whew. Not happy. So yeah, the house leaks. The good news is we reactivated a family that day and had a baptism for their 8-year-old son.

Saturday the assistants arrived. They’re kind of taking over Palmar, that’s why I think I’m going to go. We had lunch with the Principios de Evangelio [Principles of the Gospel] class and their teacher. It was so good. We brought all our investigators. Good times.

Sunday, we had a baptism for Tiburcio. He’s 88 years old and can’t breathe properly, so he has a big hole in his neck. Basically, he covered his neck instead of his nose when he was baptized. We had a member baptize him (Miguel). It was a scene. First of all, Tiburcio was trying to bend forward instead of backwards, and kept forgetting to cover his hole. Finally Miguel dunked him, but he didn’t cover his hole too well and was coughing for a couple minutes after. I was afraid he was going to die. I really didn’t want to say that one of my converts died from his baptism. So anyways, it was a pretty complicated baptism.

Well, it rained last night, and we actually got to watch the water drain into our house this time. Basically like a huge waterfall all along the wall. Yeah, it’s time to move.

Enjoy the pics. I’m trying to send a lot, but they don’t load very well. I need another system to do this...

Well, it’s all good. El Salvador is great. I’ve really been craving pretzels lately. It’s definitely an adventure.

TTYL!
Elder Bailey

No comments:

Post a Comment