39: Independencia 6

Hello United States!

So conference, wow. ¡Que chivo! I liked it a lot. Hope ya'll did as well.

A couple excerpts from my conference notes:

Richard G Scott: "We need to memorize scriptures. It helps a lot."
President Monson: "Yeah! We're gonna have two temples in Provo!"
Dieter F. Uchtdorf: This talk I enjoyed a lot. Probably one of my favorite talks this conference. It was very interesting.
Bednar: "Joseph, go do some family history."
Holland: Go on missions. Also, couples should plan to go on missions now.
Monson: Gifts come from responsibility. So just do it.

It was very cool. Unfortunately, we only had one investigator who went. This area is kind of struggling today. The thing is that we just really don't have time to find. It's hard being in the office, and a little frustrating to not be able to work in the area that much. We don't even have any dates for this month (we do for November, though). But it is a little frustrating. Also, I got sick yesterday. I feel really tired always and have a sore throat. But I did beat Elder Christner in ping pong one time, so it's all good.

So Wednesday was an interesting day. Very rainy. I was very thankful I brought my poncho with me that day. I ended up going with Elder Morgan (another elder who was staying in the house because his companion had appendicitis and was recuperating) because Elder Christner had a headache or something. I don't really remember why. But anyway, I had the poncho, he had the umbrella.

It started raining. Really hard. Like, the hardest I have ever seen it here. We ran to our last appointment, Julio Cesar, the artist who is going to do a show with fire for us tomorrow for our activity. He is so close to getting baptized, he just has to stop working Sundays. He's praying for it. I really hope he will be able to do it, because he understands everything. He is way cool. Reminds me of my brother a lot. Artist, does cool stuff, a little radical with his beliefs about the government, and likes to play with fire. You can probably guess which brother it is.

Anyway, so we got to our house and he started showing us some of his art, and the rain was pounding, I could barely hear a thing. Then, as soon as we started singing (yes, we usually like to sing to start out the lessons. It's pretty cool, invites the spirit a lot) the rain stopped, and we ended up having a very cool, spiritual lesson. It was in that lesson when he finally started considering dropping work Sunday. Finally, as we were finishing up the lesson, it started raining again. Could be just a coincidence, but if it was, God is very good at making coincidences work out well for us. I really hope he'll get baptized. He's way awesome.

So then as we got outside, it really started raining. Then pouring. Whatever part of me that was not covered by the poncho got soaked. Elder Morgan's umbrella basically broke from the weight of the falling water and he gave up. Man, I have never seen so much water coming from the sky ever. It was insane. Then we got to our street and found a river there. Literally, we were hiking up a river. It felt like we weren't getting anywhere. When we finally got to the house, the water was up over the side walk, and practically to our door. There was a huge current there. You could river raft it. It was so fast. So we got in and Elder Morgan changed his clothes. I wasn't as wet because I had the poncho, thank goodness. Then we looked in the garage and saw a whole bunch of water gushing out from the patio on the other side of the wall. (There's kind of a hole there. It was built in, don't worry.) Well, that patio is next to the mattress room where we store all the mattresses for when new people come, etc. We (me and Elder Christner) worked our way through the mattresses and got to the door, only to find that the patio was almost flooding into the mattress room. We looked for the clogged plug, and when we couldn't find it, started draining water out through the hole to the garage (maybe I'll take pictures this week so you can understand it better. But suffice it to say, we were bent over draining water out of the patio to the garage (from the garage, it just drains out to the street) so that the patio wouldn't flood into the mattress room. It was an adventure.

Then Elder Guirola and Huaman got back from Trebol. Let's just say the water wasn't so nice on the car either. It was totally soaked. There were huge pools of water down by our feet, and the electrical system was screwed, so the lights and horn kept going off. Seriously, I have never seen so much rain. It was insane.

Don't worry. We got the car fixed. Everything is okay.

So that's the mission life. It's cool. Take care back home.

Elder Bailey