72: Sonsonate 9

Dear Family,

How's it going? It's been great here in El Salvador. This week, we've been to San Salvador, Santa Ana, my companion got his patriarchal blessing...pretty much everything except work in our area. So we really haven't had much results this week because of all of that, but it was an adventure.

On Wednesday, we went to Santa Ana to have a special lunch with the President for our success. It was a lot of fun. We ate nachos and hot dogs. President just moved into a new house (they've been constructing it, but not it's finished). It's awesome! Way big. So yeah, that was a good day.

On Thursday, we went to San Salvador, and I had to sit outside of the immigration building for 3 hours with Elder Bockelman and Hermana De Leon. We played a game that consisted of bouncing a quarter off a desk into a bottle cap for all that time. Yep...good stuff. Oh, and we also studied. Then we had a feast at Wendy's.

Well, also, my companion got his patriarchal blessing this week. I got to hear it, it was pretty cool.

Hope everything is going well back home.

Take care,
Elder Bailey

71: Sonsonate 8

¡Hola familia!

 

¿Cómo están?

 

Todo bien aquí en El Salvador.  Esta semana ha sido excelentísimo.  Ya les cuento lo que ha pasado:  [Everything's good here in El Salvador.  This week has been excellent.  I'll tell you what has happened:]

 

We've worked hard and found a lot of cool news.  On Tuesday, we found 6 news in one day, 2 families.

 

On Thursday, we had another adventure in San Salvador.  My companion had to go there to do his immigration papers.  It's always an adventure.

 

On Friday, I did interchanges with the DL, so I got to leave my area and go work in Sonsonate (first time since I've gotten to Sonsonate).  It was cool.  That area is so awesome.  Seriously.  It is so much bigger than mine.  (We live in department Sonsonate, in city Sonsonate, and we're in zone Sonsonate, but area America.  But there's also another area called Sonsonate where my DL is, where I visited Friday, and that area is way sweet.)

 

Well, then Saturday we had a baptism.  D. We completed a family.  We baptized the daughter of a pastor.  Her parents had founded a church.  The church is located right next to D's house.  But we baptized her!  Man, this baptism took a lot of preparation.

 

First of all, at 2:00, we went to the chapel to fill up the baptismal font.  But the plug didn't work.  So we spent like an hour trying to fix it.  In the end, we couldn't find a way to fix it, so we just went outside and found a brick and covered the plug up with the brick.  That worked.  Well, after a lot of preparation, we finally had everything ready at 5:00 (when the baptism was supposed to start), and they weren't there.  So we took off running.  We got to their house, and the husband was showering.  Just getting ready.  Then we asked them if they had everything, and she didn't have a white shirt (we had the skirt).  Well, I guess my companion forgot to ask her that the night before.  So we went running to a whole bunch of members' houses to find someone who could lend her a shirt.  Thankfully, the bishop's wife helped us out there.  So we ran back to their house, gave them the shirt, then ran to the chapel.  People were already starting to come.

 

Well, finally, at like 5:35-ish, D showed up, she was pretty nervous.  Her husband forgot to bring a white shirt, so he took off to his house again to get a white shirt.  We played the First Vision movie while we were waiting.  He got there.  They changed.  We took pictures, and finally, about an hour and a half later, we started. The baptism was really good.  Way cool. The husband, JC, got to baptize his wife. Seriously.  It was way awesome. Way cool baptism.  Also, B and M showed up (our investigators).  They liked it a lot.

 

So we baptized the daughter of a pastor.

 

On Sunday, we had 5 in sacrament meeting (finally).  B and M finally came, and three others.  They are all progressing pretty well.  Sunday was really cool.

 

Well, we've baptized 2 families this month.  Time to find two more for the next month.

 

Hope everything is great back at home. Take care everyone!!

 

Elder Bailey

70: Sonsonate 7

Hey,

So that email I just sent was from last week.  Too bad you didn't get it on time, it was pretty good. 

Well, I don't really have much to tell you.  I pretty much said it all yesterday.

We put a date with D.  She just told us.  "Hey, so I made up my mind, I'm going to get baptizednext Saturday.  So she's going to get baptized this Saturday.

I got really sick.  I had a fever and I had the chills.  I think that was my first "sick" day in the mission. 

We're working hard in our area.  It's hard a lot of the time, but it's totally worth it.

Happy mom's day.

Elder Bailey

69: Sonsonate 6

Hello family!!

So this has been a good week, I'm not gonna lie.  We had a baptism.  F. C.

F. C. is a quieter guy who thinks a little slower.  He is the husband of Hermana K. S.  She's a faithful member and probably one of the fastest talkers ever.  She's way funny, and fat.  I met F. my first week here.  We taught him for a while at first, then he kind of dropped off.  I definitely had to put the patience I've learned on the mission in practice there.  I waited up to five minutes for every question I gave him.  Well, he was progressing slowly, but progressing.  Then Elder G. came on interchanges (a while ago), and, not being the best listener, kind of offended F.

Well, so we dropped him for a little bit, but two weeks later, I came to the realization that the reason Hermana K. was so fat was because she knew how to cook.  And really well.  She's a chef.  So I made the very easy decision to have her cook for us.  It was great.  On Sundays, we always got to eat with F. as well, and I always turned the conversation to baptism at the end.  One day, he kind of came to the realization that he did need to get baptized.  The next week he told us he's give us an answer on Thursday.  We visited him throughout the week.  I thought he was very close to accepting.

Then, Thursday night, we arrived at their house and found it to be really awkward.  They had just gotten into a bit of a fight.  After singing a hymn and praying, I asked F. how he felt, and he said he didn't think he'd get baptized.  He said that his wife was a member, and still had this fault, and this fault, etc. (she has a very strong personality).  Well, I then realized he needed to learn about the atonement.  We taught him about the atonement, and that the only way to accept it is through baptism and taking the sacrament every Sunday.  That's the only way that we can progress in this life and really be real Christians.  It was a very powerful lesson.  We used D&C 19.  After, using Mosiah 18, I read of each one of the requirements for baptism, and asked them to F.  He accepted, but started coming up with excuses for why he shouldn't get baptized.  Then he started in one…"I don't know if I can get baptized this Saturday because I don't know what time I'll get off work....but 6:30 would be good.  You guys can invite who you want.  Yeah, that'll be perfect."

I kind of went mute for a couple seconds.  But there it was, F. just put his own date.

Saturday he got baptized.  My companion, Elder Perez, baptized him (his first baptism in the mission!).  It was a sweet baptism, and we had 5 investigators come.

Sunday he got confirmed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and received the gift of the Holy Ghost, a personal guide from God that can lead us to happiness if we listen to it.

Man, this church is so awesome.

Also, maybe one of the best parts, Hermana K. still makes us food.

This week we're expecting one more baptism (Hermana D.), and two dates (Familia V., they're way sweet).

Talk to you on Sunday,
Elder Bailey