Dec 05, 2011

Geez--

That looks like a lot of wind. You know what the biggest bummer is? Now I dont have any trees to put up my slackline. Quank

Hope the cleanup is going well. That must have been quite the show. Was it really loud when the wind came? What happened to all the snow...did it just blow away?

Well this part is for everyone I guess. The baptism of Iris this week was quite a rollercoaster. Our ward mission leader is completely useless. We call him constantly to try and set up a correlation meeting with him, but he makes excuses. I have had 3 meetings with him in the 13 weeks that I have been here. Everytime we have had the meeting though, it has been on a Sunday, which means that the information doesn't get to the ward til the next sunday, which makes the information WORTHLESS.

Anyway, this week we rode him really hard for a meeting and finally got one set up for 9pm on thursday(2 days before the baptism). We showed up at 9, but he wasnt there. This is like the 7th time he has done that to us. I talked to his mom and she said he just barely left to walk around the corner and get in his car. So we ran a block or two and found him starting his car, about to leave. We told him....HEY!!! we have a baptism in 2 days and NOTHING is getting down. He just kind of muttered, surprised that we caught him escaping. He made all these empty promises about calling the bishop and assigning things, but I smelled BS from the beginning so I just told him forget about it. Long story short, with no help from the ward whatsoever, my companion and I planned the baptism.

Come Saturday at 4, No one is there except my companion and I, Iris, and the bishop. The bishop is mad because the brother who was going to do the baptism wasn't even there. No one was. We started at 4:45. Typical chileans.

WAIT. Forget a part of the story. Iris and her inactive ex missionary husband got married on Thursday. That went fine. Cool....they are married...baptism is on.

Come Saturday, Iris shows up ALONE. No husband. No family. ALL of her in-laws, whom she lives with, are absent. We chatted with her and she started crying. She explained that she and her husband had argued and he wasn't coming. But she still wanted to go on with it. It was an awful feeling. She was teary the whole time almost.

The baptism went on. She ca'me out of the water beaming with a BIG smile. The Spirit was super strong. Everyone left smiling. The next day in church, she recieved the Spirit.

Here comes the big kicker. It was fast and testimony meeting. Iris got up very last to share her testimony, after having taken the sacrament for the first time. She bore a very powerful story about how Satan did everything possible so that she wouldn't get baptized. She said she went from feeling terrible, sad, and angry, to feeling the best she has ever felt in her life. She said when she came out of the water, she felt everything was alright. It was really powerful. She also said she doesn't care about anything except keeping faithful to her covenants. HAAAAAAAAAA. Take that satan

It was a crazy crazy crazy rollercoaster day. I didn't even share half the crap that happened. It was incredible.

What else happened? Nothing much. We had our first ever zone council, which consisted of the whole Zone getting together and just talking about our potencial and what we can do better. It was cool. We all went into in fasting. It went well.

My watch broke. The band was slowing cracking. I need someone to search for a replacement band if possible.

I heard my last companion might go home for health reasons. I hope not. Elder Lowry was great. Keep him in your prayers please....

I love you all thanks for the fotos. They are always appreciated.

Have fun cleaning up this week

Elder Van Dyke