First baptism

Hola Familia! 

Well, we finally did it! We baptized Alfredo!! We baptized him on Saturday at 7 in the night, it was great!! I got to baptized him, I was no nervous that I was going to mess up the prayer in Spanish or mess something up but everything went well! (He only had three names too, and they were easy, so that helped alot!) It was the best feeling in the whole world to help someone take that step in their lives, I dont think I have ever felt anything that compares to that, besides when Im in the temple, it was incredible. When we were changing back into our regular clothes in the bathroom, I asked him "como se siente, Alfredo?" and he told me, "Me siento bien chilo" which means, "I feel so cool!" haha it was great. He told me that he felt this was something really special and that he felt it was really emotional, and asked me if I felt like that. I told him it was my first baptism ever and that I would always remember him as the first one. That made him smile pretty big.

We have baptisms set up for the next three weeks, but the problem is people wont come to church. Last week had been a good week, especially with the baptism, but at the same time super hard, because we were supposed to have (again) like 7 or 8 people in church, and had one. (Two more but they have been more than twice, one has gone through like 4 sets of missionaries, and the other is getting baptized in april, the same day he is getting married) so It has been kinda hard. I dont know how to discern if its us that needs to be better teachers or if theyre just using their free agency (ps sorry I never use the little apostraphy things anymore, the spanish keyboards dont have them, haha) The spirit is always so strong when we teach a lesson about Dia de Reposo and the Santa Cena and we commit someone to go to church, but come sunday, they never show. This pass week we found this really good family of 4, we taught the whole first lesson, invited them to church, and got baptism dates for everyone, and on Sunday morning the alarm went off and after I turned it off i saw that we had a text from the family that basically said we dont want to change religions, sorry for wasting you time, we are cancelling for this morning, good luck in you path... kind of a depressing way to wake up. They seemed sooooo good... I dunno. I understand that not everyone is going to accept but we have alot of people who do everything, but no matter what we do we cant get them to go to church! Well figure it out. I know for sure that this is just a time where the Lord is going to challenge us and if we work hard and try everything we can it will work out eventually.

I went on Divisions with our District leader this week on Friday, it was awesome! He came to our area the night before and was my companion for the whole day, I was a little nervous because I had to lead us around everywhere and he didnt know any of the members or investigators, so I had to do alot of the talking, but It worked out super good! We didnt have any problems and I learned alot from Elder DeFreese, it was a good experience. He showed me this thing where when we go to la comida (lunch) with a member (we eat with a member everyday at 2 pm, and then do our own breakfast and dinner) we read algunos versiculos de Doctrinas y convenios 18, and then ask the member to think of like 2 or 3 people they know who arent members whom we could go and talk to. We then ask the member to offer a prayer and ask Heavenly Father to give them the name of who we should go visit, and we have gotten a name every time, It has been incredible. Before the prayer they always tell us that they cant think of anyone we can go visit but after the prayer they can always think of someone.

We had a meeting with our mission president, his wife, and a member of the 1st quorum of the 70 come and meet with us on wednesday morning. It was Elder De Hoyas and his wife, they were amazing! The meeting was like 4 hours but if didnt feel that long at all, and I understood close to everything. (or at least the just of it, the overall message) They talked about how we should apply the atonement alot more in our lessons, and whatever principle we are teaching, we should tie it into the atonement. We are excited to try it because Elder De Hoyos told us that if we do it right we will start to have alot more success.

I also gave my first talk in church! (Technically two talks because we spoke in both wards, but I gave the same talk) I didnt even read straight off my notes, and for some reason I dont feel as scared to give a talk in spanish as I do in English.... Dont know why... maybe its beacause I already know that nobody will be able to understand me, so thats already out of the way and i can stumble through the rest without problemas! Haha but everyone said  I did really good, and that they could understand everything just fine, so I was pretty happy about that! I hope that everything is going well, sounds like it is from the emails!! I love you all sooooo much, right now Im off to learn how to make mexican beans with our mission president!

Que Tengan una buena Semana!!!        

Elder Eastmond Jr.