Another crazy Sunday!

Hola Familia!

Another crazy week. We felt like we didn´t have the time to do half of the things that we wanted to do but we had a ton of great stuff happen here! The first thing is that we baptized Benito on sunday!! Wooooo!! The picture is great, for some reason, the Mexicans don´t like to smile in pictures and I thinks its really funny. In one of the pictures you will notice that President Treviño is with us... haha he came to our branch this sunday with his family and boy we had an adventure with that, let me tell ya...

So we found a ton of sweet people this week, and we had to pass by for a bunch of people to come to church (I will talk about all of them in a second). So the night before we talked to a couple of priests in the ward to see if they would do divisions with us so we could pass by for everyone and get to church on time... (haha) So in the morning we split up so I´m with a priest and Elder Escarcega is with another priest. Victor and I went to pass by for Benito, Yeraldín and Selso. So we got to Benito´s house at like ten in the morning. And he comes out and tells us to wait for him for just a second. So we waited....20 mintutes later he comes back out and was ready, haha. So I´m starting to panic a little bit, we were in the middle of nowhere, the other end of town basically, and I knew that we still had to pass by for 2 more people. And we couldnt exactly run like we basically always do because we had Benito with us. So we went and met Yeraldín (a 13 year old girl, whose parents are members), then later passed by for Selso (an older guy we found, like 80 years old) and we got to his house at like 10:30, the time sacrament meeting starts. He came out and shook our hands and then was like, "we´ll, have a good one!" and started to leave! I said "wait Selso, don´t you want to come to church with us?" (he has a baptism date for the first of September.) And he told me that he had to do a couple of things in the house. I told him that if he did them after church and came with us he would recieve a ton of blessings during the week. So he thought for a second, and then said "ok I´ll come, but I have to change first." So we waited like ten minutes and I called an hermana in the branch to see if Elder Escarcega had gotten to church yet. The hermana told me, no, he´s not here yet (this was at like 10:45) but President Treviño and his wife are here waiting..." Hermana Treviño had called me the night before and told me that they were most likely going to come to our church on sunday, but they weren´t sure. The first thing that popped into my head when I realized that President was there waiting and we were going to arrive 20 minutes late to sacrament meeting was, "hey at least I´ll get to see my family really really soon...hahaha". Selso finally came out. Then we had to wait for a taxi, and an empty one because we had lots of people. We waited like ten minutes more and finally headed for the chapel in Cerro. I´m not going to lie, I told the taxi driver that if he could drive a little fast, it would be great. :)

We finally got to the chapel and there was actually a ton of people there waiting for us. (We bless every week so they still hadn´t started) I finally stumble in and my companion is in the chapel with the "we´re dead" look on his face. (It´s a good thing that I had 3 investigaters with me, I can´t imagine showing up 20 minutes late with nothing to show for it, haha) So we finally started church and I can´t quite describe the look that was on President Treviños face when I finally showed up, but I´m sure he was thinking, "strike two" after the incident with the keys... All during sacrament meeting, Elder Escarcega was writing notes in his agenda that I could read, like "they´re going to kill us" or "we´re dead" haha. Turns out that he never said a word to us about it, he taught the class in sunday school, it was great, and his family was there for the baptism so it was really special. It was cool to have him there because we had a goal to to a bautismisión, where every companionship baptizes in the entire mission. So it was cool to baptize this day with president and his family there. We actually only missed the bautimisión by 4 companionships, and we have like 70 something in the mission, and they couldnt baptized because things happened that were out of their control. Our whole zone here in the Tuxlas baptized though, it was a special experience. Thank you for your prayers!!! They help us so much with everything! And I´m pleased to inform you all that no, President Treviño isn´t going to send us home early, hahahah.

The power of prayer and fasting continue to help us here, we prayed and fasted so hard that we would be able to baptized Benito this weekend and the Lord put everything in order. (You might ask why I baptized him after I baptized Rene too, but Elder Escarcega asked Benito who he wanted to baptize him and he said me, haha he wanted to be baptized by the white boy.) He doesn´t talk much, or smile, or talk very loud, but talking with him after the baptism we could tell he was just happy as could be :) He had to make a lot of changes in his life but he change so fast because he had so much faith that the Lord would help him.

The other picture is a Book of Mormon that an hermana in the branch bought because she doesn´t see very well, it´s the coolest thing I´ve every seen! Grandma, thank you for the peanut butter cookies, they are sooooo good! My companion likes them as well! Glad to here that John gave a great talk, what else is new?? haha without Notes and everything, congratulations John, thanks for being such a great big brother and example to me! And good luck with school and everything Parked and Devin, work hard and don´t ditch too often ;) I love you all soooo much, and I miss you a ton but I know I´m where I´m supposed to be and I´m absolutely loving every second of it!!!

Mucho amor, Elder Eastmond