Bautismision

Hola mi querida familia!

We had a CRAZY week! Thats the way I like it, haha. We had so much stuff to do and so many companionships to help that we hardly even worked in our area. Here in the mission, sometimes President Treviño chooses a random week and we have something thats called a Bautimision! Its where everyone works as hard as possible to help someone get baptized so every companionship can have a baptism in the same week. When I first got here, I thought it was kinda focused in numbers but then I realized that it motivates alot of the misionaries to give a little bit more for some of the investigators who are haveing problems and doubts that keep them from getting baptized, and the little extra bit of effort is what the investigators need sometimes. It sounds kinda weird but everyone always puts everything that they have into the week and we always see a bunch of miracles with the investigators, its really amazing.

So this week was a bautimision. Everybody in the zone had investigators who could be baptized. So we spent the week running around with the zone and doing divisiones to help them with their investigators. For example, on friday morning, we got a call from some of the sisters in the zone who said that they were going to help a couple get married so they could get baptized on sunday. They were going to get all the paperwork ready on friday and then marry their investigators on saturday, but they call the office in the little town where they were going to have the wedding and they found out that they are closed on saturdays...So the race began, haha. We did divisiones with some Elders who live by the little town and went to talk to a guy that we knew pretty good. We convinced him to let us do a same day appointment if we could have all of the paper work there at 1:00. It was like 10 in the morning. I called the sisters and they were busy getting birthcertificates that were going to take awhile, so we send a guy that Elder Ortiz knows to help them get everything faster. This was basically the whole morning, we were running around making calls and coordinating everything to have witnesses there and get rides from the members and get all the papers and everything, haha. It was hectic but everything fell into place perfectly. But then when the sisters called their investigators to bring them to get married. They said that they were working in their tortilleria and were selling tortillas, and that they didnt want to close the shop.... We called them and told them that the Lord had put everything into place so they could be married and baptized the next day, but they were too worried about the money that they were going to lose... so we had to cancel everything. We were all really sad for them because basically the entire zone had gotten involved to help but we all returned to our areas feeling ok because we at least did all we could do. Then, at like 8 at night, the same sisters called us and told us to go to their area for a baptismal interview. They had found someone that wanted to join the church! We went to their area and I did the interview, it was a young lady who the sisters had taught some time ago who was now ready and excited to be baptized! The sisters were just happy as can be (one of them is new and it was her first week in the mission!) and we were really excited for them!

From this we learned that sometimes we work as hard as we can to do something or solve a problem, and it doesnt work out. But if we have faith and move forward, the Lord will put solutions and blessings in our path so we can acomplish what he wants us to do!

We had the wonderful opportunity to baptize Diana this week!! We brought some kids from the ward over to her house with the primary president and did some fun object lessons and she got really excited to be baptized. Now all of her family are members, the mom has gone to church for like 3 weeks straight, and the father has gone for 2. We are really excited because they will be able to put a goal soon to go the temple, and we are going to continue working alot with the family to help them out.

The pictures are from the aquarium here in Veracruz, its sweet! The others are from Dianas baptism!

Well my time is up, but I loved all of the emails, it sounds like there has been alot of changes and crazy stuff happening in the family. Just know that my prayers are always with you guys and I know the Lord will help and bless you in everything!!

Mucho amor!!

Elder Eastmond