Week 67

So first and foremost, I want to give a shoutout Happy Mother’s Day to my wonderful mom who put up with way, way too much of my crap during high school. I’ve come to learn and appreciate what she did for me out here in the mission. No matter what I say in this blog, it won’t be enough to praise her. But I do want to thank her for all the good moments in my life: the summer book fairs, books on tape in the car, always being there to read and correct and help me with school papers, always supporting my choices even when she disagreed, for all the hours we’ve spent playing board or card games, and always challenging me to be better. I also want to thank her for not killing me for things I did and said.  Love you, mom.

The other important thing about Mother’s Day is that it’s one of the 2 days every year that I can Skype or call home. Luckily for me I can Skype here. It’s always one of the highlights of the year. I Skyped with my family on Sunday, and it was great seeing them again. Some things have changed -- my dad is balder and my sister is a ginger, but it’s still family. As usual, we talked and talked and talked and said a lot of words about nothing, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.  I love my family.

It also occurred to us that it is my last phone call home. How crazy is that? Feels like yesterday I was calling home for Christmas and had a year left. The time is flying. Can’t wait for the end and to be home again.  I love the mission and the things I’ve learned here, but to steal a line from Dorothy, “There’s no place like home.”

Besides that huge moment, there were some other fairly big events that happened this week.  We did some service this week for a lady in the ward. We eat lunch with her on Saturdays, and she is super cool.  So when she told us that she wanted us to cut the weeds behind her house, we had no problem. Turns out that a bunch of thieves have been hiding in them at night and robbing people as they walk home. They got even braver a couple of weeks ago, breaking into houses at night and stealing cars and motos when they got the chance. The sister even heard them talking in her yard about breaking into her house. Luckily, they didn’t. So we came with the other elders here in Yuquyry and Vasilio, our professional yard work guy, and a youth in the ward. It was quite the field. So we spent a couple hours cutting and cutting and cutting some more. I’m getting pretty good with a machete; although, we realized I cut completely different than the Latins.  But it works. 

 

 

We had fun--  it’s a good time doing service with Elder Jimenez.  He’s a good guy.  Me and him pushed over a tree as well.  It was all eaten out by ants, so we just pushed and over it went.  So that was pretty cool. We got most of the field cut down and then after some juice we headed home to shower and cook.  

So we got invited to a little girl’s birthday party, and to be nice, I asked if we could bring anything thinking she’d say no or ok how about some pop or cups or something.  Nope.  She wanted peach cobbler.  So that’s what I did.  They loved it.  It is good.  Thanks to Elder Anderson for teaching me that one.  We ate cobbler and cake and drank hot chocolate and pop and talked and sang happy birthday.  It was good to celebrate something again.

 

 

One other interesting thing this week was they fixed our windows.  After the pictures you guys saw, it’s clear our windows needed fixing.  Well they said they were gonna come every night this week, but in the end it took until Friday for them to actually get there.  And when they did, all they did was rubber cement some pipe cleaners to the ledge and said that will seal the windows.  I’m skeptical, but we will see.

Finally, we had some baptism drama this week as we have been preparing a guy to be baptized.  He passed all the mission standards, and passed his interview, so no problems- right?  Well, no.  Our bishop was against the baptism from the start, but he said it was up to us.  And he’s right, we can baptize without any permission from him.  But, when we told him it was gonna happen, he freaked out and called the stake president.  So I get a call from the zone leaders, who wussed out and told us we shouldn’t do it since the bishop disagreed.  I argued with them.  The next thing I know, I get a call from the APs. They talked to me about 5 seconds before having enough of me arguing and sending me to the mission president.   I argued with him as well. In the end, I half won.  The baptism still got canceled, but not permanently.  In the end, the mission president came and interviewed the investigator and the bishop and cleared him to be baptized this week. The issue was the Sabbath day, as our investigator works Sundays, but we explained the importance of it and he promised to look for a new job and to talk to his boss about getting his shift changed.  Good enough for us, and the mission president, but not the bishop.  So that’s what the fight was about.  But in the end, he’s a great guy who despite being visibly upset when we had to cancel his baptism less than 12 hours before it was supposed to happen, he came to church anyway and passed his interview with the Mission President with flying colors.  One baptism this week.  I’m excited.  

I hope you guys have a great week, and I’m sure I’ll have more stories next week.

Love ya and take care,

 

Elder Frost