Man, I'm always bummed when I have a companion who we have hobbies in common or have the same likes and they leave. I've gotten used to that of course over time. My new companion Elder Amaya is really a strong missionary. I have already seen things I can improve just by his example. He analyzes the problems of the investigators and is direct about what they need to do. We have been having a lot of success. Also,
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| Elder Amaya |
Well, this week was frustrating and as I have looked I'm just surprised I don't have any white hairs. This week we had five baptisms planned but one by one by one small strange and crazy situations came out of nowhere.
1. We have a young woman here who is 16 years old and was planning on getting baptized. It was perfect, she heard the missionaries for a while and was just a little scared. We helped her gain a testimony of the things we were teaching and then we planned a baptism for her about a month ago. Three days before her baptism, she gave birth to her kid and the doctor told her that she couldn't get into the cold water for a month. (In Panama that’s basically saying you can’t shower for a month...) But then we planned another date for this last weekend and everything once again running smoothly. She was pumped, she brought her cousins to church and they were excited for her. After going to church on Sunday, this young woman ran into her ex-boyfriend who abandoned her for like ten months before and she has been just staying at his house. We have passed by every day this week since then and she hasn’t even come back once, not even to get a change of clothes.
2. Another young boy who had separated parents. The Dad was an active member of our church, and the Mom was converting to the church of her second husband. This young man lost permission when he started behaving poorly and the step-father started saying you can’t get baptized if you’re not obedient.
3. An 18 year old has been trying to get baptized, but has an addiction to coffee. Well a lot of people here do, it’s cheap and it’s a hunger quencher, so parents feed it to their babies straight from the bottle. Well he doubled under the pressure and went back to drinking coffee.
4&5. Then it came down to a 13-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. Other missionaries taught them before when one of the other kids was baptized. This family left on ‘vacation’ to go to the finca. It’s super cool right. It’s a home away from home! They live on the top of a great giant hill and it’s like going to the cabin for a weekend, only the entire time you’re working on a farm. So it’s not so much vacation as it is just brute work. They arrived back after a 3-4 month vacation and both the kids were excited to get back and get baptized. The 13-year-old boy has always been indecisive was going back and forth but was still too scared. At the very end, his sister did get baptized which was wonderful. It has been a weird strange turn of events.