December 17, 2012

I heard about the shootings this week. So so bad. The news find of really affected me this week. I saw a few articles that were sent to me about the shootings and I just ended up feeling angry and sad. My initial feelings are that guns should not be available to citizens anymore. Guns are the worst. One Hermano in the ward asked me what i thought about what has happened and I told him what I thought about guns. His response was both chilling and true. He said, "But, Elder! You don't blame spoons for getting people fat, do you?" I thought about his comment for a while afterwards. The problem does not have as much to do with guns as it does people. The problem will not be solved until people choose good over evil, light over darkness, and love over hate. I feel lucky to have the gospel in my life and wish that all others had the same help. The gospel, in my life, is the motivating force to choose light over darkness and love over hate. It has the power to save the world from every social and economic problem. The only thing we can do is to make sure that we are active in the matter and do our best to always choose good and help others to do the same.

This week was really really good. I was working in a lot of different areas on exchanges this week, and it was really refreshing. Being on exchanges kind of makes you feel like a new missionary again because you don't know anyone, know where anyone is, etc. That feeling new again was exactly what I needed. Sometimes, it's kind of easy to fall into the routine. When one falls into the routine, all of ones relationships become emotionless and kind of empty. I believe that was happening with me in Tolosa. It was good to take a few deep breaths and get my perspective back.

We had a baptism this week. Remember the family of daughters who were kidnapped? We have been teaching one of the daughters of that family named Macarena. (It's a name here, not a dance.) We were walking past thier house the other day and saw a girl crying outside. We went to talk with her. She told us her name was Macarena and that she was 16. We had seen her a couple of times, but never really talked that much. She started telling us that her family was always doing bad stuff and she was sick of it. She said, "I want a new start." boom. In her house, almost every night, there are huge, nasty cocaine parties. Even the kids who are 7 and 12 years old are constantly walking around drunk. It's just a bad atmosphere. But, Macarena couldn't take it anymore and asked for our help. We have been teaching her in the house of a near by neighbor ever since. It has been amazing. Macarena has eaten up every word, lesson, scripture, testimony that we have given her. She read the Book of Mormon twice already. I have never seen such fierce hunger for the gospel in a person. After a few weeks of amazing lessons and days at church, she has a new shine and even looks different. So good.

The baptism was planned for this Sunday. The font takes about 4 hours to fill up, so we got to church a little early. We started filling up the font, but after about 2 minutes of filling up, the water stopped. I couldn't believe it and almost lost it. All I could think was, "When there is water, the people don't come and when the people come, the water doesn't." I was so angry and wimpy about the whole situation. Luckily, Reynolds is still rock solid and has way more faith than me. He just told me not to worry and that we would fill the font with buckets. I didn't think it would work, but followed Reynold's lead anyways. For the next three hours of church, we missed all the meetings and slowly tried to fill up the font carrying buckets from an outside spicket to the font. Eventually, we got about one foot of water in the font. Yet again, I decided it wouldn't work, but Reynolds, yet again, said it would be fine. Reynolds did the baptism and Macarena pretty much had to lie down flat in the font, but she was baptized on the second try. It was a special baptism. Macarena was beaming with new light. In the end she received her new start that she was looking for. 

Do good things. All is well. Life is good.