August 16, 2014

"John-Eve"

Since it was pointed out to me that some people might not know how to pronounce his name. Incidentally, when I'm on the phone with other missionaries, I usually call him "John-wives".

But yes, Jean-Yves was baptized on Saturday. It was actually a little interesting this week.

So, the frequent visitors of the Elder Santos mission blog will know that, in the past, a baptism or two have fallen through very close to the planned date. Well, I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I say that because I've become a bit...hesitant to count eggs. Basically, until their knees are wet, I'm not really sure if it's going to happen. As an interesting side note, I've fasted with the person being baptized these last two transfers, and so far that seems to work much better.

Jean-Yves was doing great at the beginning of this week and was right on track. That was made more exciting by a really good FHE that some of you have already heard about-basically, the man was as excited about temples as I have ever seen him before. The baptismal interview is always interesting. No matter how well the person is prepared, you always will have some nagging doubts. This one actually was pretty fun, because while District Leader Drennan was doing the interview, Desir-family-six-year-old-granddaughter was hanging out with me and her grandmother. Because I didn't know what else to do, I handed her my hymnbook and told her to pick her favorite song. I then spent the next 40 minutes singing every single hymn in the book. She opened up to the end, pointed to a page, and asked me to sing. I usually got through about the first line, and then she would flip the page and point to a different one. Lather, rinse, repeat 200 times. It worked out pretty well time-wise; we finished the book about three minutes before the interview was over.

Anyways, after that Elder Drennan explained that during the interview, he had shown a good understanding and acceptance of all the necessary principles, and seemed to be ready for baptism. He also said that they had read through the guide des écritures definition of a testimony, and Jean-Yves said afterwards "I don't have that". "He does," Elder Drennan said, "but he doesn't know it yet". He asked us to work on recognizing a testimony with him before the baptism.

Skip to Thursday night, about 36 hours later. We're in a branch meeting with President Desir (his good friend, and the one who referred him to us-have I already explained that?), who gets a phone call from...you guessed it, Jean-Yves. President said that he wanted to talk to him about a question he had during the baptismal interview.

...and the doubts start flowing.

I explained to him what Elder Drennan had said, without really having any idea what Jean-Yves wanted to talk about, and told him that I believed it to be a problem of recognition, not of preparation.

Saturday morning, 7:22am. The phone rings, it's President Desir. My heart drops. I answer the phone, preparing for the worst. He says that the two of them had talked, and that they wanted to speak with us, the missionaries, thirty minutes before the baptism. Gnnraaaah!

Well, they show up fifteen minutes before the baptism is supposed to start, and without saying a word they get into their baptismal clothes and sit down in the chapel. Song, prayer, two talks, and then he's baptized.

And that's the story! Probably a little bit more than you wanted, but hey. That was my week.

Oh, also I fell off my bike for the first time in my mission. I felt soo dumb. I don't even know why, that's the thing. It was as we were going to our first lesson with these people, and we had just barely gotten to the point where they could see us. Boom. I'm on the ground, hurting and feeling like an idiot. Yeah. But, I'm better now!

I love you all!

-Elder Santos

August 4, 2014

...ow...

Now, I'm not sure, because I don't have those emails from a year ago in reach right now, but I would feel pretty confident in betting that a lot of the things that I'm going to say in this email will mirror what I said in my first emails from Guadeloupe-back in June of last year.

So, the basic gist of it is that I've been four full days on bikes now (including a full day fast), and everything hurts. Neck, from craning up to see the road in front of me, shoulders, from holding myself up as I lean forward all day, lungs, because they're not used to having such a big order to fill, back, from the angle that I'm at when I'm sitting down on the bike, butt, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone that has ridden a bike before, knees, from bending more times than they have in the past year collectively, and calves, from having to push all day long. No joke, it's all sore.

But, I'm actually doing pretty well!

Elder Broadbent and I are having tons of fun. He's from Socal, very politically opinionated, and also very intelligent. We just have fun all day long. When I finish panting, that is.

The most exciting thing going on here is that we're teaching a member referral from our Elders's Quorum President, who is going to be baptized on the sixteenth of this month. Jean-Yves is super cool, and yesterday (while we were fasting together) during the sunday school lesson on the sabbath day, he shared a story about how his boss had insisted that he come to church that day, and that he had told him "no, I'm going to church". We're going to do a FHE with him tonight. Pray for us!

I also want to quickly thank everyone for their love and support, advice, encouragement, patience, and prayers. I'm not going to have the time to thank all of you individually right now, but know that you are amazing, and I'm so grateful to have you.

I love you all! A bientôt,

-Elder Santos