Well hello family and friends,
This week was a hard, yet an awesome week.
It all started with my companionship with Elder Borg. We had an awesome week together, something clicked. We were working together, and we understand each other’s needs most of all. It’s weird, we understand that we are very different, but we are learning how to live with one another. Our lessons are coming along great and so are our families. Things started getting a little weird however in the work we were doing Thursday. Thursday we had lunch with our favorite member and her husband Catherine Diaz. However when we called she was very sad and jokingly my companion said, "Did you have a fight with Jackson (husband) and there was silence on the other line.
He has been doing drugs and coming home drunk, leaving the house for 4 days at a time. Stupid jipi, (hippie). Honestly this makes me so sad. A family that was happy has been utterly destroyed by alcohol and drugs. This is why I am here to help these families, but the problem is, occasionally, they don’t want to be helped. That is the hardest thing to accept.
To see this family fall apart is awful. All we can do is support the wife, Catherine. She needs all the help we can give her.
Things got weirder after that. Later that night when we were planning, we received a phone call from a family that lives in Timbio, (my paradise). We were teaching the grandfather of the family who had cancer. He passed away Thursday. So we went out to Timbio Friday morning to give… Yes, give the service. It was a very emotional experience for the family and I am glad that Elder Borg did the majority of the talking because I still have an obvious accent and make errors when I talk. Open casket is a weird way to say goodbye to someone in this life, it made me uncomfortable to see the face so placid after having talked to him recently.
After that we had no idea what to do, and it started to raining, like I’m talking I have never seen rain like this in my life. We were soaked through and through.
We had interviews for baptism with Evelyn and Luz Dary. Evelyn informed us that she wouldn’t be baptized and Luz Dary, who really wants to be baptized has some things in her past that will be cleared up this week with the Presidente of the Mission. She will then be baptized this Saturday.
Then Saturday, the day of the baptisms, all of our appointments fell through, no one was home. Evelyn now has decided to be baptized. So we went to the baptism where a member was going to baptize her.
We showed up at the baptism and the person who was going to baptize her never showed up. So the next in line was… Me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the baptism that we do in the Church of Jesus Christ, we believe in being baptized by immersion in the same way Jesus Christ was baptized which is found in Mathew:
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
I have never read the ordinance to baptize before in my life. I have no idea how to baptize and I had no clothes to do it in. So we quickly ran around like mad chickens and found clothing to baptize her in. We finally found something that would work, and both Evelyn and I enter the baptismal font. Normally the person who baptizes the investigator gives the person support on their back, not me… Before the baptism Borg told me you have to do it with force and fast. So I focused too much, said the ordinance correctly and basically threw her under the water with my right hand making a right angle...
Everyone now calls me 300 for the movie 300 with the gladiator that said
"THIS IS SPARTA"
And then kicks a dude off a cliff. Well in one-way or another, Evelyn is now baptized, ha-ha.
It sounds like I will be starting with English classes soon. Teaching twice a week.
All right now everyone,
How did your goals for the week go?
Because mine went great. My love towards my companion and my investigators increased immensely all because of thinking of the pure Love of Christ all week.
This week is all about: Missionary Work in the Ward
The goal for Borg and I this week is to bring 20 people to the church on Sunday. The other missionaries are going to do the same, 40 in our branch. We can do it, however we cannot do it without the help of the members.
To be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints means so much more than just going to church and listening every Sunday. It means to exemplify Christ in everything we do.
Before we came to this Earth we agreed to do all that we could to extend the gospel of Jesus Christ that we know in this life. We agreed to the words said by Christ in Matthew 28:19-20
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
We are all missionaries here, and the work that missionaries due is incredibly difficult without the help of the members. Practically impossible.
The goal of the week is this:
Call the missionaries and ask them if you can help them in any way possible, aka can you visit any investigator of theirs, or invite them to a family home evening. Really this is what the missionaries need. Members to support them. If we are not supporting the missionaries we are not supporting the work of Jesus Christ here in this life, which we have already agreed to do.
If that isn’t enough for you here is an epic scripture that I found in, Ecclesiastes:
4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.
5 Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.
In Spanish they use the words when you make a promise, and in verse 5 it says: It is better that you shouldn’t have made a promise than to make that promise and not keep it.
We have all made this promise with our Heavenly Father to continue the work, the work of the missionaries. Missionary’s jobs are to teach the lessons necessary.
The work of the members is to talk to these investigators, give the references to the missionaries, make these investigators feel at home and visit them.
Goal of the week:
Help me reach 20
Achieve the goal of 20 investigators in the church this next Sunday.
Call the missionaries and ask them,
"What can I do, I am ready to visit"
Help us please!
In the name of Jesus Christ
Amen
Elder Lyle
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