Baptisms in Characato

Hola Familia,

Unfortunately for all of you people in the normal world, this
missionary experience is going by faster and faster every week. Which
just means that I forget things and things kind of are more normal,
less special. That just means that the every day living stuff isn't as
important to me anymore. I'm a little more concerned with people. I
say sorry, just because my letter this week is probably going to be a
little short.

This week was mostly spent preparing the Quispe Vega family for
baptism. They are really special. They accepted us and everything they
taught us very easily. They are really loving and accepting. We got a
baptism date for this past Saturday. There are five people in total
that can be baptized. We were planning on having all five baptisms
this past Saturday, but the father showed up from work really late and
didn't want to go through with it becuase he had a bad day and some
things happened. But we went through with the others. I baptized the
oldest girl, Vanessa. She is fifteen and actually reads things and
understands things. She is a special girl who is going to be a great
member. This family is really special becuase they all understand that
this baptism isn't the end of their journey here on earth. They really
understand the importance of going to church every sunday and keeping
the commandments.
But even though the Father, Sixto, wasn't baptized last saturday he is
going to get baptized this saturday for sure. Just a little delay
that's all.

It's stopped raining here so hard. Just light drizzles the past few
days. Our roof stopped leaking on Tuesday, so that was pretty sweet.
Now my stuff is pretty much dry. Things are looking up, but yesterday
my comp was pretty sick and i was a little bit too. We've decided it's
our food. We went and bought more healthy stuff and we are going to
take better care of ourselves.

The work here continues every day. We have a ton of activities at the
church to try and get people to just come and to meet people. We have
english classes, family home evening, and movie night. The activities
are definately helping, we can see that. We have made a lot of friends
with the kids and young people here, which is a good way to talk to
the parents. Like I said before, this week was mainly spent preparing
the Quispe Vega family for baptism, which means we spent a lot of time
there. The Mother, Norma, cooked us lunch a couple of times, and
dinner too. The cool thing is that now we're going to go follow up on
their references and we'll see how that turns out.

I forgot to tell you guys this last week becuase it didn't affect me,
but we had transfers last Monday. I'm going to be in this area for at
least another five weeks (probably like another 4 months becuase it's
a brand new area) and i'm glad for that. I want to follow up on all of
the special people that live here. Hopefully they make Characato a
Zone becuase it's so far away from our zone. We have to take a taxi or
bus for like 30 minutes just to go to district meetings and to go to
the internet cafes for p-days.

Well, that's about it for me this week. I increased yet again in my
appreciation for primary teachers, sunday school teachers, choristers,
presidencies, members, ward mission leaders, people to give talks, and
bishoprics. I'm more grateful for these things becuase we have none.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not grumble or complain if you have a calling.
Please, magnify your calling, make it a good part of your life and
make your calling a priority. You have no idea how much you can bless
lives through your church calling. Thanks for all your prayers,
thoughts, and letters.

Elder Child

Happy Valentine's Day

Querido Familia,
Hey everybody, once again it's P-day and once again I didn't really
think about what I'm going to write, so I'll try and do my best. I
can't believe it's been a whole week already, every week goes by
faster and faster. So the highlights of this week were pretty cool.
Last Monday we had Family Home Evening just like every week, but it
was raining at six o'clock, so we were slow to get out the door to go
invite people to the activity. Just as we were leaving though, the
Mendoza family and their friends knocked on our door and were there
ready for Family Home Evening. It was pretty cool to actually have
people come to the activity without having to go bug them and remind
them that we were actually having it. It was a cool experience. We
have fun every Monday night with the investigators and this week was
no different.

Tuesday was probably the second best day of the week. That's because
we actually got some tables, chairs, shelves, and dishes for our
kitchen. It was awesome!!! Now we can actually gather together and
have some meals. That took like all day so it was pretty boring but
worth it. We had to go buy the furniture and things then get them back
to the house and clean the whole house so that we could actually have
the kitchen. All the while it was raining like CRAZY!!!! It rained for
about ten hours on Tuesday. There was tons of water on the streets.
I'm really getting sick of the rain. No, really I'm getting a little
sick. Nothing to be worried about, it's just that I'm feeling a little
under the weather today. And I'm pretty sure I know why. Our roof
isn't exactly built to code, so there's a leak in our roof. The water
is coming through the ceiling little by little. There's water all over
our ceiling on our room, and its dripping a little. We called the
President but they can't do very much until it stops raining because
the roof needs to dry. So we're waiting for it to stop raining. Don't
worry, it's nothing to overreact about but it's just making things
more interesting.

So Wednesday was really cool because we went to a baptism with our
investigators. There's this family that we found last week that is
absolutely golden. They accept everything we tell them, read pretty
much everything, and actually go to all the activities and church that
we have. Its a family that is actually married, they have five kids.
Three of the kids can get baptized. So we went to this other baptism
for them to go and see. It was a cool baptism and it allowed this
family to feel the spirit and see an actual church. This family
accepted the challenge to get baptized, all of them, on Thursday. So
we're going to have 5 baptisms this Saturday. I know that we were led
to them and they were prepared for us to teach them about the gospel.
We are only tools in the hands of the Lord to carry out his
preparations. We don't convert anybody, we just invite people to come
unto Christ and choose what they know is right. Sometimes they use
their agency to refuse us at this time, and sometimes it's just not
their time, but always, the hand of the Lord is in this work.

This week we also started doing English classes. We invite everybody
to this, but usually its the kids that come. We are starting to have a
good relationship with all the kids here in Characato. The English is
fun to teach because I actually know what I'm talking about. We've
only taught them like numbers, days of the week, months, and things
like that, but its still fun. They all enjoy it and it's a really good
way to get people introduced to where we have church and to us as
Elders. We also had a church movie night on Saturday. We showed The
Testaments. It was really awesome, everbody liked the movie and I know
some people were touched by the Spirit. It was the perfect movie
becuase it talks about The Book Of Mormon and how it really is another
Testament of Jesus Christ. People here all believe in Jesus, we just
have to make sure they know that The Book of Mormon wasn't written by
Joseph Smith. After the movie, one of our investigators who hasn't
come to church, told us how good it was of us to be here in Characato.
He said that the people here needed this good thing in their lives and
he was grateful for all of our help. It was cool, but he still didn't
come to church, that was kind of sad.

That's like the biggest obstacle here, getting people to church. But,
yesterday we had like thirty people at church. Its really cool to see
how the church is growing here. We started in an investigators house
with 8 people, and now we have members, a branch president, and
several new investigators coming to church every week. We really have
been blessed and I know sometimes I talk about the hardships, but
really this is a good experience for me. I'm making really good
friends here in the mission and I feel like I'm helping people become
better families and helping them find eternal blessings. I wouldn't
trade this for the world. I know I have to leave one day, but I don't
want to. I wish I could just read the scriptures, serve people, and go
to church every day, just becuase of the peace I feel when I do these
things.

Well that was my week, see you next week.

Love,

Elder Child