March 29, 2010

Things this week were amazing. We found tons of people to share the gospel with, had a few funny experiences, and ended off the week with the best thing ever: a baptism! A lady named Veronica Vergada got baptized - she calls me her gringito, and when she tries to pronounce my name it comes out, ''Vinchent'' haha. She's a SOLID convert; she's got a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and absolutely loves going to church. She said that she's never going to stop going because God would be angry at her if she abandoned the correct path. A boy named Erick also got baptized - he's the son of a member that was inactive for a few years, but he came back to the church and asked us to help get Erick baptized. So we did :). Now he, Cristian, has a calling as an assistent in the quorom of high priests and his son Erick will attend primary, young mens, and then later will be a missionary! Yay! He's a little ball of energy (9 years old) so I think he'll make a great missionary someday. We've got four more baptisms of a mom and her three kids planned for the 10th of April: Neysa (the mom), Macarana (17), Oscar (15), and Marta (15). They're an amazing family we found knocking doors in one of the richer neighborhoods in our sector. So we feel really blessed to have found some more of Gods children that He had prepared for us. We've got many other people that are progressing as well, but they don't have baptismal dates yet. The other night one of them called us, actually, and I'm pretty sure he was drunk. He tried to speak english to me, which he had never done before, and then afterwards he read me one of his love poems (he's a poet) and asked me to translate it into english for him so that it could be put in the Liahona. And then he told me he wanted to get baptized and that he would see me the next day in church. He never showed up to church so I'm pretty sure he had a happy heavy hangover haha. What a bummer - we had just barely spent an hour with him the other day drawing signs to put all over his house to help him quit smoking (which it seems like he did), but then we went out with some friends and drank...we forgot to practice saying no to alcohol. Doh! We'll pass by to see him these week - I'm not going near that love poem, though, haha.

(cleaning the baptismal font)

The other day Elder González and I were walking through a small park talking to people when we saw a little boy that looked pretty sad sitting down next to his sister. We walked up to them and asked if they would like to see some magic tricks (I've learned some magic tricks with cards here in the mission - it's a great ice-breaker). They said sure, so I started showing them a few, and before we knew it we were surrounded by about 15 kids from ages 8 to 15. Eventually I did run out of tricks, so I put my cards away, invited them all to church this Sunday (none of them came haha) and told them that we had to go. When we said that they all grabbed us and one of them said, ''Give us your cards! Pleeeeease!'' I told them that I couldn't because I only have one deck, but the refused to let us go! To make a long story short we ended up being chased by a horde of little kids screaming, ''They're getting away!!'' Good thing I played a little bit of football back in the day, I had to use some of my moves to avoid some of them.

A few days ago we were knocking some doors, and we got to one that didn't open, but it talked to us! The person was inside looking through the seeing-hole thingy. We just laughed, said, ''Chao! Que esté bien!'' And then we walked off.

We had a funny encounter with a little girl last week. We were walking through a neighborhood knocking some doors to meet some new people, and a little girl not more than 10 years of age came out of a house. At first she just kept turning around and yelling at her mom to come out and talk to us, to which her mom repeatedly responded that she was busy and couldn't come out (we get that all the time). So we started to tell her that we would just come by another day to see them and the little girl turned around and yelled to her mom that we were speaking english...haha. I'm very positive that we weren't speaking english. So we just smiled, said chao, and walked away. Some people need a little more social education in their lives.

I've heard some rumors that today is called, ''Día del joven combatiente''. Basically it's a day when all the young guys go around causing havoc in the city, and the government sends the military out to put them down. I don't really know how serious it is but Elder Grillone said that in Santiago the missionaries don't go out to work. I hadn't ever heard about it until today, but Elder Gonzalez says that it actually exists. Our sector is pretty residential and we've got lots of appointments tonight, so we'll be fine. I just though it was kind of interesting that there's a select day out of the year when this happens...hmmm.

Has the newer Joseph Smith movie come out on DVD yet? I would really like to get it as soon as possible - there are a lot of people down here who would love to see it. I have the movie Legacy, but it's pretty old and cheesey, so we've got to get that new material in circulation.

Well, I think that's just about it for this week. I'll look forward to hearing from you all next week! Stay strong, study the scriptures, eat good food, pray for me, and never pet burning dogs. I love and miss you all very much!

Love,
Trevor

PS. I got the box you sent me at the last conference, but no other letters or packages got here (for those of my friends that may have sent me something).

what they do to first-year students at the University

fixing the toilet