Monday, July 8, 2013 - Rain Season

Hola Mi Familia! HAPPY 17 MONTHS TO ME!!!!!!! That is sooo crazy!!!! 17 Months! That is just 1 Month away from 18, which is just 6 months away till the END....My has this gone by just so fast or what!?! What a fun little 4th of July! I am quite jeally of the homemade peanut butter ice cream! My mouth is starting to water just thinking about it! That sucks that you didn't get to enjoy the fireworks...too rainy, too bad...I did! More on that later! So I totally feel you with the rain and humidity. This week has been exactly the same! It began last Sunday--rained a little, but not too much. But Tuesday, we were in our last lesson of the day and there began to be lightning and thunder and all of a sudden before we were going to leave, it just began to pour! We had one of the young men with us and so we had to take him back to his house and so we left and got just soaked, but it was actually quite pleasant. It has been just killer hot here and so to have a nice cool pouring rain storm with a ton of wind and such, was quite enjoyable! But I kid you not, the rain was cold. It was enjoyable to have a cool down. But always the day after rain, it is really humid and hot and nasty, so that was gross....but that isn't the worst part.....it has basically been doing that thunder and lighting thing every single night and with a little rain--not as much as before, but a little. And so if it is doing that every night, that is making it hot, humid, nasty, and horrible every single day! Which sucks! But the rain makes it a lot cooler and more pleasant in the moment, so I can't complain too much! Well, our investigator brother....was baptized! Oh, it was one of the most beautiful baptismal services I have attended. We basically just created a program and filled the font, and then the member did the rest! It was so nice having members give the talks and even baptizing! Granted, they were the family members of his wife that was doing it all, but it was nice! The spirit was really strong and it was a beautiful service......the events leading up to the service were so enjoyable. After lunch, we got the the church to clean the font a little and then to begin to fill it. Well, we get there and the other Elders had not drained it since the last time they had a baptism almost 3 weeks ago! But more than that...I don't know if you remember me saying how since we are in season of heat, the cockroaches enter through the drain and there are a ton. Well, there they were still, but all dead in the water! So we freak out and have to get it to drain, but it just doesn't want to drain too fast. After an hour and a half we check to see if it had drained all the way and it had only drained maybe a fourth of the way. So, we began to get buckets and taking water out and flushing it down the toilets to make it go faster. Luckily we were able to get the water out of there fast than the drain would have. We clean a little and an hour before the baptism is supposed to start (it takes about 2-2 and half hours normally to fill, mind you), we finally begin to fill the font. We have the spout going, we bring in the hose from outside and we begin filling buckets from every water source possible. We called our district leader to come and help us and then were a great help! I don't know how we did, but by a miracle from our Heavenly Father, we were able to fill the font in only 1 HOUR! It was amazing and we were so thankful! The service was so lovely and so spirit filled. We brought one lady and her 4 kids and they really liked it we think! It is crazy how the Lord really prepares people for us to teach and help, because the missionaries have been visiting this other brother for like 2 years, and he was finally baptized when we began teaching him. His wife gave a really sweet testimony and you could tell that she was quite happy to have him be baptized and that they are one step closer to being an eternal family! The lady and kids are just crazy! They are really awesome actually! This week we had a mega-lesson. It was the 5 of them, 2 of us, and we brought a youth with us to help teach, and then the family of 3 that introduced her to us.....11 people in one lesson! It was nuts! We taught The Plan of Salvation, but I think 11 people was a little much and many wanted to teach and share things and I think they just got confused and in the end had more questions than answers. We won't be bringing as many people to a lesson again. It was nice to have the support, but too many! We passed by one day just to see how they were doing and to talk with them. We wanted to have a spiritual moment and sing them a hymn ("Nearer My God To Thee"). When we began to sing, one of the kids began laughing, and then the other, and all of the rest, even the lady......they laughed at our hymn! Haha! We wanted a moment so special and spiritual, but they began laughing! When we finished they asked for forgiveness and one of them said it was because we were singing the together the same thing or something like that, but I didn't believe it! Needless to say, we won't be singing for them again... It is rough, because they are really cool and I feel like when we invite them to be baptized, they will accept, but the thing is that the kids work Saturdays and Sundays in a flea market and so that would be a problem trying to get them to go to church.... we will just have to pray and hope that something will happen to allow them to go. On Friday we had our conference with Elder De hoyos from the Seventy and the presidency of the area seventy of Mexico. We went to Nogales and since there is only one bus that goes to Nogales from AP, we had to leave at 4AM....so I got up at 1:30AM.....but that isn't the worst. We thought that a member from the other branch was going to give us and the zone leaders a ride because he is a taxi driver, but when we called him that morning he never answer his phone, so we had to go to the bus station walking.....FAST! Let me just saying walking in the streets of Agua Prieta at 3AM in the morning is not the funnest thing! And having to walk 60 blocks away....NOT FUN! My legs are still REALLY sore and hurt, but oh well...you gotta do what you gotta do! The conference was really quite amazing! Our song went well and we sang "We'll Bring The World His Truth" in Spanish and in English. Elder De hoyos talked to us a lot about how to get the members more involved in the work and how they can be a powerful source. He talked about how if the members go over the the investigator's house to read the Book of Mormon with them for just like 15 minutes, it can be a powerful help in their conversion. I was loving the conference and really hanging on every word he said and getting excited to implement what we learned. I almost for got about the 4th! The 4th...I dressed up again! My blue pants, white shirt, and red tie! It was fun for me! We didn't really do too much special, but in the night when we left from our appointment, the fireworks in Douglas started and we were able to watch them! It was fantastic! I loved it! We then ordered pizza and went and bought ice cream to have a semi-4th feast! Haha! It was short lived, but fun! Oh, btdubs....I guess you would like to know about transfers....well we stayed the same...didn't get transferred. But we did change districts, and I was assigned District Leader once again.....that is about the only changes we had. I get to escape the hotter parts for one more transfer! I am so thankful to be in a less hotter area for the most part of the summer...what a blessing! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner