Hello to one and all on this brisk cool day of 80 degrees, I hope everything is going alright with all of you. I have quite the interesting newsletter to write this week, so lets see how it turns out.
This week was definitely a roller coaster one, filled with sadness, anger, happiness, and hope. The week started out good on Tuesday, and I got the opportunity to work with Elder Cruz, my district leader, in Ciudad España. I didn't go over there, well, because I'm not allowed to haha. It is 100% prohibited for white missionaries to be there in his area after about 4pm, and I'll just leave it at that haha. But anyways, Elder Cruz is a great guy from Honduras, the coastal area. We had a lot of fun working together, and found success as well. For the first time in all of my time here in Ciudad España we were able to find a family that was interested in hearing our message. It was an interesting and strangely rare experience, we actually got a little bit nervous in the lesson haha, but it all turned out well. I learned a lot about the principle in Preach My Gospel "Talk with Everyone" in the interchanges. We really focused on that and basically talked with everyone we passed by on the street that day, and look what happened...success! That was a good day for me.
And now for the bad news...well...we were supposed to have a baptism this Saturday of a 13 year old girl named Yamilet. You guys don't know about her because of my failure to speak about it before, due to laziness and lack of time. But yeah, she is part of a family that have already been baptized, but she hasn't due to a problem that the mother and her have between each other. The mom is a little bit...of a special person, and so we have been working a lot with Yamilet so that she will have the strength to ask forgiveness of her mom. After a long time of work, she finally agreed to do it, and she did it. We were about to have the baptism and everything, and when we went to pick her up to go to the baptism, the mom came out and said..."If you baptize my daughter today, I will never speak to her again, and she ceases to be my daughter." She had already signed the paper and everything, but told us that the signature didn't mean anything, her opinion is what mattered. So, we couldn't go through with the baptism. I was thinking about it a lot, and came to the decision that I'm not here to separate families. Sure, I could have baptized her, but what would it have served for? The real work we are doing here is to bring people unto Christ, so that one day they, as a family, can go to the temple, be sealed, and one day achieve exaltation, not to cause a war in the family. I felt really bad for what happened, but that was not our intention. We are now working with the mom and the whole family so that we can hopefully one day bring all of them into the fold of God. It was a bad day for us, but we got through it.
I really enjoyed talking to you guys yesterday, it was an edifying experience for me. The best news is this...immediately after I hung up the phone, Elder Torres and I set off to contact...and found a family! His name is Pedro (the dad) and he has 4 kids! We taught the plan of salvation and he really enjoyed it. In the end, we asked him if he would pray to know if the words we have spoken are the words of God, and are true. What he told us brought joy to my heart, "Hermanos, I know that prayer is important, but I already feel that what you are telling me is true." I'll give more updated news on that as we continue to teach them.
Well, sadly my time has run out, I never really have time to tell you guys about everything, but I hope you enjoy what I could write. I love you all and hope you're doing well!
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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