My dear beloved family and friends, I am pleased to greet you this fine day, we are about to enter into March (my favorite month) and things are looking great. I’m just as happy as usual, and also, I have a lot of things to talk about so, let’s get started!
The week of miracles, in reality, turned out to be a miracle. I marvel at the Lord’s mercy sometimes, and why it is that he plans such great things for such insignificant people like me. We were able to have the baptism of the Reyes Family, and it was one of the most memorable days of my mission. Just check out the photos to see haha! I’m totally burned up in the pictures due to the sun, stress, and happiness haha!
Being extremely nervous for the weekend to come, we planned a zone meeting for Tuesday so that we could relax a little bit and feel the spirit as we studied various themes. We let the sister missionaries teach this time (knowing that they always have the spirit with them, and are much better than Elders). A great friend of mine that I have gained in the mission, from Draper Utah, Sister Cutler, gave a wonderful theme about the power and authority of our calling, which really had a great effect on me. I truly believe that what she said helped me get through the week like I did. We planned the baptismal interviews, weddings, baptismal services, confirmations, and all of that stuff so that we could have everything totally organized. Right now I am totally out of money due to the extensive amount of travelling that we have done to interview, etc. I anxiously await tomorrow to get some more haha! All in all we had 22 baptisms in the zone this weekend, and 24 throughout the month of February. In the Guaimaca branch, we had 9 baptisms. 4 from us and 5 from the other Elders. It was something that has never been seen before in these parts of the mission, so let’s just say that it was a little bit stressful. Last night I slept like a little baby!
On Friday we had the wedding of the Fam. Reyes. We had a wonderful attendance. We planned it to be in the church, and everything was very cute. The family was super happy, and they were very thankful for the effort we put into it. The members in the branch were all fighting over bringing the cake and refreshments to the wedding! We ate a lot that night, and took lots of pictures. The next day we had the baptism. President Flores came to the baptism (I think he just wanted to make sure we weren’t lying about the stats we were reporting) and gave a wonderful talk about the Holy Ghost. The members of the Fam. Reyes are Edy (dad), Miriam (mom), Edis (son), and Melvin (son) who got baptized, and then they have 3 more kids as well that are younger. I was able to baptize Miriam and Edis, while my companion baptized Edy and Melvin. We had as many people in the baptism as we usually do in sacrament meeting.
To answer your questions mom, I’ll talk a little bit about my living situation here in Guaimaca. There are 4 Elders here in Guaimaca, but we each live in separate houses, so Elder Torres and I live in our own house. It’s a modest house, but very nice. We have a water heater on our shower, but it only half works so we just have lukewarm showers, it satisfies me! With the food, we pay some members who live right by our house to make us lunch, and for dinner, we don’t ever hardly have time to eat, and so not much happens for dinner. For laundry, the same lady washes our colors and we pay her. And for our whites, our neighbor has a washing machine and so we borrow it to wash in there...awesome!
The only person that we couldn’t get baptized was Kenia Guerrero. We found out that she didn’t have the right intentions to be baptized. She basically fell in love with my companion haha, and so wanted to be baptized for that reason. So....we are staying away from her house for right now for that reason. She knows that the church is true and everything, so hopefully one day she will come to her senses right?
Well, that’s all that I have time to write this week. Thanks everyone for all of your support. I hope that you have a good week. Be safe, Be Happy, Be Mormon!
Vaya Pues!
Elder Tinkham
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