June 7, 2010
Hey everyone, let me tell you a little bit about my week. We were supposed to have 2 baptisms on Saturday but we ended up only having one(I’ll explain later). We baptized a 13 year old boy named Ronald. We have been teaching him for about a month. He had a few doubts about going on a mission when he was older but we were able to explain things and get over it. He has had a lot of opposition from his family because they are all really catholic. This Sunday his sister was trying to get him to not go to church which would have been bad because he got confirmed on Sunday. They always tell him bad things about the church and tell him that he doesn’t know what he is getting into and stuff like that. But he is really excited about everything so he didn’t let any of that stop him. He has a lot of friends in the young men’s program as well and that helps a lot. And the young men’s president is a really cool guy and has been helping a lot. We organized his baptism so that one of the priests in the ward could baptize him. It was a cool experience for both of them. We have an appointment to go to his house this week with like 5 members to try and help out with all the opposition that he is getting from his family. Celeste was(and still is) really excited to get baptized but ran into some opposition. She has been looking for a job for a few months now and she finally get one on Wednesday and has to work Saturday and Sunday. My companion and I had no idea until Thursday night when we went to visit her. Right after we knocked on the door I turned to my companion and said “I don’t have a good feeling about this, something happened” then he said “I feel the same way”. Then we proceeded to enter and she told us what had happened. We’ve been working hard to help her get everything worked out so that she can get baptized. We’ve been asking around everywhere to see if anyone knows where she can get a job where she doesn’t have to work on Sunday. We even took her to and interview on Saturday morning. They offered her the job but she doesn’t know if she wants to take it. We’re hoping that something works out so that she can get baptized soon. 
There were changes this week but nothing happened with my companion and I so we’re staying together for at least another 6 weeks(unless there’s another emergency change).
Today we got free shoes from some lady that has a son on a mission in California. She says that she wants to take care of the missionaries here because she knows that someone else is doing the same for her son in California and she owns a shoe shop so she hooked us up with some free shoes… which I really needed since all of my shoes got trashed in Esmeraldas.
We are planning 2 more baptisms for this week. David and Carlos. They are kids and there parents are members but they were inactive for a long time. We’ve been working with them and they’ve started coming back to church so we’re going to baptize their kids. Carlos is deaf so when we teach him his mom always has to translate it into sign language. They passed their interviews this week so everything is ready for their baptism next week.
That’s about it for this week! I love you all!
