Hello!
I would just like to apologize one last time for the terrible
e-mail I sent last week. Last week I had a ton of stuff to do and
totally ran out of time to write! (I know mom... thats not a good
excuse)
This week has been mentally, spiritually, and physically exhausting.
This whole change (six week period) has been great for my companion
and I. On average we are teaching about 35 lessons a week and are
picking up a ton of great new people to teach. We have done so well with this change
that the leaders are thinking about sending another set of
missionaries to our ward to help us out. HOWEVER, this past week has
absolutely sucked. We had less than half of our average and did about
half of the amount of street contacts that we usually do (usually we
do about 140 quick one principle lessons in the street every week) I
don't know what happened, but I feel soooo guilty. You dont really know
guilt until you feel guilty to the Lord. It's a terrible feeling. We
had so many people cancel on us this last week and got rained in a
whole bunch of times. Annnnd to top it off, our baptisms got canceled
this weekend.
Here is the story of our baptisms:
About a month ago we met this mom in a bus stop. She told us that she
had two 15 year old sons that are interested in joining a church and
learning english (how perfect, right??) so later that week we stopped
by and met Jorge and Roberto, they are so cool! We have been teaching
them ever since and they have been super active. They go to mutual,
church, and even went to conference in the stake center this weekend.
They were really excited for their baptism this weekend, and when we
talked to their parents for permission they said NO. They said that
there is no way that they can already be prepared to do something that
serious in such a short amount of time. Upon hearing that, Jorge and
Roberto got sooo sad. We are going to continue working with the mom
and step dad this week to see if they can get baptized next saturday,
but it's going to be a big struggle.
Okay, sorry for venting and telling sad stories. I'll try to be a
little bit more uplifting.
There are many
different beliefs here in Costa Rica. Almost every person here already has their
"religion" even though they don't ever go to church. We were teaching
this one man named Rafael. The first lesson went pretty well, but we
could tell that he wanted to fight the whole time. When we returned
this week to teach him a second time, he had brought one of his
friends from church with him to "prove us wrong". The most popular
religion here is Evengelic. Its a type of christian. Their church
services are kind of scary and different than what I am use to. They have karaoke, rock bands
and sessions where people talk in "tongues" and cast out demons... its weird. I have walked in on "exorcisms"
before and have seen and heard some pretty strange things. ANYWAYS,
when the evangelicos pray, its different. They believe that since
everybody has a prayer in their heart, everybody needs to pray at the
same time. So, one person directs the prayer and the others start
screaming their prayers to the heavens at the top of their lungs.
Sometimes they jump and spin and raise their hands up... it's scary. At the beginning of this lessons with Rafael and his friend I started
by offerering the prayer. Right as I started praying, they started
"praying" as well. Screaming and waving their arms and everything. It's
quite a sight to see. After the prayer ended they started showing
bible verses in our faces telling us how we are dumb youth and we
worship a prophet of the devil and all of this stuff. Needless to say,
we walked out as fast as possible.
My companion and I always say that we need to wear "Go Pros" everywhere
we go because of all the weird stuff that goes on here.
I know this letter was kind of weird... my brain is kind of scattered
at the moment. I'm still really happy to have been given the
opportunity to be here. I love the people here with all my heart. I am
determined to work even harder than before so that I can share the joy
of this gospel with everyone!
Love you all!
Oh and conference was awesome. It was in spanish and I had trouble
understand about 1/4 of it, but it was still really good. Bye!
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