Villegas- Week #82

Bossier Bretheren

Hey Family!!!

Well another week gone by and I am still not used to these keyboards. This week was great! We did even better than last week, but despite my valiant efforts the hermanas absolutely killed us. I thought we were doing well the whole week, and we were winning until Sunday night rolled around and they report they had 8 baptismal dates and 10 investigators in Sacrament meeting…blast. Haha, just kidding that is great! My district is tearing it up! We are on average 500 efficiency points above the mission average, which to everyone reading this doesn’t mean anything I just realized. Oh well, just know that the Lord is really blessing us with success. So this week was kind of an eye-opener for me. All of a sudden I am getting old in the mission. I came to the stark realization that I am the oldest (in mission terms) in the apartment, which has never happened to me before. Now all of a sudden I am the target of a bunch of trunky jokes, and then last night the zone leaders called me and wished me a happy 19 months…wait…what? I just turned 18…what happened?

So this week we had interviews with President Benton. He said he wants one of Lacey’s wedding invitations. It has only been like two weeks since the last interview I had with him so not much changed, but it was still a great interview. He talked to me a lot about faith, and the strength of having a positive outlook on every situation. He counseled me to look at the area as a fountain of success that only grows and adds upon itself, because a lot of missionaries look at areas as wells that dry up after a lot of success. I think I mentioned this before but Villegas has had 6 baptisms for the last 5 transfers straight, and this past weekend we baptized one of our last progressing investigators, so there have been a few skeptics as to whether or not we can do it again. So I am trying to follow President’s counsel, although I will admit that we are in search mode hard core right now. We will see what the Lord has in store for Villegas this transfer. We currently have zero baptismal dates unfortunately. I hate when that happens, but like President told me in my interview. “Move toward your faith. Ask the Lord for help. He won’t deny you.” So I am handing the reigns over to the Lord. I am going to try my hardest to do my part, so that we are worthy to ask the Lord to make up the rest.

Anyway, Alvina was baptized! I will talk about that in a second. Lucas will not get baptized this weekend. We went by his house to teach him and he hit us with the news…pee-wee soccer starts next Sunday, and as a result he says he is never coming to church again. Are you kidding? Haha we got beat out by pee-wee soccer! Except we have to take into account that, all jokes aside, and no pun intended, soccer is a religion here. We tried reaching his small dream stricken nine year old heart by testifying, promising specific blessings, and sharing personal experiences (when I played little league baseball and I couldn’t play an important game on Sunday…go tigers…) but he wasn’t having it, so we are back to ground zero.

Ok the baptismal service. It was a little frustrating, but now has just turned comical in my vast reservoir of mission memories. First, Elder Thomas told her that I would be doing the baptism and she was all for it. I am not sure why since I met her 2 weeks ago, but whatever I was down for it. So I was privileged to perform the baptism. Of course my camera was dead and I didn’t realize it, so I will be borrowing some pictures from Elder Thomas later and I will send them home. Anyway, we were going to start at 7 o’clock in the evening, but hit a few snags. It turns out Ward Council was also being held at 6. Whoops, but ok that is fine we will just have plan well. Unfortunately, it didn’t go that smoothly. We waited until 8 at night, because their meeting was taking a long time. So we asked if a member of the bishopric could come preside, not one single person had a tie on in the whole ward counsel. Our ward mission leader then said, “Don’t worry about it Christ ministered in sandals and a tunic.” Long story short, the second counselor came and the baptism went through, and was really spiritual actually. Alvina was happy and it turned out to be a really nice meeting. So that is all for this week, maybe we should go back to what you used to do and put all your questions at the beginning of your email, because I don’t have time to go back and remember all the questions you have. Bossier Brethren sounds great. Also everyone is talking about Haiti here; I bought a big mac today because 2 pesos of it got donated to Haiti…so that was my kind act of service for the day I guess. I don’t really like big macs.

Well, until next week, pray that we can find some good people, and that we can get them to church!

Love, Elder Gilmore