Baptisms!!

Hey everybody!

This week was super busy and really good. So, I´m going to start out with something that is weird about the church here that I have forgotten to mention. So, they do it backwards here. They do the priesthood hour (for the guys) first, the second hour for the other class, and the last hour from 11-12 is the sacrament meeting, which is the exact opposite of how it normally is. I don't know why we do it that way. There´s not really a reason, haha.

Anyways, on Tuesday we had leadership counsel, so we were just at the office all day and listened to president and heard all the new stuff for the mission. So, we officially can no longer eat lunches with the members. We can accept sealed food and like cake and sugary stuff, but no real meals and no meat. So, it kind of sucks, just because we had lunch every day here, but there are some good sides. The members can buy us food, other than the meat, we just have to cook it at the apartment. So, a lot more people are just giving us stuff. and, we can cook and eat quicker than normal so we have a little time to rest which is nice.

Then, we had out zone meeting on Thursday. We just had a meeting as a zone and talked about what we are doing well and the things we need to change and it went well. then, I went on divisions with Elder Warth after the meeting. That was super cool and fun and I love every time I get to do divisions with him out here and it´s crazy how many times we´ve had the opportunity to do so. On Friday my back hurt for no reason which was weird. It wasn´t the bones or the muscles...it was just there. So, I rested for a little and got some Icy Hot on it and it was all basically back to normal on Saturday...just super weird.

Then, we had our baptism on Saturday along with the other elders. We had 4 baptisms for the ward and Jackie, the daughter of the Colombians, was our baptism. That was awesome and she gave her testimony afterwards and it was awesome. Their whole family is really cool. Then, on Sunday we had record numbers at church. We had 111 people at church. The previous record in Güiraldes, the ward, was 104 and my previous record in the mission in my other areas was 92 (or 96 I cant remember). So, it is awesome to see the growth of the church and the faith of all the people that go. And, we also had the baptism of Hector Aguirre on Sunday. He works every day, so he couldn´t on Saturday. So, he was baptized after church and he´ll be confirmed this next Sunday. So, now everyone in the family is a member of the church and they are unified which was awesome to see.

Elder Murphy and I are working with a ton of people, investigators, less active members, and recent converts, but that was the most exciting news of the week. The Colombians are my favorite family here and they are really progressing and making a change and have all gotten better since their baptism.

The quote this weeks comes from David A. Bednar. He said, "Our individual load is comprised of demands and opportunities, obligations and privileges, afflictions and blessings, and options and constraints... Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness." Our difficulties in life are what shape and create us. Life would have no purpose if it was all easy and we just floated through and didn´t have to make any real decisions. So, our trials really help us to become these better people that we can be. Anyways, thanks to everyone who wrote me this week and I hope to hear from you all soon.

Les Quiero,

Elder Joshua Clarine