The biggest baptism that I've ever seen for a girl named Karla

Karla's baptism

Another super sick week. Well besides the fact that our investigator Alex (the guy from Perú that was working on his masters degree) left to go back to Perú. He's going over there to get married to his girlfriend, and he'll be coming back in December. We definitely won't still be here in Mayagüez when that happens though, so we had to go say our last goodbye.

We did, however, have some super cool things happen though. One of which was the baptism of a girl named Karla. It was probably the biggest baptism that I've ever seen. In total, there were more than sixty people that showed up to it. Her parents haven't been coming to church for a couple years now, and we had just started working with them and the daughter. It's been awesome to see the changes in their entire family as they've progressed.

Saying goodbye to Alex from Peru

Then, surprisingly, we were able to work on two service projects. For one of them, we chopped up all the vines and stuff in the backyard with machetes, and then moved on to the front to do some yard work. The other one we got to paint a room in one of the houses of a member out here. Both of them were super fun. It's always nice to get a little change from the regular preaching and teaching.

Service!

We also were able to get a Family Home Evening set up with a bunch of the JAS (young single adults in English). It turned out to be super awesome. We had more than 10 people show up, 3 of our investigators were able to come as well. We ended up playing some games out on one of the fields at the college campus. The youth out here in this ward are super awesome. They're pretty much all college students, some of which are returned missionaries. And they're all super fun to hang out with.

Some of the other cool things that happened out here were our Haitian dinner that we had with two of the students out here. Probably some of the most filling food I've ever had. Then there was the time when some people from an Adventist church pulled over to give us some comida criolla which was pretty sick. And of course our lesson with the blind guy. Or should I say "blind guy." We spent so long trying to find this guy. We had texted with him to meet up at some place, (how he can do that while blind beats me) and when we got there he like pretended to not be able to hear us when we were talking to him. He could totally hear us though. I'm not to convinced he was blind either. Although he did have one of those blind people sticks so.. who knows. What I do know is that this week was dope and this place is sick. Transfers are coming up next week too, so hopefully I don't have to leave.

The more time I've been out on my mission, the more I realize that I knew like nothing about the gospel before my mission

Preaching in the rain

Well, in 3 days, I will have been on the mission for an entire year now. It's been weird to think about, because one of the members out here is leaving for her mission to California in 2 days. It's been making me think about when I was getting ready to leave for my mission. The amount of stuff I have learned since then is absolutely crazy. And that's not even including the Spanish. Matter of fact the more time I've been out on my mission, the more and more I realize that I knew like nothing about the gospel before my mission. It's funny how you can go to church for 18 years of your life and not seem to know like anything that's taught. I even read over my farewell talk the other day. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I guess, I did know some things before my mission. The point, however, is that I've learned so much, and I'm only halfway done with my mission.

As far as this week went, it honestly went by so fast. We had some super cool experiences though.

We got to set two baptismal dates with dope dudes. We call them dope dudes cause they're.. well dope. They're two guys our age that grew up in the states so they know better English than they do Spanish. They're out here in Puerto Rico for school or something. They have like all the same interests as us and have been telling us about all the cool spots out here in Mayagüez. Lessons are pretty awesome with them cause we get out of the normal routine. They both are super interested as well.

We also got to watch our investigator from Peru defend his thesis for his masters degree in mechanical engineering. We felt a little out of place. One of the professors was super late so we ended up having to chill in the room talking with all of the other professors in there for like an hour before it started. There was actually a professor that was there from Italy. He knew like way less Spanish than we did though, so I was a little confused as to how he was ever able to teach anybody. Our investigator's presentation was awesome though. Although I was confused like the entire time (He started talking about bridges and then showed us like a thousand super complicated equations), it was a super cool experience. Now that he's done with that, we should actually be able to meet with him on a regular basis.

Overall super sick week. The only thing we didn't get to do was hike a super sick waterfall like last week.