Intense (offices week 9)

Hello everybody! This week was intense. Let me try to explain it all.

It all started last Friday. We were planning in the night time and started with a prayer as always. While I was praying I felt that we needed to invite a girl named Rocío to come to see a baptism the next day and then invite her to be baptized on Sunday. So we called her and invited her to the baptism. On Saturday she showed up a little late and got to the batpism just in time for the closing hymn. But afterwards we were talking to her and said, ¨you know, there is going to be another baptism tomorrow.¨ She was like, ¨Really! Who is getting baptized?¨ We replied, ¨You.¨ She got a really surprised, but happy look on her face and was like, ¨REALLY!¨ She said it made her really happy. So we grabbed some people, sat down, and taught her the commandments. Fortunately her super awesome neighboor friend had already taught her everything.

After we taught her everything we had one of the zone leaders do the baptismal interview. Everything was going great until the zone leader left the interview and asked me to lend him my cell phone so he could call the mission president. One of the questions in the baptismal interview is about serious sins someone might have commited. If the person has done any of these sins they have to talk to the mission president so that he can help them repent fully. Seeing as how she is a thirteen year old girl we didn`t think there would be a problem and didn`t ask her the question before the interview. Well, there was a problem. When the zone leader told us what had happened my companion and I couldn`t believe it. She`s thirteen for crying out loud! It`s probably better I don`t say what the problem was.

So, we couldn`t get hold of president since he was on a plane heading down south. The zone leader told Rocío she would have to wait to be baptized. She seemed a little discouraged, but not too much. Then as we were talking with the zone leader Rocío kind of dissapeared (we were at the church with members around still). We found her outside on the steps looking sad. When we tried to talk to her she just started bawling and saying things like, ¨I never want to come back here again!¨ Man, I didn`t know what to do. My first instinct was look around for a woman who could be a shoulder to cry on and understand her in a womanly way. I`m a man so I know I don`t understand and I`m a missionary so I can`t even put my arm around her! Fortunately there was a super awesome woman nearby who heard her crying and came over immediately. She listened and tried to calm her down as Rocío told all of the terrible things that have happened to her. I didn`t understand a lot of what Rocío said since she was crying really hard, but I was sitting there thinking, ¨If half of what I think she just said really happened, she has every right to be crying.¨ I was praying really hard that the female member there would know what to say to help her. God seems to have answered my prayer because the member lady talked to her and by the end Rocío was smiling and happy again; ready to come back to church the next day.

That night I prayed really hard for God to comfort that poor girl, that He would help her see that only by coming to church and drawing closer to God would she be able to erase all the horrible things in her past. I was so happy the next day to see her in church, talking and laughing with the other girls her age. We went by the house again on Tuesday and her granddad wasn`t very happy. Apparently there had been a family fight and Rocío started crying again. But her awesome neighboor friend helped her out and we talked to her and she felt better again. I think she mainly just doesn`t have any females in her house to be able to talk to and understand her.

Thursday there was a ward activity that she came to, so we had President come over to talk to Rocío. She was really really nervous when we told her, but after she met him she calmed down. President is way too nice and loving to be nervous around. She passed the interview with president and after a little more persuasion decided to be baptized next Saturday! I`m super happy about that. Out of all the people I`ve taught, she deserves to be baptized.

So, that`s enough stories for one week. There were probably fun things that happened in the offices (like going to the bank to cash a check) but I don`t remember what they are. Hope everyone has a great week. Talk to you next time!

Hasta Luego,

Elder Gardner

P-day at the zoo