June 3, 2013

Hello Family! I had a crazy night last night that you will enjoy hearing about :) So I was calling the sisters last night to get their numbers for the week and that started around 9:30. They didn't answer me the first few times. So I thought they must have been doing their planning still. I waited until 9:45 and called again and they still didn't answer. Then I called the zone leaders to give them the information I already did have and told them the sisters weren't answering. They just told me to keep calling. So I called...until 10:15 and they still hadn't answered. So I call the zone leaders and we talk to the AP's and we tried calling some members over in the sisters' area. I called the owner of their house and his phone was disconnected. All these calls happened until 10:30. At 10:30 the zone leaders left from San Juan to go to Pontezuela. They arrived around 11:00 and called me to get exact directions to the house. I stayed on the phone with them as they shouted. They honked and shouted at the house for about 15 minutes, and then some members arrived. They all hopped the gate at the house and climbed the steps and started banging on the windows. In the meanwhile I'm in Carolina just praying, my mind was wandering on what could have happened. It was really crazy. About 11:30 the zone leaders called me back and said the sisters were in the house. What had happened was both of the sisters thought the other sister had the phone, but they left it in their car. When they didn't ever hear the phone ring they just thought I must not be looking for their numbers, so they prepared and went to bed. And then when they heard men shouting and honking outside they got afraid. But after awhile they realized, "It must be the elders!" So they went outside and they talked, and explained all that had happened. Super crazy experience. I was so anxious I couldn't sleep after that haha. I saw them this morning and they were so embarrassed by the whole thing. That's definitely going in my journal. Now, the rest of the week was pretty good. I haven't been so sick and tired. I went and bought medicine--thank you mom and dad for always having bought my medicine. I never realized just how expensive it was :) Transfers are next Monday, so I'm kind of anxious. I'm not quite ready to leave from Carolina yet. I have too many things to do here, or so I feel. Our investigators are in sort of a slump. We weren't able to visit with Andres and Lowra. I don't know what happened: they just didn't answer when we went to their house. And the next day we went back their daughter told me they were sleeping, which is one of the classic excuses to not talk to the missionaries. So we'll see what happens. I am praying really hard for them. They need the gospel so badly in their lives. We found a new investigator last week in Pontezuela: his name is Billy Gun the Giant. Maybe you can google him. He was a luchador. He has ulcers in his legs now so he's out of commission, but he is an icon here in Carolina. He lived in Utah for a couple years and loves us. He calls me Mr. Elder haha and he tried to pay me money for visiting him. Things in his household are really crazy though: he lives with his mom because of his medical issues. But anyway, Billy is getting ready to be baptized into an Evangelical church. We weren't able to teach him much: he likes to talk a lot. He loves us and just wants to talk to us, but we're going to teach him a solid lesson. He showed us this little workbook that the pastor gave him to prepare for baptism. That's the way things are run here in Puerto Rico: the pastors give out these workbooks that the people have to fill out. It's like a little search book. There will be questions in them like this: What did God teach Moses? (see Exodus blah, blah, blah). Funny things in the world. I was surprised there wasn't a word search or something in there. There are a lot of crazy churches here in Puerto Rico and they all have really long names. Here are some examples of names: "Church of Christ: God is love," "Defenders of the Fountain of Faith of the Lamb of God", "Evangelical Temple of Missionaries of the Lamb of the Faith and Salvation." Lots of things like that. So Elder Helm was making fun of them. He said, "Yeah we saw this church the other day. It was called like the Church of Christ and the lamb of deception...or something like that." We laughed so hard at that part: lamb of deception. Haha. Oh man. Well, love you all! Elder Cevering