Life in Clorinda

Family!

I can´t even imagine how you´re all feeling right now.. you know, with Braeden leaving and all! I´m so pumpd for him though. It's gonna be a great experience for him. No doubt!

And mom! I don´t know how you did it. Being a parent is HARD WORK! Even though I´ve got a good boy:)

The week was good. I´ve got some news though... we didn't have a baptism. Carolina was super excited on Friday, we even did the baptismal interview - which she passed, and we were getting everything ready for Saturday and a storm came. A BIG STORM. And when I say a BIG storm. I mean two different storms came... the first, was literally a storm. It dumped rain from about 4 on Saturday until about 7. And you´ll never guess the other reason... well, she was a little embarrassed because "the storm" hit her. (I hope you understand.. its the worst subject to talk about.. by far worse than the law of chastity)

But yeah, we have the baptism planned for this next Saturday and we´ll be super excited. We´re gonna have a "SUPER BAPTISM".  3 baptisms and a wedding at the same time! So we´re planning on having a HUGE party to celebrate the baptisms and the wedding. 

The branch here is a lot better than I´m used to. We had 14 elders in Elders quorum yesterday. We have a lot of men, but not that many women, kinda strange, right? But it´s that way. We have 2 branches that meet in the same building, and we´re enjoying it! It's kinda crazy having 12 missionaries in the same building on Sunday morning, but I can see that without our help, it would be a little harder to stay afloat. We had a fun FHE with some of the people from the branch.

We have a super excited Branch President, who lives just a few blocks from our pench, so they´re gonna be "my family" for the stay here. Just like Tracy was in Anadarko, the Wade´s and the Dickmans in Guthrie, and the Oviedo´s in Goya... just add the family Rojas to the list:) They gave us some food, and it was SO good the other day. I just love the food here. Its honestly SOO good. 

It´s been an interesting experience being with Elder Simmons. He´s from Payson, his dad is the stake president there and a super good cook from what he´s told me. He played soccer for Salem, and he´s way cool. The only thing.. is that people have a hard time understanding him. We found this crazy lady this week, and up until we were actually in the lesson, he hadn´t said a word... but when I turned to him to start teaching, this lady started to point at him and laugh because she didn´t understand a word. He might feel a little frustrated, but its understandable. I remember how hard it was the first few weeks.  And now, lucky little Braeden is gonna get to go through the same experience. :) It's the best. Hands down.

We found a lot of people this week. We contacted a lot and had some good lessons. It's always a struggle the first 3 weeks or so in a new area, while finding your way around and getting to know a few solid investigators. Right now we´re working with like 3 families and they all have kinda big obstacles... 

One needs to get married. His name is Anselmo and he´s been together with his girl for about 10 years. She is a member and also the sister of Carolina. The only thing is that she doesnt wanna get married to Anselmo, so Anselmo can´t get baptized. You know - drama. The worst part about it, is that the reason why she doesn't wanna get married is because Anselmo´s mom doesn´t approve of "marrying outside of his race". Anselmo´s white, Lisandra is an Indian. Ya. I thought that was only like BoM stories, but nope. It still exists.. So we´re kinda clueless on what we can do to get over that problem and praying for a miracle. :)

But more than that, we just had a normal week! We worked hard, and enjoyed our time. We had some solid Guiso´s for lunch and we´re loving the heat of Clorinda! Our pench is nice, but it is super humid. it doesn´t air our too well... and when we open the windows 1000 mosquitos fly in... so we´re dealing with that. :)  Plus, the person that designed the pench put the shower in the middle of the room... so... he deserves to get his butt kicked. :)

Love,

Elder Harris