Dear All,
Pretty solid week. I feel like I say that a lot. Maybe
this week I'll think of a new phrase do describe life.
So this week we started out with a conference with the
Mission President on Tuesday, which was super good, as usual. Then we ran from
there to go eat, cause we said we were going to go do some service for a lady
in the ward at 3 and we left the conference at 3:15. So we ran, ate about as
fast as humanly possible, and then went to her house. She had this giant tree
that had fallen down in her "yard" and asked us to come cut it up and
take it away. So we show up expecting hatchets or an axe or something but all
she had was a machete. And then she asked my companion if he knew how to use
it, and he said yes, and then she was like "ok so then you're going to be
in charge of the machete cause I'm certain Elder Rawlings has never even seen
one of these before" and I'm like excuse me eagle scout here and so I grab the
machete and start hacking away. It was super fun actually, but it got old
really fast. Just imagine cutting through a tree about 8 or 10 inches in
diameter with nothing but a machete. So that kinda sucked. But then this lady's
son who was working with us slipped and fell and broke one of the pipes in
their yard (most of the plumbing here is above ground cause the people do it
themselves) and so all of the sudden we have to deal with a geyser and a fallen
tree at the same time. Meanwhile, the lady had to leave cause she had meetings
in the church. So she leaves us with the son, a fallen tree, and a geyser. Then
the son sprang into action to fix the pipe. And I wasn't really paying
attention I just knew he was gonna try and fix the pipe. And from what I could
tell, he did. The water stopped spraying. So I got back to cutting the tree,
but pretty soon my hand started to hurt, so I switched with Elder Lopez. And I
went to go see how the fixing of the pipe was going.
Turns out in order to fix the pipe this kid had done
nothing more than stick his finger into the opening to stop it. And every 30
seconds or so the pressure would build up to more than he could hold and launch
his finger out and spray him right in the face. I was dying. It was one of the
funniest things I've ever seen. But then I had a genius idea. I remembered
seeing duct tape in their house the other day when we were there (I remember
cause duct tape is impossible to find here; you have to go to the US to buy it)
and so I ran to grab it. And like anyone from the South would do, we covered
that pipe with about 10 layers of duct tape. And it worked, for the most part.
But then Elder Lopez finally finished off the tree, and came over to help. And
then he added his Mexican flair to the duct tape job by grabbing a lighter and
using it to melt a plastic watter bottle and drip the melted plastic over the
leaks. It was the ugliest repair job I have ever seen. But it worked so heck no
I won't complain.
The rest of the week was pretty cool, we have an
investigator who started out super cool, but then she went to go visit her
in-laws and they told her a bunch of stuff about how we have 7 wives and don't
believe in doctors and stuff like that so when we called her to confirm the
appointment we had with her, she was like, "well probably I think I want
to stay in my church, but come over anyway." So we went over there, and we
didn't really know what to say, but we just started talking. All of the sudden
she started spilling her whole life story to us, all of the problems she has,
everything. It was super cool and weird at the same time. But it gave us a
chance. We just bore testimony of the things we know, and she was like
"you know what. I think I want to go to your church." So we left like
heck yeah. But then on Sunday her husband didn't let her go, so she called us
and she was like "I just know if you guys can come and talk to him he'll
change his mind and we will go to church." So yeah. We have an appointment
with them tonight. Wish me luck.
We also had a missionary fireside on Sunday (yesterday)
for all of the youth that will be able to go on a mission in the next year. And
it was super cool. We sang the EFY song, but in Spanish, so it was super cool.
And then at the end, they asked everyone who wanted to go to stand up. And a
ton of youth stood up, and that was cool, but then a little bit after everyone
else, another person stood up. It's a young woman from my ward who just got
baptized in July. And before, she had told us she hadn't wanted to go because
she was going to study. But she changed her mind in that very fireside. So that
was super cool.
And yeah. That's my week. Hope you all have an even
better one.
Les quiero mucho,
Elder Rawlings
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