Monday, June 6, 2011

"No Bees in My House!" and Other Plagues

This week has been a bit more difficult than most. I'm trying to become humble, but I'm not particularly good at it. I want to become a lot more focused on the people we are teaching, to be more worried about their needs in the present. I sometimes look at my mission almost in hindsight, and I think, "Oh, this will make for a good story later."
Hermano McFadyian, one of our teachers in the MTC, mentioned something I really liked. "Being prepared for the future is good and all, but we live in the present. Let's focus on that."

Bees
Elder Monroy and I were having a normal, albeit sleepy, companionship study. His announcement that there were two bees on me woke me up pretty quick; so I went and opened the front and back doors in hopes that they would just fly out. Turns out not. I went into the bathroom and there were SO MANY BEES. We still can't figure out why, but there were a lot of them. Armed with a big fan and a broom, we tried to get them to leave for awhile, to no avail. So, I sprayed them with Raid. Most of them flew out, but we had a little collection of tiny bee corpses in our bathroom.

Cockroaches
In stead of a drain in our shower, there's just a big rock. I thought that was strange, so I moved it. Bad idea. Apparently, that was the Roach-Blocker. Once again, Elder Monroy alerted me to an insect-related threat, and when I arrived the bathroom there was A TON OF COCKROACHES. This time, I just got really good at making them grab onto the broom and then catapulting them over the back wall. Also, they fly here. That was pretty exciting.

Biting Beasts
Before we go to bed each night, Elder Monroy just sprays the can of Raid at the cieling of our room, and then we watch as a bunch of mosquitos and spiders and flies fall. And then we put on some "Off!". But, that doesn't deter all of them, so I've ended up with a good bunch of bite marks! Very fun.

Husbands
We have visited six different women this week who want to be baptized, but for various reasons, their spouses won't let them. Six! It appears that the unfortunate husbands of Mexico are holding back the general salvation. Two of these women were our baptisms planned for the week, which have now fallen through. I spent a long time talking with one of the husbands, and he was a lot more worried about the expenses of a divorce than his family. It worries me, so we're continuing to do all that we can for them.

The mission is focusing very strongly right now on changing the way we work a bit. The idea is that we can choose to fish with a pole - or, alone - and catch one or two fish, or we can choose to fish with a net - the members - and help a lot more people choose the right and remain faithful. A lot of the manners in which those changes are put into practice are pretty difficult for me, but I want to begin applying them as well as I can.

That concert on the roof of the Willardsen's looks extremely cool. Thanks for the shoutout!

Love,

Elder Tingey





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