Elder Spencer Tingey: Baptism by Mud

Baptism By Mud

Another great week. Itzel was baptized! Her mom and her sister both came to the baptism and confirmation. We almost had to baptize her in a nearby river (which has crocodiles - for real) due to a rupture in the pipe. Our ward mission leader saved the day by getting water from... somewhere... I'm not sure what water "de la sistema" means exactly, but I do know that it was super green. But it worked fine for the remission of sins and whatnot. Itzel is super strong and should go with the branch on their excursion to the temple in Hermosillo this month.

Lawyer Guitarists

We went with Elder Soto to see this lawyer-judge guy about a divorce for one of his investigators. He had a sweet guitar up on the wall behind him, and when I asked him about it, he just took it down and started playing a singing. ..yep. It was awesome. There were two older guys hanging out in the office as well. I took a video, you can see it eventually. But he played us "el Corrido del Dorado." (Supposedly can be found on YouTube). The corridos is a music genre that's compared with rap, because it generally has narcotics trafficking themes, but sounds nothing like rap at all. But this one was about El Dorado and mentions litchis and all of the neighborhoods we work in. And then I played and sang "la Oración del Profeta." Hoorah. The old guys liked the corrido more.

Following the Spirit, Even When You Don't Really Want To

Coming back from San Joaquin, I attempted to change gears, and my shifter got ripped out and pulled into the spokes. So I couldn't really pedal. Luckily, a guy in a truck passed by right then and took us straight to Federico, our bike repair guy. For the rest of the night, we were on foot. For the final hour of our day, we had planned to contact a reference from a branch member. As we were leaving, I thought, "Why are we going here? It's probably the furthest colony in our area. It's going to take a half hour just to get there." But we went. We knocked at that house, and no one was home. It was already pretty late, and we probably could have just started walking home, and would probably have arrived justifiably early. I looked over at a neighbor's house and saw a family just getting home and going in their door, and used the Elder Tyler Tingey technique, thinking: "They'd probably be cool members of the church." We went and knocked on their door, and with a simple contact, the woman who answered received us really well. Once again, I thought, "Just put an appointment for another day, it's already pretty late." However, I asked -unwillingly - if we could teach them right then. The words just kind of came out. The lesson went great. The mom, Urania, said that the missionaries had gone out to her ranchito when she was really little, and they taught and sang hymns and gave them coloring books and stuff. We set baptismal dates with them, and had an overall great lesson. When I was tempted to give less effort, the Spirit gave me a little kick so we could find that family.

Costa Rica Reunion!

This was the second Sunday that I've consecutively played piano at funeral services for members of the El Dorado district. A member of the branch in Costa Rica passed away, so everyone from Costa Rica came to the chapel in El Dorado! It was awesome! (Clayton, todos le mandan saludos y le felicitan por haberse comprometido.)

All is well!