I won!

I like how Alex puts that God has a way of bringing us uncomfortable situations that become beneficial experiences. Isn't that the truest thing ever? I am so happy that he is happy and doing things that are helpful to the other missionaries as well as members in that area. I am also very excited to be able to get to skype with him in just a few more days! Only like 10 more. That is such an exciting thing. And it is the last Christmas he will be out. The end in nearing! It is not as near as I would like but it gets closer every single day!
There are no pictures which always bums me out but more surprise for later on I guess.



So far this is going pretty well.

God has a way of bringing you uncomfortable but beneficial experiences.

For example, an apartment complex wanted 115,000 pesos from me. They said that we owed because we hadn't paid since July, etc. I sent them our internal payment - and they scoffed at my efforts. Before the mission I might have maybe paid it or tried to get someone else to do it. But it is my job, and we weren't going to pay that money twice. So I pulled the bank records and sent them a screenshot of their own page with the transaction numbers. They refused to admit that they had charged again something they shouldn't have... But they gave me a "discount" of the sum we weren't supposed to pay again.

When I read the capitulating email, I stood and half-yelled, "I won(!)"
President King, who is usually not in the office, happened to walk in and say, "... What did you win?"
"La Blanca's building wanted a bunch of money for gastos comunes and they backed down when showed them the bank stuff," I spouted out in over-detail immediately.

But hey, it was a great experience. I used to be a sheep for that kind of stuff, but now no. Not at all.

Not to say that I wasn't spiritual this week. We have several investigators who are simply super easy. (I will be leaving to another ward and remaining in the office next change in January, which will be the neighboring ward Monumento, leaving Esquina Blanca. (Indicating that I will have to essentially 'open' the sector, as it will have been a Sister sector until I go over there.) (We'll see how that goes a little later.))

I say they're too easy because they have all just fallen to us. As if God is saying it's okay that we are in the office, we maintain almost-normal numbers at all times. We leave to work at six or seven instead of four, which is a fair amount of time. And yet we are supported, and have more than enough people we can teach.

I find myself with little to comment about them. I don't know any of them very much, and none of them have a lot of difficulties.

Well, there is one. Raul and Ximena (that's an /h/ sound) are two amazing "eternal investigators." Such a person is created when he hits upon something, like a pending divorce, that prevents him from being baptized even though he attends church and does everything else right. Raul and Ximena would be married, but Raul's crazy ex won't let him. She wants tons of money, and Raul recently suffered a crazy property loss and cannot pay. He wants nothing more than to be baptized, but cannot afford either to move out of his house to "stop breaking the commandments" with his 'wife,' or pay off his nutty old lady he hasn't even seen in twenty years. He and the woman with whom he is currently have a child of nine together and will not split up, even if it is for baptism. I get it, but even so, things can be done. With that thought in our minds, we went to set a baptismal date to help motivate them to fix their situation. Raul started to get a little angry as we talked - not at us, but at his life. As we approached the part where we'd extend the date, he was crying and almost yelling. Then we did it. And he looked down. And he said, "si. Yo creo que si. Sera esta vez." "Yes, I think so. This time it will happen."

And so it was. God is powerful. Raul is looking at a righteous goal with no way to get it. That he knows of. If he really goes for it, he'll have it.

Faith is not the force, remember?

Well, today we went to President King's house to play volleyball and eat a huge american breakfast, so my time is short. I'll get some pictures of it. I have to go to a Christmas party. Keep being good. Read the scriptures. Love each other.

Elder AC Crist