Live Like HIS Son

April 6, 2015

Hello lovely family!! I hope you had a wonderful Easter week and that the Easter Bunny visited with a few little treats...but most importantly you had the chance to listen to CONFERENCE and remember the Atonement of our Savior.  It rained SO HARD here on Easter Sunday...the picture doesn't really do it justice, but you get the idea.

The Easter Sunday downpour in Buena Fe

Well, to start off this week, I have a funny story…Here in Buena Fe the plumbing system is a little different than what you all are incredibly blessed with!  In fact, you can’t even properly call it a plumbing system, it’s more of a PVC pipe system!  Haha.  In every home there are many pipes that run everywhere and carry things outside; for example - from the kitchen sink, drains into the middle of the floor, in the balcony, etc.  So whenever you put something down the drain here, whatever it is, follows down the pipe and outside of the house and drains out into the middle of the sidewalk or road.

Hopefully you can see the PVC pipes coming from the house?

A closer view...

Now because of this, one should ALWAYS be cautious while walking down the sidewalk in Buena Fe.  You don’t want someone’s leftovers that have been shoved down the kitchen sink to be splattered on your head as the new fashionable hat trend. 

Well, one day we were leaving the cyber (internet café) with our zone leaders from printing off invitations we were handing out to people inviting them to come to the church this weekend to view general conference.  About that same time, someone had just finished eating and didn’t finish all their rice (which is very rare :)), and of course flushed it, along with who-knows-what other liquids down the drain, JUST as I walked under it.

It started off as just a few little drops and I simply thought it was starting to rain.  So I looked up to see if my suspicion was true but....NOPE, I was wrong!  And to top it off, the washed-down-the-drain rice didn’t just become my new hat for the day, but I was also blessed to have it land in MY MOUTH! :(  Let’s just say it wasn’t my favorite thing I have eaten here on the mish.  But we all had a good laugh, and I rocked my rice-meshed hat until I got home to clean myself off.  On the way I bought some juice to help my snack go down.  HAHA!  I will now be more careful to stay away from the PVC pipes and will absolutely never look up for rain as I am walking down the sidewalks in town.  

A quick update on our current investigators.  Mabel Bermeo went on vacation all last week because her ex-boyfriend showed up to surprise her and see his daughter.  Like I said last week, we could have predicted it - we knew her ex would come back...they always do.  So now they are back together again and need to get married before she can be baptized.  The problem is that he works in Santo Domingo, which is about 2 hours from here and the soonest he can be here is not this weekend but the next!  So now our plan is that she can be married in 2 weeks and baptized on the 25th of April.  We are super excited for her, and she is BEYOND anxious to get baptized.  We are praying that things will go as planned.

Familia Romero are wonderful as usual, and will be married next week so hopefully they can be baptized on April 18^th. 

In closing I want to tell you about a new investigator.  So we have a lady in the ward here that ALWAYS gives us food - she is like our grandma.  In fact, she feeds EVERYONE, even the stray dog on the street.  EVERYONE is loved by Maura.  Well Maura has a brother named Maximo, which translated into English means “the best!”  Maximo is one of those who eats lunch with Maura every day.  It turns out his name couldn’t have said it better but he really is THE BEST!! 

Seeing that Maura is the grandma of all the missionaries that pass through here, many missionaries have also tried to teach Maximo.  He listens, but has NEVER wanted to go to church.  One day this last week we gave him one of the invitations I told you about earlier for general conference that said, “Come and listen to the Prophet’s voice”, along with a card referencing the church’s Easter campaign on lds.org called #becauseHelives.  The thought of a modern day prophet intrigued Maximo, and the #becauseHelives video intrigued him even more. 

Fast forward to Saturday morning right before the first session of General Conference was beginning.  Maura called us and said that Maximo was waiting outside of the doors of the church, but didn’t know where to go...WHAT?!?!  We got up from where we were sitting and ran outside and were greeted by Maximo who was so excited that he forgot the rules that you can’t hug the missionaries.  HE LOVED CONFERENCE, and was so focused and intent on listening to every talk and even tried to sing the songs in English with the choir!  The time has finally come for Maximo to live up to his name and to make THE BEST decision of his life and come into the fold. 

Well, I need to keep this short as I have to go to Guayaquil now to attend a Liders Conference.  Looking forward to that 4 hour bus ride!! WAHOOO! ;)  

I absolutely LOVED general conference.  Just as the choir sang, “HE sent HIS Son.”  He is the gift #becauseofHim.  As Elder Jeffery Holland said, “He held me. He loved me. He did not let me fall.”  Jesus Christ did the will of His father. HE rose again.  HE LIVES!  After this conference we can ask ourselves, “How will I change?  "What does He ask?  LIVE LIKE HIS SON!" 

May we all become more like HIM!  

I LOVE YOU ALL!

Hermana Bartholomew