Like Luiz and Maria. A mother and son. Maria is 68 and Luiz is 40something. Yeah, I’m not going to lie to you guys, they look somewhat homeless. We see them at this one train station like all the time. I’ll be honest, I was kind of freaked out by them and clearly don’t have enough charity because one day my companion was like "I can’t take it anymore! we have to talk to them!" So I finally agreed but then they had taken a different way to get out of the station so we couldn’t find them. Then we ended up literally having to chase them down. So we talk to Luiz and turns out, he knows who Mormons are and has already met with a few sets of missionaries way back when in 2001. He has a Book of Mormon. He’s also obsessed with the United States, and I’m saying this as a complete matter of fact, and not judging in any way. I think he has aspergers. He knows everything about everything. He has like these strange tick kind of habits. He’s obsessed with the way books smell. But he’s so smart that it’s not normal.
So we set up a time to meet with them the next Thursday. Then on Sunday, we pray about it and feel like they are our revelados, aka they are the investigators who can be ready for baptism next week. Yeah that always entails a TON of work. So we are like crap, we aren’t meeting them until Thursday. So we improvise and have lessons over the phone with them every night and have him and Maria read chapters in the Book of Mormon about baptism and pray about it. Thursday comes and we go over to their house, read the part about baptism in 3Nephi 11 and ask them to be baptized the same way on Sunday. They both IMMEDIATELY said "eu aceito." I accept. Irma Q and I just looked at each other like, "Alright, this crazy train is happening." So we come back Friday night and teach them all of the commandments and requirements for baptism. They accept to live by them. It's nuts how much desire they have to follow Christ. I can’t even comprehend it.
Luiz is weird, yes. But, Maria is wonderful and Luiz is harmless and looking for how to have a better life. Saturday night the zone leaders, our besties, come over to do their baptismal interview. Everything is like peachy keen. Luiz has a past, but had committed to live the commandments and was already living it all except he smokes the occasional cigarette but said he would give it up. Sunday morning we confirm with bishop that he will be meeting the both of them before church to give his ok on the baptism and see that they are ready because it had been ten years since they’ve been to church and it was only a few times. (Side note: I know that this sounds ludicrous and like, "Why in the world are you trying to baptize people so quickly?" Go back and read my email about what a revelado is and what the expectations of this mission are and you will probably have just as much of an understanding as I do. Not a lot.)
So, we get to church Sunday and everyone is so nice to them. It was great. They knew we had to confirm with bishop about the baptism so we weren’t really stressing. Then bishop pulls us aside and says no, that he prayed about it and felt like they needed more preparation. We were stressed out mostly because the assistants were going to pass faca (chastisement) down the leadership train. I felt bad because the zone leaders like us and don’t even tell us to repent when we know they’re supposed to. In this kind of situation, it means we should have prepared them better and then this wouldn’t be happening or something. Basically, bishop said that they shouldnt' be baptized so we told them it would be next week. I was a little bummed, but I kind of wanted the baptism for the wrong reasons anyway so I needed to be more humble. The reason bishop said no is because he said he just really felt like they weren’t ready for some reason. Then later on in church, the first counselor came up to him and said that he saw Luiz smoking a cigarette in front of the church right before sacrament meeting. He had told us he was going to the bathroom. Awesome. Thank goodness for bishop because he hadn’t even known that when he said no.
The only people who want to talk to us most of the time are crazies. We have a lot of ups and downs like that one. The zone leaders still call us all the time. Elder Ca even cooked us African food. It was so strange but way good. We don’t really have any investigators that are going anywhere. Ju wasn’t baptized because she got really sick and was in the hospital. Stupid Satan. But she is out now and starting to feel better. I'll let you know when that happens.
Anyway, I freaking love you guys, and I’m praying for you all the time! The church is true and a mission kind of sucks but in a very hilarious-because-how-else-can-you-take-it kind of way when we have experiences like this past week. But yeah. Love you guys.
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