Fixing the font

Querido familia,                           5 de Agosto 2013

My young friend Alex

So this Saturday we had the baptism of María Soto and we spent a lot of time this week getting everything ready for the baptism and it's a good thing that we did because we ran into a ton of problems along the way.

De-rusting the stairs

On Thursday, we went to the chapel to see what we needed to do about getting the font filled up, because we don't have a real font, but rather a metal frame that has a tarp inside of it. But that wasn't the problem, the portable font was just dirty and needed to be washed and disinfected. The real issue was the water pump in the chapel. Previously the basement had flooded, so President Baldovino had done some homemade repairs and re-wired a couple of things in order to get power around to where he wanted it and that may have caused some difficulties. 

Maria's daughter, Camila

So on Friday we went in with the intent to not leave until we had found a way to get water running in the chapel again or until we had an alternate solution to get the font filled (the back up/last resort plan was to buy a super long hose and ask the neighbors if we could use their water to fill up the font). But much to our surprise, we arrived at the chapel to find three other men already there working on things. We hadn't called anybody, but we certainly had prayed for a way to get the font filled so that the baptism could be a success; we would have attributed these three men to the three nephites if it wasn't for the fact that I already knew one of them (he used to be President Heyman's counselor before the mission divided).

Cleaning the font

So they did some work and we talked to them about the problems that we were having and eventually they got the water working. So then they left and we continued working and getting things set up. Then we had another issue because the water stopped working after an hour and then not long after the lights started to flicker before going out completely. Well, we didn't really have any more time to work on anything there, so we left with the hope that everything would somehow work out in less than twenty-four hours. 

I was able to talk to two of the three men that were working on the chapel on Saturday morning and they said that the problem was likely coming from the city; Elder Reynolds said that was typical response; it's always some other group's fault that something doesn't work or someone else's product failed. So we got the city over to look at things and sure enough it was a problem on their end and we got everything we needed and ready before the baptism.

So we didn't have a big turn out to the baptism, but it was really good. the water was kind of cold, but I wasn't the one in it either. María had a really good experience and it was cool because it was very lightly raining that day; it made me think of the song "I Like To Look For Rainbows."

We had another really cool experience on Thursday with Oscar Alvarez, the less active member that I was talking about last week. He asked us how long we had known about him before we decided to go visit him. We compared notes a came to our conclusion that we found him only one day after having looked for him. He then told us that the reason that he wanted to know was that because two days before we found him he had been confused and felt lost and wasn't sure what he needed to do. So, he had been praying for the guidance that he lacked and two days later we showed up at his door. 

On Wednesday we had interviews with President and Sister Heyman, so we went to Paso De Los LIbres to have lunch and meet with them. With them also came Brother Holm and his wife from the United States; their the Heyman's friends and neighbors and they came to visit them in Argentina for a time. Brother Holm is a lawyer, so I spent a lot of time talking to him about political processes and law and I shared with him a little bit about the "We The People" program that I took. It was really interesting and had me thinking about careers to do in political science; he said that studying Political Science and English as majors and minors would be the biggest advantage in a law school. 

Afterwards, Elder Reynolds and I went with Elder Otterstein and Elder Hasleton in their area because our bus didn't go back to Mercedes until eleven forty-five. So Elder Otterstein and I went out together and at the end of the night when we all got back we found out that Elder Hasleton had led himself and Elder Reynolds to a dangerous area where people usually get robbed. Of this Elder Hasleton said, "Well I felt the Spirit so I wasn't worried about it." So I told him, "well I'm sure that Abinidi felt the Spirit too right before he died."

On Sunday, President Baldovino, the branch president, and I went to go look for some people to invite to church when we went to a lady's house named Mercedes Itati. We clapped outside their gate and her youngest son Mauro, who is about five years old, came to the window and asked what we needed. We told him that we had come by to invite them to and offer them a ride to church. So he said that he'd be right back and then his older sister, Agustina, came who is probably thirteen years old. She then told us that they wouldn't be able to go to church because the baby was sick. Mauro then said, "The baby doesn't have a single problem," Agustina then insisted that the baby did indeed have a fever, "She's lying," interjected Mauro. Agustina gave her brother a look before he said, "She just hit me!" So we just said that we'd come by some other time. President Baldovino got a pretty good laugh out of that whole conversation.

os amo,

Elder Burt