I know it´s been a while since I´ve sent any good pictures, but on the computers in this lan house, I can´t do anything. I´ll have to try something new this next week.
So, this week was pretty awesome. I think I told you last week that we brought two men to church that we could probably baptize. I´ll tell you now about one of these men, Carlos.
We met Carlos last Saturday, just a little more that a week ago. He was sitting outside his house, all alone. We went and made a contact, and asked him to come to church the next day. he accepted, but here in my mission everyone accepts and then gives a lame excuse when it´s time for church, so we weren´t expecting much. But the next day we passed by, and he was all ready, waiting outside his house for us :) We were super excited, and we went to church with him, and he loved it. He was a little nervous, because he wasn´t used to being around so many people, but it was still really great. We found out that he lived alone, and that his birthday was coming up, so the whole next week we visited him, taught all the lessons, and then on Friday we planned to finish up with the commandments, fill out his baptism form, and then have a birthday party for him to celebrate his 50th birthday. So we started teaching the commandments, and talking about the baptism questions, and we discovered that he had a lot of problems. He drank coffee, but that's easy though as he just has to promise to stop, which he did. He drank beer, but like coffee he just had to promise to stop, which he did. The last problem he had took us by surprise, and was a little harder to fix. Carlos was gay. This 50 year old man who lived alone, who was progressing so much in the gospel, and who was loving the church.... was gay. It kinda killed the birthday party we had planned. And when we started filling out his baptism form, looking at his date of birth we found out that it wasn´t even his birthday, but we didn´t say anything though, because we already had bought the cake and candles. He wanted to be baptized so badly though. He wanted to leave all his sins, and start a new life. He promised us he would stop being gay, but still it was a little more complicated than that. First he had to be interviewed by the zone leaders, then the zone leaders had to talk to the mission president, then the mission president had to talk to the stake president, and then the stake president had to interview Carlos. I felt really bad for Carlos, with all the interviews he had to do, because he was so nervous. But he did really well in all the interviews, and was allowed to be baptized! This man changed his live completely to join the church, and I had the opportunity to help him! It was probably one of the most rewarding baptisms I´ve seen. He was so ready to change, and start a new life following Christ. It was also the fastest baptism I´ve had. We met him and then 8 days later he was baptized.
So that was the highlight of my week. Everything else has been going normally.
I hope you all have a great week. I´ll try to send pictures of Carlos´ un-birthday party and baptism. Thanks for your emails, letters, and prayers. They mean a lot to me. I pray for you guys every night too. Keep choosing the right, and don´t forget about me once Amber gets home :P
Love, Elder Forsyth!
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