Heelllloooo FAMILY!
Things are just great here in Arenal, thanks for asking! Yep, I´m still in the same ward that I´ve been in since December, and this is officially my tomb. I´ll be finishing my time as a full-time missionary here in this Ward. It´s so great. So here´s an update:
After several weeks of difficulty, we´ve begun to see mild success again in our area. Two weeks ago we baptized a boy named Daniel, whose mom is a less-active member and dad is a non-member (and non-interested haha). It was kind of a battle with them, considering the fact that they live right next door to us. We had started working with them a few months ago, but decided to leave them because they never went to church. But one day about three weeks ago we decided to try and visit them again, and they accepted. They attended Sacrament meeting and Stake Conference with us, and then Danny was baptized last Sunday. All went well, except for the fact that the boiler has kind of stopped functioning and the water was freezing cold. Fortunately, cold water still works to wash away sins. He got confirmed yesterday, and he got really shy and didn´t want to sit in the chair to be confirmed in front of everybody. But I went up to help and participate in the ordinance, and all went well. Remission of sins received!
Yesterday we had the awesome opportunity to baptize Daniela, the daughter of another less-active mother named Olivia. She is one of the most intelligent 9-year-old girls I have ever met! My last companion (Elder Galvan) and I were working with her in February but also decided to drop her because her mom would go to parties on Saturday night and wouldn´t wake up to take her to church on Sundays. But, again, we decided to re-visit them, and they decided to put the batteries in and make an effort to attend Church. Long story short, they have been going to Church every week and Daniela got baptized yesterday (with the same cold water with which Daniel got baptized...the pump that takes the water out of the baptismal font is broken too...so we had to use the same water as the week before). But still, the water was cleaner than the water was at the River Jordan, so all went well.
President Hicken sent us a really good email this week about obedience to our leaders, and I feel like that is one of the most important things I´ve learned here on the mission. He used the example of Brigham Young, when Joseph accused him ofdoing something wrong when he knew he was innocent. Instead of trying to ¨defend¨ himself, or prove Joseph wrong, he humbly said, ¨What would you like me to do?¨ That´s the attitude we need to have when we receive counsel from our leaders. Whenever the assistants call us and ask us to do something that seems a little strange with the Zone, I always just say yes. My companion usually asks me, ¨why do they want us to do that?¨ And I tell him that I don´t know, we just need to say yes and do it. It´s something that has blessed me immensely, and it´s an attitude that I think will help all of us throughout our lives.
Anyway, I love you all. Have a great week!
Elder Budge
