Dear Family and Friends and Kinsfolk,
Sorry,
I had some pictures to send, but I left my pendrive that has them in
our house, so that will have to wait until next week.
So this week was good. We didn´t have to travel to Sao Vicente which was awesome.
So the big event this week was the baptism of Sandino and Joaquim. They have both experienced great changes.
Sandino
wasn´t baptised in past weeks because he wasn´t willing to get back
from work tired and then spend the rest of the day traveling to get to
where he could skype his interview. But, he had a change of heart, and
ended up missing the car to come to his interview, so he started on foot
with an amazing attitude, and then the next day there were problems
with the car getting people from his area down to the baptism, so when
he knew that it wasn´t going well, he started on foot and got down 30
early like we had asked him to be, while everyone else showed up 50 mins
late. It was a real blessing to not have to worry about wheither he
would show or not. The same thing sunday,
he came down by himself and waited outside the church for 40 mins
before because it wasn´t open yet. He also called us yesterday, just
wanting to chat about how happy he is and about how all he wants to do
is to serve God. It is incredible. If he continues like this he will
end up a stake president or something like that here in not long. It is
amazing.
So when we showed up at the baptism, Joaquim informed us that there
is a place that he had a tank of water that he had checked like 10 mins
away, instead of this new place we had found that was part of the ocean
that is super beautiful a bit further away. We decided to go to the
place that he had said, and when we got there, the tank of water
wouldn´t work, so he said that there was another one further up the way,
so we started up, but there wasn´t a trail or anything. We were
walking on rocks and aquaduct things all the way up for like 15 mins.
It was like living the rainforest cafe. This was the real deal. It
was so incredible. We got to the tank, and it had like 12 feet of water
with very tiny steep stairs on the side, so we tried like 6 times to
baptize there, but they kept falling in, so we started even further up
trying to go to another tank that we thought hopefully had more water,
and Elder Sanchez and I stopped behind to say a prayer, and after we
stopped the prayer, someone suggested that we could try a place in the
river bed, that might still have a bit of water, so we started to check,
and found this place. It looked like the waters of mormon with all the
rocks and green. It took them 5 or 6 tries to get Sandino baptized
because there wasn´t that much water and it was slipery and they kept
falling over, but in the end, Sandino knelt down and they did it like
that, then Joaquim was baptised. I was a bit afraid that they were
going to be unhappy because of all the problems in finding a spot, but
Joaquim wasn´t and Sandino was super happy, talking about how it was a
place special just for him, and that one day he would bring his kids up
to show them "I was baptised right there".
That night we watched the Testimants as an activity, and that was
super powerful for the members. I got back to my house and was so full
of the spirit that there aren´t words to express now and there weren´t
words then to express my gratitude for that day.
The mission is by far the hardest thing that I have
ever done, but when we have trials in our lives, we are foced to rely on
the Lord or fall. We have to learn to rely on Him before we start to
fall and before we are too far. The Lord is the way. This is His work.
Nothing else is worth it in the end. Only the things that pertain to His Holy Gospel.
Love,
Elder Sampson
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