Week 22, Jan 5 - And the work continues

Not much has happened in the last week. Holidays aren´t very nice to missionary work, because people never remember the Christ in Christmas - and as a result are obsessed with themselves and buying and sales and parties and have way too much prisa to talk with us. We´ve spent a lot of time contacting. But a couple cool things have happened:

We took directions from two midgets, which later turned out to be incorrect.

A crazy Cuban woman got our phone number (which isn´t very hard - we give it to everyone) and now she keeps calling us and yelling about how she has our book and then . .  . I´m not sure. Not even the native speakers understand her. She has called from 3 different phone numbers trying to get in contact with us, every time yelling frantically and unintelligably

We´ve contacted several Nigerians, which is always fun because they have deep voices and cool accents and really, REALLY spicy food (Elder Norrell got some serious acid reflex/heartburn). But then you have to learn how to give a lesson in English, and THAT is hard - I have to talk about the gospel only in Spanish or Spanglish now, which I didn´t think would happen. 

In relation to a menos activo who said continuosly he´d come to church but never did, the ward mission leader told us, "Ese hombre . . tiene más palabras y menos acción que un diccionario." That was funny. 

Juan (more on him later) came to an English class wanting to learn how to pronounce some words for a song he´s been learning. And, upon realizing that Elder Norrell has a very deep voice, he decided that for English class they´d sing together. (I´m very grateful Juan was our only student that night.) Long story short, now I can´t get Elvis Presley´s "Can´t help falling in love" out of my head. 

The ward mission leader was released, put back in as Elders quorum president, and now we have counselors in the Branch Presidency for the first time in two years! But also no ward mission leader for the forseeable future. In a branch of 40 attending members, there´s not a lot of priesthood leadership. Both the Branch President and one of his counselors have only been active for 2ish years. We´re very, very close to an apostasy - thank heavens for the Manual. Apparently it used to be worse - things like the Branch President paying members, using tithing and fast offerings, so that they´d come to church on Sundays. Another Mission Leader quote - "Casi nadie sabe la locura que era ésta rama."

We´ve signed up more than 25 people for English class . . more stories on that when it starts. 

We met someone named William Guerras, who told us how evil religion was for causing wars, and how we were just nutcases trying convert everyone and his 20 dollars per month paid to the UN did more than all of us put together. How ironic. 

We have a progressing investigator named Juan - his brother is a menos activo and really, Juan´s been the only real member reference we´ve gotten. He´s been coming to church for the past 2 months and yesterday, he shared in the Principios de Evangelio class (taught by Hermana Doli, the Stake President´s maquina wife) that he´s pretty sure that joining the church is in his future - and we´re going to try and give him a fecha this coiming Friday! We´ve tried in the past, but always gotten lukewarm answers - a couple prayers from home sure couldn´t hurt - It´s sure not going to be us that convinces him he wants to be baptized.

And, for a spiritual thought, I challenge everyone who reads this letter to find a copy of "Remember Lot´s Wife" by Elder Holland. I think it´s a BYU speech because that´s what my copy says, but I have no idea what that means. I assume if you google it you´ll find it. It´s a great talk to read during January. 

Love, Elder Maxfield

P.S. Thank you in advance for any mail/packages that were sent - It all comes this week on Thursday.