Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Do I know how to cook meat? Do Mexican's wear sombreros?


Hello most beloved mother of mine! Oh how i miss you:) I would like to start today´s letter with the story of the baptism we had:) Sheesh... where to begin. Ok so when my comp and i got to the area we are in now, one of the members sent us a reference of a single mom who had listened to the sister missionaries before. (this is the same one i have been talking about for a while now. the same one who's puppy died a couple weeks back haha) anyways, we passed by and she was very receptive but seemed a little too worried about her work and taking care of her daughters at the time to really commit to anything like going to church. But for some reason i felt like she just needed a little more of a push. so we kept going by. (the fact that she sells really good burgers and hot dogs at night also motivated us to pass by often haha.) After a while of some pretty careful commitment lessons, she finally agreed to go to church! ever since then she has not failed to go for even one sunday. Her conversion process has been similar to others in many ways. For example dropping coffee was a hard one for them. But the biggest one was keeping the sabbath day holy. She would go to church but she always kept her little hot dog stand open on sundays because that was the day she would earn the most. she was afraid to close because that made the difference for her in the week. anyways, we realized it was an important commandment that would bring many blessings so we taught that one to her really well. The next sunday (she didn´t close) she hardly sold anything. the following sunday she sold absolutely nothing. after that sunday she called us and said i will never open again on Sundays for the rest of my life! i know now that this is an important commandment. and so she has been closing every single sunday! (she got TONS of blessings for that one!)

So anyways, lots of things i can comment about her and her daughters (Oh they are the ones who through me my birthday party too! haha). but the thing is, we have basically been teaching them ever since we got to the area which was almost 4 months ago. normally when somebody takes so long to progress i just leave them and go find someone else. Ok that sounds harsh but the truth is, that is what we have to do with missionaries. only teach the people who accept us right? well this time i didnt feel like it was the right thing to do to leave this little family. my comp got a little mad at me at times because he was just like Dude they aren´t going to get baptized! everytime he told me that, i was just like Challenge Accepted! haha. Anyways it took a ton of work. But finally, we got them ready for baptism! Then we get a call from her on Thursday (the day before their baptism) saying her 10 year old daughter is super sick. throwing up all over the place and a whole bunch of other stuff. She said they still wanted to get baptized but they thought maybe it would be better to wait a little longer until she got feeling better. i was like not on my watch! or the Lord´s anyway! so we went running over there. it was chaos! the poor mom was running all over the place super stressed out because she had a bunch of customers at the door waiting for their hamburgers. For some reason the meat wasn´t holding up and the burgers just kept falling apart. she got even more stressed because she didn´t know what to do. it was not at a sell-able state. on top of all of that, her daughter threw up all over the floor and passed out on the bed. she was running all over the place to try and do like 10 things at once. So i was like yeah i should probably step in here... so i told her look take care of your daughter. she is number one priority. i will take care of the hamburger meat and the customers. she was like Do you know how to fix the meat? i was like Do Mexicans wear sombreros??? 

I looked at my companion and said Beast Mode Activated! (The sad part is he didn´t understand me because he speaks Portuguese haha). Anyways i ran over to the bowl of meat she was trying to form the hamburger pattys out of, and i could not figure out why they wouldn´t stick! she made them the exact same way she always did but for some reason it just wasn´t working that day. that is when it hit me. A thought came to mind, You have to out-think the opposition! so i was like clank... what would my mom do in a situation like this??? and then, as if you were actually present i basically heard you scream at me to put some freaking bread crumbs in the mix! so i was like what the clank. so my comp and i ran to the store right next door, bought some bread crumbs, threw it in the meat and then added 8 drops of super glue to make them stick really nicely! (just so you know i was kidding about the super glue... i hope you didn´t take me seriously on that part haha). anyways i threw those puppies on the grill and they held together like a champ! i served up the burgers and the customers said it was worth the wait because they were the best they had ever eaten! hahahaha oh boy. good ole concession stand days sure did come in handy! anyways, when the mom finished taking care of her daughter she came out and she was like where is everyone???? "i was all don´t worry they all left happy. Now lets talk about the Gospel."

So that was the minor miracle that happened. thanks to the help of you, mommiee, i saved the burgers! the greater miracle happened right afterwards. I explained to her how the same priesthood authority we use to baptize can be used to give blessings to heal the sick. she said she would love it if we could give her daughter one and that afterwards she was thinking about taking her to the emergency room because she had never seen her that sick before. (our bishop had passed by like an hour before we got there and dropped off some medication.) I told her to be patient and wait for the Hand of the Lord to bless her. we went in and i gave her a blessing. i told her to take the medication, to sleep and when she woke up she would feel much better for her baptism the next day. in the morning the next day, i called them to see how she was feeling. her mom said she was running around playing as if she never even got sick! she was so amazed at the drastic change of her health! i just told her never to doubt the Lord. When we are willing to follow His commandments, He will always be willing to help us accomplish them.

Needless to say, they both were SUPER excited about the baptism and the service went off without a hitch. (When i say "without a hitch" i mean that figuratively... like after i spent 4 hours trying to clean the baptismal font because everytime i turned the water on, cockroaches would come out. but after that, every thing went smoothly!!! haha:)

So it was a fun week:) Full of miracles. i can´t even begin to explain how thankful i am for the priesthood power on this earth. that day i thought a ton about my patriarchal blessing where it says i will be able to heal the sick and accomplish many things for the Lord. it truly was a blessing to be able to see how happy that family was when they came out of the water. they may not look that happy in the pictures because mexicans don´t like to smile in pictures, but hey! that is pretty good considering! haha. anyways the final part of the story was when the mom came up to us afterwards and thanked us for being so persistent with her. she said " i have nothing against the missionaries that came by before you guys but i just felt something different with you guys. i NEVER would have gone to church with the sisters because they wouldn´t have been able to give me the extra push you guys gave me." All the hard work, totally paid off:)

Ok so that is my storybook for this week:) I hope you enjoy:) I will try and send you a few more pictures also:) i sure do love yoU! I CAN´T WAIT TO SKYPE YOU ON MOTHERS DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:):)

Love
Elder Hackleman


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