Sleeping In Bed Bugs For 7 Days

Saludos! Buenas tardes a todos. Gracias por escuchar y escuchando este mensaje. Hoy un dia. 

I am sick of writing and adding emails. Writing emails is horrible. Like, you guys have no idea how painful it is to sit at the computer and write an email. So today, I am going to do a voice recording because it will be a lot easier and faster. Then, I won't have to worry about punctuation. I can just stop my sentences and not have to do any capitalization. Let's go! I hate grammar. I'm sorry to my English teacher, but English just sucks in general. I hate it. I'm not going to admit anything, but I might have accidentally copied all the assignments in high school and cheated. But don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I hate English.

Fun fact: I actually learned what an adjective and noun were when I was in an RC boat with my trainer. Yeah, I don't know how I graduated high school without knowing English. I just hate English. I don't understand it. I just know how to speak it. I don't know how to do anything else. Anyway, so when I got to Bonito, I started waking up every morning with these random bites all over me. I was like, "Man, I keep getting bit by the worst mosquitoes here." But the mosquito bites that I thought were mosquito bites looked super weird because they had a little blood dot on top. I thought, "That's weird. I've never seen a mosquito bite like that." It was different from a typical mosquito bite, but it was super itchy. I thought it must be a mosquito bite because they're usually super itchy. So, a few days passed, and then last week I went to Pedal and talked to my mom. She said, "I think you have bedbugs." I replied, "There's no way I have bedbugs, you're freaking me out." She insisted, "No, I think you really have bedbugs." So I looked up what bedbugs look like, and I found a huge one. It looked exactly like a bedbug but was massive. There were also tiny bugs all over the bed. I actually had bedbugs, and I had been sleeping with them for eight days. It absolutely sucked. We had to get new sheets and stuff. It was a huge disaster and an adventure. Let me just say, sleeping with bedbugs is not fun. Now I'm scared of bedbugs. Every time I get into a bed from now on, I'll be super cautious and check for bedbugs. I never want to sleep with them again, and I did it for eight days. Now I have these bites all over my legs. It was not fun, let me tell you.

Moving on, we are making progress with Diego. The last time we taught him, we were going over the Gospel of Jesus Christ and teaching about baptism and all that. He seemed awkward about the idea. We got a weird vibe that he doesn't really understand why we're here and our purpose. So we prayed and thought about it. We felt that we needed to teach him the commandments because he had been taught everything else. We told him how much we care about him and that's why we're here. The testimonies were super good, and we found out about his plans and goals. It was awesome. Sister White was there, and we set a baptismal date for December 29. That will be sweet.

Also, we were teaching this lady who was telling us a funny story. When we got to her house, we had to have another man with us. Missionaries are not allowed to go into a lady's house without another man. So we arrived, and I noticed there were cards and urine and feces all over the porch. It was like, "What the heck?" Anyway, she asked if she should come inside, and we explained that we couldn't enter because there was no man present. She was surprised and said, "What? You guys can't come inside?" We explained that it's a rule for our safety and hers. She replied, "I'm like 70 years old. What am I going to do? There are cameras in my house. Just come in." We had to insist that we couldn't. We asked if we could get a chair and talk to her through the door. It was kind of funny because we ended up sitting on her porch, talking to her through the door while she stayed inside to avoid the cat urine and feces. It smelled weird, but it was still an awesome experience.

During the conversation, I shared a lot about the restoration, and then she asked if we wanted something to drink. We politely declined because we didn't feel like it was the right message for her at the time. Instead, we asked her what she was struggling with, and we found out that she was afraid of death and unsure about her eternal destination. But when we shared our testimonies and the message of the Gospel, she said, "I believe you. If this is true, I'm not scared anymore. I know what you're saying is true. Invite Him to be here, and I want to be baptized. Let's work towards that goal so I can enter a higher degree of glory." She felt prepared and believed that God had sent us to her. She spoke for about 15 minutes, expressing her readiness and faith. Then, she mentioned that she was leaving tomorrow to visit her daughter in Georgia for two months. All her kids had moved to the States, and she had been struggling with helping her husband, who had heart problems. That's why we wanted to help her change her life and get baptized before she left. We suggested getting her in contact with the missionaries in Georgia so she could continue her journey there. However, she mentioned that she wasn't sure if her daughter would allow her to relax and attend church. We encouraged her, saying, "Who cares what your daughter says? Just go to church. You can all go together." We tried calling her on Saturday night and yesterday to get in touch with her and find out her whereabouts, but she didn't answer. It was an awesome lesson, but also a bit frustrating because she was going on vacation to the States, and she could have been baptized. We could have helped her. We'll try to contact the elders to assist her.

On another note, our other baptismal date, Juan Guzman, moved to Theo. He was on house arrest, and we asked him about his plans. He mentioned getting a house, possibly by Monday or Tuesday. We thought that was great because he could start coming to church. We even planned to baptize him before he left. However, he called and canceled our lesson on Monday, but then he rescheduled it for tomorrow, which was perfect. He still wanted to talk to us. Unfortunately, he called us on Tuesday and said he had already moved to another place. He thanked us for everything and asked us to put him in contact with the missionaries in his new area. We sent his information to the missionaries covering Villalba, and they have an easy baptism opportunity with a great guy. It was cool, but also a bit sad that we're offering free baptisms to everyone, yet people keep leaving. We found out that Diego is also leaving Teal to get a better job in the States. However, he told us that he wants to put God first and get baptized before he leaves on Friday. Finally, someone who wants to stay!

On Friday, while walking in the streets, we met a lady and her friend sitting on a porch. The friend was a devout Catholic, and we decided to try teaching them about the restoration. As we explained, they became curious about the many churches in the world. One of them said, "Let me know when you guys find out who has the authority." The other lady freaked out, saying that no churches are truly like that. We didn't bash her beliefs or anything; we were just trying to help them understand. I shared a powerful scripture, and it had a strong impact. However, the lady who was initially calm started getting frantic when it began to rain. They gave us a fake number, which was weird. We'll have to go back to her house because she might have accidentally given us the wrong number due to her frantic state. On the bright side, we met another guy in the street and had a direct conversation, which seems to be more effective. We discussed the purpose of water baptism and why authority is essential. He said he had already been baptized in the Baptist church, but we explained that without proper authority, it's like taking a shower instead of receiving a valid baptism. We had hope when he said he would read a pamphlet and pray about it, but when we called him the next day, he said he was busy and hung up on us. It was confusing and disappointing. We thought he was genuinely interested and felt the Spirit strongly. It's another testimony to me that Satan is working hard on these people, especially when we're giving our all and bringing the Spirit into our teaching. Satan tries to undermine our efforts and make people doubt us. But we truly care about them and want them to experience the joy we've found.

This week was pretty hectic, with many ups and downs. It was mentally, physically, and spiritually draining. I feel exhausted, but it's a reminder that I need to be here because the adversary is working hard to thwart our plans. Despite the challenges, it was still an awesome week. My mission president shared a scripture with me, Helaman 16:22. I encourage you all to read it because it's super awesome. That's all I can remember from this week. I'm sorry I didn't write a detailed email. I didn't want it to be 12 minutes of me talking about random things. But I do this because my grandma wants to hear from me. Shout out to Grandma; she's the only one who actually responds to me. Anyway, one day we went with a member who took us to visit inactive members. It was a great experience because my companion and I are new to this area, and we don't know many people yet. We asked him to accompany us and introduce us to the less active members. We visited each of them, and it was awesome. Some of them were like, "What are you doing? Why didn't you come to my house earlier?" So now we're planning to go back with our branch president and remind them that it's time to come to church. We're working a lot with less active members in the ward because they need some help. That was our job this week, and it was awesome.