This week went by so fast. So much has changed now too. I´m just gunna get going from monday. A pretty normal day and and we got to bed about 1030 and woke up at 2 to get on a bus to montevideo again for another mission leadership council. Got there at 8, breakfast, meeting, lunch, meeting and we ended at about 6 in the afternoon. Basically whats going on is this. Before president Cook got here almost a year ago, we had some pretty hard presidents. The mission and the members got into this "baptize at all costs" kind of attitude. Which produced thousands and thousands of... less actives. The retencion rates were about 20 percent. Then president cook came in and one of his assistants was an elder who left the mission as a baptizing legend. This gave president the impression that we were just about baptisms so that is what he focused on for a few months. But then things started to change and the mission as a whole changed and now our retention rates are better and improving. We might not be baptizing as much, but we are baptizing a lot better. Now we know HOW to baptize all we need to do now is do it faster. So in the council all we talked about was how we can do this. Help the missionaries really to under DC 20:37 and really apply it to their work and their investigators. So we changed the requirments to be baptized here in the mission. Now instead of coming to the SACREMENT meeting TWICE, they have to come to ALL THREE HOURS at least THRICE. Only then can the missionaries start to analize their investigators to see that they meet the requirements found in DC 20:37. Its a good change, but already we have seen a huge decrease in urgency and "fruits". So that was fun, we got on a bus at about 11 that night and headed home. Got home at 4 in the morning, slept two hours and got up to work that wednesday. Probably one of the most physically demanding days of my mission.
From monday morning until wednesday night we had maybe a total of 6 hours of sleep. We prepared our information to present in the zone conference and I feel like the 22 missionaries took it really well. That was friday, we also had our baptismal interview for Natasha, the niece of Daniel, who just got baptized, which went well, and then we prepared everything saturday, baked a cake to share after, and had her baptism sunday afternoon. I´m not gunna lie, probably one of the most spiritual moments in my mission.
So listen to this, the opening prayer was by Anthony (her cousin and recent convert), then I had to come up with a talk on baptism on the spot because the member didn´t show up, then a talk on the holy ghost by Stella (her aunt and recent convert) then she was baptized by Daniel (her uncle and recent convert) then we watched some inspiracional videos while they changed and she shared her testimony and started crying, so Daniel and Stella started crying, then they hugged and all the members were crying. It was great. Closing prayer by Jean or Ian (cousin and recent convert). Natasha has been waiting soooooo long to be baptized, she is 12 years old and really has a strong testimony in the church and with so many family members who are members, they are all going to stay active for the rest of their lives, I´m pretty positive. A good day. A good week.
I think that´s about it for this week. I can´t really think of anything else that happened. Oh yeah, I got the package with the mug in it. haha That´s pretty legit. So thanks for that. I´m running out of room in my journal, I gotta find a new one.
Elder Webber
photos of the baptism and rodriguez doing the baptism dance.
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