July 26, 2010
Brun (Anghedon) and Jasmine told us yesterday that they want to be baptized. We had put our baptismal goal for August at 1, but on Saturday night we felt we should change it to 2. When I called Jasmine during the week, i could tell they had something they wanted to tell us. They told us about them wanting to be baptized after church yesterday. We put the appointment for August 15, because they are going to be out of town next week. We are really happy and they are as well.
This week there was a really crazy lightning storm that made us soaking wet and made the power go out in the whole city. The lights went out in the middle of our lesson. The power has been going out a lot lately, and they’ve been shutting the water off in the city a lot as well.
Went on divisions again in Turrialba again this week. I try to go on divisions once a week and sometimes I have to go more than that, like last week.
Its been a good week. We had a lot of lessons, knocked a lot of doors, and found a lot of new investigators. We’ve been knocking around the church. We make every door contact the best we can, and even though most people don’t want to listen, we try our hardest to interest each person we talk to, about our message. Even though we’ve been knocking in the heart of this catholic city, we teach Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, Evangelicals, etc. as well. We found two sweet families around the church this week. We are going to keep knocking til we’ve knocked every door in every part around the church. We need more references. Haven’t gotten any. Working on that.
We continue to have English classes at the church, but only four people go. An elderly man named Reco, his granddaughter Samantha, El Italiano, and my comp. They all call me teacher. I gave the class an exam last week. The last question on the exam was, ‘Where did you come from, why are you here, and where are you going after this life?’ That question made it so people in the class started to ask questions, and I was able to talk a little about the plan of salvation and the restoration, and now we are teaching Reco and Samantha. Reco is an elderly man that always has red eyes, always shakes, and smells like alcohol. Basically he drinks and smokes all the time, I want to help him. I am also helping a guy that lives in our house with English as well.
Hna Lijia (la dueña) has had leg and back problems since I got here, and I feel bad because even though we try to help her and tell her to rest she doesn’t listen. She gets really stressed because she feeds a lot of people that come into her house (I don't know who these people are, its really random types of people that come through here) and she feels she always has to make sure everything is clean all the time, even if she has to go through a lot of pain to get it done. Lijia was also taking care of her 96 year old uncle, A few weeks ago they took him to the hospital, and he died this week, so they had his funeral, and a lot of their family came to the house.
Yesterday Brun, Jasmine, and there son Sebastian came to church by themselves again. Some new investigators that live just down the street from the church, Jessica and Isa, came with us to church. Jessica is Isa’s daughter-in-law. Jessica is from El Salvador. Her father is a member of the church in El Salvador. Jessica is a really fun lady and is always laughing. She really enjoyed church and was already talking about baptism. She asked if her dad come down from El Salvador and baptize her, she knows he would be so surprised but so happy. She still hasn't decided yet. Isa is a little harder to read. She seems really negative about everything, but I think its just that she is is super sarcastic. She said she didn't like the church, because its not what shes used to, and she was complaining basically the whole time. She thinks that the people who prayed didn't pray loud enough and she said it was boring. I think she liked it more than she admits, but we’ll see. One thing she did say she liked a lot were the hymns. I had to point my finger at the words the whole meeting so she could sing along, but i think she finally gets how to read the hymns.
Today we went to Turrialba as a district to Parque Nacional Guayabo. It has the only Mayan ruins in Costa Rica. I was expecting something a little more spectacular, but in the end it was still really cool and we had a good time. We saw the ruins and also got to swing through the jungle on vines again.
Elder Tobler
