Hahaha. So this is my....second to last email. And this last week has just been soooo crazy! Its just Elder Serrano and I trying our hardest to get all these baptisms through before I'm outta here. Its so nuts! So much fun and so much running around. Just helping people while trying to keep my sanity and my patience too.
For example....
So we had a wedding planned for this last Saturday for Lynn-Lynn. SHe's the one whose been an investigator for the last 6 years and hasn't been able to join the church cuz she's living with her member boyfriend and they havent had the money to get married. So she got this paper from the government certifying that they had been living together for 5 years and we were told that that was the paper that certified them as married. Well, on Friday night, Churchill got called back to work in Surigao which meant that we needed to finalize everything ASAP. We went over to their house and Elder Hardin looked at the 5 year affidavit that they had gotten and said that that was the paper that considers them married. So we congratulated them and then went home for the night.
But the Philippines government isn't THAT easy.....not by a long shot.
The next morning, the day of her baptism, I get the prompting that we need to go double check with someone to make sure even though EVERYONE was telling me that that paper was the final deal. We go over to the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare something starting with a D) and ask them what that paper means. Well, turns out that the paper takes the place of the marriage certificate! We still have to have a ceremony in order to make this thing official! So then we went into a frenzy calling the district president and anyone else that we can to see if we can get these two people married before 6 pm that night. But just one dead end after another. And the worst part was that we knew that Churchill wasn't going to make it until next Saturday so we were definitely running out of time. Turns out that the thing that we needed now was a Marriage Certificate that they would need to sign at their wedding ceremony and we didn't even know what that looked like. Well, it was going to be postponed. THat was the bottom line. But that night during the baptism (we couldn't baptize Lynn2x but we still had 3 others get baptized) I went into the Branch President's office feeling really anxious and not good at all. I was really worried about Churchill leaving back to Surigao and Lynn2x not getting baptized. But as I prayed I said, "We did everything that we could, Lynn2x and Churchill did everything they could and I don't understand why we still failed. I know it is your will that Lynn2x be baptized" and then I felt the response of, "Yeah. It is My will. But not this week. If it was my will for it to happen tonight then it would be happening. Don't worry. Its all good." And then I felt fine.
But I had a new determination. I realized that Lynn2x's baptism was conditional on all of us doing the best that we could to make it happen. If we started slacking then we were going to lose the Lord's help. Elder Serrano and I decided that we could shoot for a wedding on Tuesday if we worked really hard on it. The Lutopan branch president sent us some papers for the marriage contract with the Elders at District MEeting. Then we were off to work. We needed to have this thing all typed out before Tuesday morning. We ran all over the place Monday afternoon looking for someone who could put these forms in a typewriter and get them all typed up. But that was looking impossible now. We got to the DSWD office and asked if they could do it and they said no. It was 5 o clock. People everywhere were going home. The government was going home for the night. In desperation we went to our branch president and asked him what we could do. He sat in his internet shop and proposed that he make a template for the forms and then print them off. We thanked him greatly and then left with a prayer in our hearts. Long story short, he couldn't but his wife was able to make a template. But then we didn't have any witnesses. So Tuesday morning we were running everywhere to get witnesses. Got four of them and then got back to the internet shop. We got it printed off and got to the church at 11 am for the 1:30 wedding. Lynn2x and Churchill got married yesterday and I was there for it. Sooooo happy. Maybe the happiest moment of my mission. Its definitely becoming the happiest weeks of my mission.
We're getting prepared for Lynn2x, Rowena, Ernie and Klein to get baptized this Saturday and then Soy2x the next week.
Love you guys. See you in two weeks. And here we are.....
