Week 5 in Aregua: A Baptism!

Dear Family and Friends,

What a crazy week.

On Tuesday, we had a reunion with all of our zone (instead of just our district) because our zone leaders wanted to bajar la caña (or chew us all out) for being such a lazy zone without baptisms in over 2 months. I was feeling pretty bad after the meeting, but not for long because the zone leaders came up to Elder Silva and I and personally thanked us for all our good work and told us to keep doing what we're doing. We must be doing something right!

I can't really take much of the credit for our success though; here in Aregua C, great new investigators who are ready to progress and learn are just falling into our hands! This week for example, Elder Silva and I were walking to an appointment when a less active woman told us that the man she lives with wants to hear from us. We visited him later that day and he accepted baptism, and a baptismal date on the 7th of May! If things work out, we'll be re-activating, and baptizing.
In our preparations for baptisms this week, we ordered a cake from a less active woman named Lorenza. When we went to pick it up on Saturday, we met her daughter-in-law, who responded (with more interest than we're used to) to our invitations to hear the lessons. There we have another opportunity to reactivate and baptize!

My favorite new miracle investigator is a man named C. He called us over from the street. He explained to us that right now his life is really hard because he's addicted to alcohol. His daughter (who is permanently in a wheelchair because of a spinal injury) recently kicked him out because his alcoholism has been causing problems in his family. I've never met anyone in the mission with such a desire to turn their life around. Using the scripture 1 Nephi 17:3, we testified that if he puts his faith in the Savior and lets us teach him and help him, God will make it possible to leave his addiction in the past. We ended the lesson with arrangements to teach him again and an invitation to attend church.

Before we realized it, the week was ending and the time came to prepare for our baptisms. I don't know why, but baptismal preparation has NEVER gone smoothly for me in the mission. I've had to fill the font by hand; once the water that entered the font was yellow and dirty; basically there's always something that goes wrong. This weekend was no exception.

Elder Silva and I woke up and entered the church early to wash out the font and prepare it, but after twenty minutes of "draining" the water, we realized that the water level wasn't actually dropping. The pump was running, but it wasn't pumping any water. Not wanting to waste any time, Elder Silva and I started bailing the water out of the window of the baptismal font by hand. In a matter of 15 or 20 minutes, we had successfully cleared out about half the water, but we were exhausted! Luckily, with the ingenuity and mechanical understanding of my comp, we figured out that to get the pump to pump water, we had to fill it up with water. With my dad's trusty old Leatherman, we were able to take out a part of the piping and fill up the motor with water. After that, the font drained without a problem. We thought that that was the end of our problems but then we realized that the warm water we were filling the font with was tinted yellow... so we had to empty it all over again and fill it up with cold water. In the end, after many struggles and prayers, we got everything successfully set up!

The first of the baptisms we had scheduled was of a nine year old girl named A. Her family is THE BEST. Her dad, Hermano Carlos, is hilarious and her mom is a charismatic school teacher who has helped me out with my Guaraní (now I know how to count past 100 in Guaraní; most Paraguayans only know to count to 5). The problem is that A is super shy. Elder Silva told me that it's a miracle that she even talks to us because she used to run and hide from the missionaries. Elder Silva and I have been super worried that she'd be too scared to get through the baptismal interview and that all our hard work would end there. To our surprise, she passed the baptismal interview without a problem. In fact, we had no problem with her until she entered the water to be baptized... In addition to a fear of talking to people, A has a fear of water. After much pleading, she finally agreed to give it a shot but... refused to put her head under the water. The second time, she completely submerged... except for 2 fingers. After that, she was done. And we weren't able to finish the service. It was really sad and hard, especially for her family, but we're going to have a lesson with them tonight to try to reschedule the baptismal service for this Saturday!

Our second baptism went a lot more smoothly. We finally baptized A.S., the father of a missionary serving in Brazil. We had to baptize him on Sunday morning before church because of his work schedule, and for a while, we were scared he wouldn't show up. But everything worked out and we had a great baptismal service.

Church after the baptism was great too because, even though it was raining all day (which means not many people could make it to church), our new investigator C (with the alcohol problem) showed up! He really is putting in a lot of effort to change his life! Also, I realized in church that no one here in Aregua really knows my name. Carlos Guttierez (the 9 year-old's dad) calls me Elder Hendy (which means "complicated" in Guaraní). And most of the other ward members call me "Elder Rubio" ("Blond") or "Elder Silva's companion." It's all cool though. I really do have a complicated name!

I'd like to wrap up with a thought from my reading this week. In an effort to understand the history of the early church better, this week I read the book "Our Heritage" from the missionary library. I was really hit hard by the story of Zion's Camp, when Joseph Smith marched at the head of an army of saints to reclaim their homes and lands in Missouri. Speaking of the march, the book said that "an opportunity to prove obedience in difficult circumstances... was provided by the march of Zion's Camp." The men suffered a lot; in fact, they "were often required to eat limited portions of coarse bread, rancid butter, cornmeal mush, raw pork, and rotten ham," and at one point, due to disobedience, a large number fell sick to a cholera epidemic. According to the book "this refining process revealed the grumblers who did not have the spirit of obedience," and "the journey had revealed who was on the Lord's side and who was worthy to serve in positions of leadership."

I'm not suffering anything near what the men of Zion's camp suffered, but the story made me think: "Am I a grumbler in my mission? Will my trials here reveal that I'm on the Lord's side or that I'm a complainer?" In my short time here in Paraguay, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure the answer to the question "Am I on the Lord's side?" is a definite "YES!"

I love you all. The church is true, and if we endure to the end, even if we don't understand why we're suffering or if we have doubts, we'll be blessed with peace and happiness that can't come from anywhere but from nuestro Señor y Salvador, Jesucristo.

Elder Fairbanks

"A selfie for the fam" (Elder Fairbanks in a "beautiful place" he & Elder Silva found while tracting in Aregua C)

"A beautiful place" Elders Silva & Fairbanks found while tracting in Aregua 

Elder Silva in Aregua C (4/10/16)

More of beautiful Aregua (4/10/16)

Still more - Aregua (4/10/16)

Baptism of A.S. by Elder Silva (4/10/16)

Baptism day for A.S. (4/10/16)