Hello! How are you all? We're good, it's just blistering hot and all we do is pray for rain! haha, it's coming! We'll hit rainy season soon enough.
Anyway, this week has been interesting. Last week when I was emailing, we got a text from one of our investigator's wife, informing us that he had suddenly passed away. We were so surprised! We'd taught him earlier that week, and he just had some weird arthritis thing going on with his foot. I guess he'd been taking non-prescribed medication, and it caused a hole in his intestine and he passed away. We visited them the next day, and it was really weird. As tradition here, the body stays inside the house in the casket for a couple weeks or so, and people come all hours to visit, and there are a lot of weird taboos that people worry about. It was hard, and just very surreal. We are going to go the funeral I guess? We asked President about it and he said we could go to the service at their church, but it might be at the giant Catholic cathedral, so we'll check up on that one. It's just so weird to have investigators pass away, and be thinking about what THEY are thinking now on the other side. I'm excited to have the chance to teach their family about the plan of salvation though! I hope it helps them.
On the flip side of the plan- we have this other investigator who is SUPER hard to teach. he's just too smart for his own good. We FINALLY got him to commit to come to church, and after some prayer and fasting.. he didn't show. We texted him, and I guess his very pregnant wife decided to have the baby at the same time church was supposed to start! So, we'll try again with him next week. :) It's their 8th kid, and the 7th boy. We were texting them to make sure they are okay and joking about how many kids they have, and he said "multiply as much as there are stars in the sky, right, is what God said to Abraham?" haha, yes brother, that is what He said. I'm also really excited for them to understand where their little baby is coming from! What a blessing it is to know the Plan.
Real quick- we had the best activity earlier!! We went to the beach, after we spent an hour or so at the church filling up "water balloons" which were just plastic bags from the wet market. Then, we all piled into tricycles and had a fight at the beach. SO FUN!! Then, we played volleyball and frisbee, and even bought a giant tarp thing and had a makeshift slip and slide on the shore. Then we made sand castles! We had a good time making the Salt Lake Temple, and writing "To learn more, visit: www.mormon.org" on the sand in front of it, haha. Once a missionary, always a missionary!!
I love you all, and thanks for everything!
Sister Porter
