Baptism in Sipacate!‏ (Week of 8/1)

Hola hola...

Yep... there has not been one baptism in Sipacate this year. It´s our area that we are only able to go to twice a week, has an attendance of about 15 people, and needs lots more support than what we are able to give.

He´s a niño of 8 years old. His grandparents are members, his mom wants to be baptized, but her husband won´t marry her, so she can´t... so we´ve been teaching him for the past couple of months. He´s the greatest. Yesterday, I helped him pay his tithing (1 quetzal), he gave the closing prayer in sacrament meeting, and he was just all smiles during his baptism! He makes us too happy.

Funny story: the other day we were teaching Carlos and Rosa. Carlos is going to get baptized this Sunday, but his wife still has doubts. It´s the same family that I talked about before... the husband always responds for his wife. We always have awesomely interesting lessons with them. We were teaching them about the Palabra de Sabidurìa (the word of wisdom) the other day. Long story short, near the end she said to her husband "No. ¡Vamos a sequir tomando nuestra cafesito!" We still have big dreams for this family... we´re gonna keep on luchando.

Yesterday, we were visiting a family reference that we had received. La familia Sanchez. When we first started, we only saw one lady, but then a few other people walked in and we realized there were already a couple of people in the room that we hadn´t seen before. So, really there were 5 people in the room. All family. We were mainly talking to the couple (parents and grandparents of all of the rest). By the time we went to say the closing prayer, there were 8 people in the room (still all family members), and when we opened our eyes at the end of the prayer there were 11 family members in the room with us!! They all just kept on walking in. Most of them were teenagers, so I thought they were going to bail out, but they all came in and actually stayed and talked with us. It was awesome.

I love how the families here are all just so huge, most live close to each other (sometimes in the same home, sometimes neighbors, sometimes in the same town, and occasionally some live far away), and they´re always together or getting together to spend time. It´s fantastic.

Life is great. We´re happy, healthy, and trying to be better everyday... even though I can still have my grumpy times... whoops :)

Love,
Hermana Marin