He is Going to Africa!

Hey guys,

Well it sounds like it is football season again! I asked President if he could join a fantasy team under my name and keep it up for me but he said no. Go figure! 

This week we had a visit from Elder Held of the Seventy. He is a really cool guy! He and his wife were born in Bogota but their parents were born in Germany. They spoke German in their houses as children and Spanish everywhere else. 

They then moved to Germany and got married. Then one night the missionaries knocked on their door and 10 months later they were baptized. 

They learned about the Gospel when they were 28 years old. And he is now a General Authority which goes to show that conversion has nothing to do with time but it has everything to do with dedication. 

This week was kind of slow in the sense of the missionary work because we had to do a lot of stuff for the conference with Elder Held because it was in our chapel. 

We bought 90 liters of soda. Do you know how much soda that is? 30 3 liter bottles. After the conference there were like 20 left over and we took 10. 

There will no longer be any baptisms this Saturday because we are going to have stake conference and the leaders are in a meeting on Saturday. Esther's baptism will have to be for the 15th of September. 

The ward secretary in our ward just got his mission call and I have been waiting so long for it. 

He always comes out on splits with us and is literally such a good kid. 

Yesterday he opened it at the chapel. He had like a testimony meeting and everything and everyone made guesses on where he would go. 

Now, basically the majority of people from South America go to another country in South America or maybe Mexico. And every now and again the USA. So those were basically the guesses. 

Side note: Latinos are very superstitious and make things up in their brains about everything they think they know. It is terrible. You will understand why I mentioned that in a second. 

He finally got to the part of opening his letter. He pulled it out and read the whole first paragraph and his eyes just got a little big and he had his mom come up and stand by him. 

He started reading the letter, about halfway through his moms eyes got really big and she just started crying and crying and crying like frantically. 

Then he gets to the end and says¨ You are hereby assigned to serve in the Ghana Accra West mission.¨ and I was literally the only person besides him and his mom that knew where that was. And I understood completely why she was crying. 

In the mind of a person in Colombia you might as well be sending the poor kid to the moon. It almost doesn't fit in their minds that he is going to Africa. It was really funny. 

In the conference with Elder Held he told us all that we have to fill out a My Family pamphlet with our 4 generations in it to be able to show to investigators. So this Wednesday my companion and I will be going to the family history center in our chapel to receive help from the ward lady. (He did take this information with him, but I'm not sure he knows it)

This week I gave my first ever baptismal interview. His name is Honorio and he is a great guy. A little strange but a great guy. He passed and was baptized but I really enjoyed the chance to really figure out if he had a testimony which he did. 

Anyways, that is my week! Love you guys! 

Con amor,

Elder Reese