Mother's Day Call

Mother’s Day 

Talking to Carolyn was GREAT on Mother’s Day.  She seems to be happy and doing better… adjusting to life in a third world country and missionary work.  This week they will get to go listen to Elder Amado of the Seventy on Monday at a conference, have P day on Tuesday and Wednesday they have interviews with the Mission President.  She will get all her mail (Dear Elders) on Wednesday and she is very excited because the mission office staff told her she had a ton waiting for her!  (“Keep them coming!” – her words!)   I had a full page of questions to ask her and so I got pretty much all my questions answered, finally!  They live in the guest house of a family who is from Guatemala, but they currently live in Utah.  They are thinking of using the main house for the church meeting house since they could not pay the rent of where they were meeting and now the members have to travel 20 minutes by bus to get to the church in Antigua to hold their meetings.  This is a financial hardship on many of them.  So, if they decide to bring the branch back to San Pedro las Huertas, and use the house, Carolyn and her companion will have to move out, because they cannot live on the same property as the meeting house.  (Seems like a perfect place for them to live to me)  Then they would have to find someplace else to live.  Right now they are one of only a few companionships that have a kitchen and cook for themselves.  That is a huge blessing in a country like that!

A fun thing was that we got to speak with her companion, who is going home soon.  We wished her a HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY.  She was like “what do you mean?”.  Well they call their first companion/trainer their “MOM” (“DAD” for elders) and so when we started saying that she was all happy and said, “Oh si, si!  Es mi dia tambien!” (yes, it’s my day too!).  It was really cute.  Carolyn said she spoke to her dad.  She is an only member convert in her family, but she is excited to go home soon. 

Then Brian asked her to speak to us in Spanish.  She has always understood everything we said to her in Spanish, but she would never reply in Spanish, only English, so she gave us the beginning of the first discussion in Spanish.  Man!  That girl can speak Spanish!!! 

She told us about the families that she is teaching.  She is hoping to have a baptism this week, but the husband is kind of unsure still, but then his mother started coming to the discussions and is very interested!

Well, it was really fun and too long until Christmas day, but I’m sure it will come fast!