Things have been slowing down–and that is BAD. We need to keep up. Sister Duarte was telling me about how in her ward one time there were 40 baptisms in one month. Because there were ward missionaries helping with the teaching and the entire ward was involved. Wow. 40. Sister Duarte said on the day of all the baptisms, one of the sisters fainted when the 25th person was baptized. Yeah. I would faint too. I would probably faint several times before the baptisms too. But it just goes to show miracles are possible, and really… every member is a missionary. If everyone would get involved the second coming would probably come a lot, a lot faster…
We just had to pay $220 (belizeanos, that’s like 110 American money) for our water because last month our toilet was leaking and we didn’t do anything about it (very dumb). Hopefully they still have pity and reimburse us.
Jerry Jr did not show up to his baptism.
Again.
He didn’t want to come because his grandmother has been telling him again that he was already baptized and that he didn’t need to be baptized again. A lot of people think it’s sinful to be baptized again, because the way they understand Ephesians 4:5 is that “one baptism” means you get baptized once in whichever church by anyone and you better not ever even think to do it again because you already did it once and if you baptized more than once you go to heck and you’re “playing” with God.
Atlanta, Georgia. You poor confused (misled by Satan) souls. Don’t worry. We’ll baptism Jerry’s mom too. Just baptize em. Best solution for everyone.
We are working with a family named Briceno. The youngest daughter, Daviana, started crying every time we said the word “church” the first few times we taught her because she’d never entered a church before last Sunday. It was pretty funny, because Sister Duarte was trying to excite her to go and said, “Daviana, there’s lots of kids your age, it’s really nice in the church–” Afterward she said: “Then she gave me such a look that I felt like the most horrible person in the whole world. I felt like I was evil.” And Daviana burst into tears. I think she is a little bit special. The Bonilla family visited them the other week though, and Daviana loves Brother Bonilla. She now refers to him as “Cookoo” and starts laughing whenever Ssiter Duarte says (even when Bro Bonilla isn’t there), “Daviana: brother Bonilla is crazy!” The whole family is quite hilarious, because they talk SO MUCH. And it seems like they’re asking a question sometimes, but a lot of times they just start talking about things they’re thinking about.
We actually contacted this family because David Briceno and his kids painted our house. They work for our landlord, and we invited them to church and gave them pamphlets and things. Brother David read the pamphlet and said he was going to go to church because he wanted to know more about “who is Joseph Smith, and what was his calling. I want to know more about him.” Their son Richard is constantly grinning. He has a very funny personality. It’s kind of funny too because he says he doesn’t understand Spanish, but sometimes he talks to me in Spanish or answers in Spanish, but he doesn’t really understand Spanish very well, and he also seems to have a hard time understanding me in English occasionally.
We are also working with a family called the Martinez Family, the husband is a serious alcoholic, the mom is an angel and she says she loves reading the Book of Mormon. She reads it every day whenever she is frustrated because it helps her not to feel so stressed. Brother Martinez says he wants to change, but we haven’t been able to get him to church yet. Liani, their daughter, supposedly has a baptismal date Saturday… but I don’t know… she keeps disappearing from the house and she can’t be up to any good like that…
Thank you for the letters and the prayers. I know they help a lot.
Love,
Bek
Questions:
Do most people in Belize have cell phones? Yes. Quite a lot have cars too. If they don’t have cars they have bikes.
How many branches are there in Belize? That’s an excellent question. I just asked Elder Kline, he says 12. I guess the work is kinda slow here since the church came to Belize in the 80s or something, but people never seem to be able to stay past the first generation. There are only 2 returned missionaries that are active in our branch. Sister Martinez and Hno Andres Cruz (he is from El Salvador, served here, and decided to move here because he liked it so much.. not a bad idea, eh?).
Does the weather vary from place to place like it does in Costa Rica, or is it pretty much the same everywhere? I think it’s the same everywhere… which means some crazy angel in heaven who doesn’t know what he’s doing pours a bucket of rain over your head at random moments. Literally. It rains so crazy fast and hard that we get soaked in less than a minute and your shoes get full of puddles.
How many people attend your branch? It used to be pretty low attendance, there are supposedly a lot of members on record, but about 110-130 have been the attendance rates since we’ve been here, and compared to El Salvador, that’s good. They just need more priesthood.
How far away are the closest missionaries to where you live? At least two or more hours, if you don’t count the Senior Missionaries (they live about 10 min away on bike)
Where does the missionary couple live? (the ones that drive you around) Where are they from? Do they speak Spanish? They are from Utah… Alpine I think… They don’t speak Spanish, they act like they don’t care but they are trying to learn a little (unsuccesfully). They live really close and work in our ward too.
How many people there don’t speak any English? Do most of them speak Spanish or some other language? Pretty much all the active old members don’t speak English. Only a few are bilingual, plus the Martinez Family and Jerry now… There are only a few that don’t speak Spanish.
From what I’ve read, there are lots of ruins in Belize. Are you allowed to visit them on P-day? I suppose there would have to be on close enough to be able to do that. We went to the ruins actually. It was pretty amazing. I am going to send a dvd of pictures soon. 🙂