Let me just start right away with what happened this week.
On
Tuesday, it rained a ton. The climate here on Easter Island is
tropical, so the rain comes unexpectedly and it comes hard. The whole
afternoon we were searching for people, and we were just getting poured
on. I thought about the counsel that the mission president from my home
ward gave to just 'look up and smile' That's what we did, and we had a
jolly good time in the rain. We visited an older man from our ward who
lives alone, The other elders couldn't visit him, and had told him that
they would play a couple games of dominos with him, so we stopped by
taught him about the word of wisdom (because sometimes he accidently buys coffee thinking it is hecho) and we played dominos.
That night we were looking for a less
active member of the church. On Easter Island the houses don´t have
numbers. they just have street names. If you want to find someone, you
have to knock the whole street and ask everyone. We were knocking to
find this less active and a young mother answered the door. We talked
with her and asked if she knew where the member lived, and she told us,
but we kept on talking with her, and we asked if we could share our
message with her. She let us in, and we could see that she was there
with her family and they were all sitting around doing nothing and we
thought "this is awesome, we are going to teach a family". 5 seconds
didn't pass until this older woman comes out of the kitchen and begins to
yell at us saying "who let you into my house. Get out of my house! we
are Catholic!" we left. it was a bit of a bummer. but don't worry we don't
stay sad for more than 2 seconds. we left and knocked another door.
On
Wednesday we were knocking some doors, looking for more people, and we
heard someone playing a ukulele in a nearby house. obviously, we went
and knocked that door. we found a young man who was there, and he let us
in to hear our message. he told us that his dad is in Santiago because
he is really sick. He was very nice, and he liked what we had to say,
but he didn't have a lot of time, and he goes on vacation to Tahiti this
week, so we will wait another week to chat with G. again.
On
Thursday we had to stay in the house in the afternoon because there was
a protest near the house. dont worry, nothing happened. there is just
some tension between the Easter Island natives and the government of
Chile. the Rapa Nui want the national parks to belong only to the Island
and not the government of Chile. there were some people marching about
that, and we were advised to stay in the house.
On Friday we did a service project for a less active family. We had to
coat these wooden beams with gasoline to kill termites, and it smelled
so bad while we were doing it. I do not like the smell of gasoline.
after that, we went to a funeral because the son of our land lord who is
our neighbor and our good friend, died. it was an interesting
experience to see a rapa nui funeral. they sing a lot and they wear
white.
On Saturday we had the baptism of
T. He was one of the people the other elders were teaching before I
arrived, and he got baptized on Saturday. They get baptized in the ocean
here which is really cool. a recent convert got to baptize him, so we
were pretty excited about that. In the baptismal program we sang "I am a
child of God" in Spanish and Rapa Nui. It was awesome. After the baptism
the family invited us to a barbeque.
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| T. was baptized by R. (a recent convert) in the ocean. |
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| The four elders serving on the Island with T. and R. just before T's baptism. |
It was a
good week, and I am really loving the mission here. Im pretty excited to
be completing a year in the mission this week, and even more excited to
talk with my family this next Sunday.
Something
that has stood out to me here on the island is that I am in the middle
of the ocean and yet I feel the same Spirit of the Lord when I take the
sacrament and when I pray and when I read the scriptures. The Lord has
no bounds. I know that this church and this gospel are true because the
Spirit has revealed it unto me, and that is not something I can deny.
love,
Elder Williams
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