Baptism Cancelled

Hi familia,

Our baptism with I___ was cancelled. We had everything set up and ready to go until his mom had to go all hard-hearted on us. She keeps saying that she has to receive a call from her husband (who is working in the US) to ask for his permission. It is frustrating because she won't let us sit down and explain everything to her, so we talk with her in front of her house and manage to convince her for a moment, only to return and have her say ''màs adelante'' [later] to us again.

The other reason we keep persisting and know that she is throwing up excuses is because I___ has gone to church with the member family that lives across the street for a year. He also remembers what we teach him better than any other child investigator I have ever taught.

You wouldn't believe how many lies we hear every day. We are lied to, ignored, sworn at, and more on a daily basis. We encounter hard-hearted people who refuse to listen and even go as far as calling Moses and other Bible prophets false prophets (I will go into more details later about that) even though they profess to read the Bible. We go through so much garbage (literally, I might add) to find the few and rare people that are prepared to receive the word of God and live it. Even then, with those who are willing to listen, it is a battle to lead them to the baptismal font. There is always some sort of obstacle and the devil never ceases to spice things up.

For example, D___, an old lady who is listening to us and wants to be baptized, but her situation is difficult. She receives a monthly pension from her first husband and she survives off that money. She currently lives in an "union libre" [common law marriage] with an old man that has no form of identification. As D___ put it, ''He doesn't exist''. In order to comply with the commandments so she can be baptized, she needs to separate from him or marry him. The problem is that if she marries him she loses the pension, and also I don't know if it is possible to marry someone that doesn't even have a birth date. Who knows what is going to happen there.

All of the pain and struggle in missionary work reminds me of a line from a talk by Elder Holland. The quote has forever been etched into my mind and burns even brighter when I have a bad day or nothing turns out. He said, ''Salvation is not a cheap experience''. I almost wish he'd said, ''Salvation isn't a cheap experience for the investigator'' because I feel like we pay the price to see people baptized as much as they do.

This week didn't turn out the way we planned it to be. Citas [appointments] fell like dead flies (or rather, cucarachas in our house) and it looks like we will need a strong spiritual moment to convince I___'s mom that this is a blessing and that she too can be baptized. We did find a promising family and we are on good terms with the ward.

E. Hinton and Funk (elders in an area called Cima) are going to baptize a couple that I taught in Alpuyeca. Y___ and F___ (the dude who believed that a doll spoke to him and gave him powers to levitate and move objects without touching them) really want to be baptized. We were about to baptize them when they were living in Alpuyeca but they moved back home to Acapulco before we could get them married. The cool thing is that they remember who I am! It made me so happy to hear that they were super prepared for baptism and that F___ has gotten a whole lot better since Alpuyeca. I may try and go to their baptismal service to say hi.

One more story: F___, the dad of a recent convert, has been duped by the devil. When we went to teach him Thursday night he had a bunch of rubbish questions about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Each of his questions had scriptures from the Bible that he had ''looked up himself'' (even though he doesn't know where the books are in the Bible) to contradict Joseph's account of the First Vision and the Book of Mormon. It was apparent that someone had inserted their own ideas and hatred for the church into his mind. We answered all of his questions by telling him he needed to read the Book of Mormon and pray to God with real intent because that would be the only true way of answering his doubts. We testified of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, but he would merely move on to his next question without considering our answer in the least. He was looking more to prove us wrong or catch us without an answer to one of his questions and scriptures from the Bible than receive an answer to understand our message. One of the things he was hung up about was a scripture in John 1:18 that states that no man has seen God. E. Morales pulled out an awesome scripture in Numbers 12:6-7 and spoke about how prophets in the Bible had seen the Lord. F___ was so obsessed with his tiny, misinterpreted verse (I believe there is a JST that clarifies that no man has seen God except he has borne record of the Son) that he declared that Moses and others that had claimed to have seen God in Old Testament times were false prophets. It was sad to see how hard-hearted he was. He refused to believe nor read the Book of Mormon because he believed that Joseph Smith wrote it and that all it talks about is his first vision, even after we explained to him repeatedly that it was an account of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas.

Oh well. We gotta keep working.

Dad, I hope you have a fantastic birthday and that you enjoy your day with the family. I have always appreciated your words of advice and counsel. You have helped me out all throughout my life and I am grateful for your example of one with an unshakeable testimony in Jesus Christ. I have seen so many types of fathers and leaders here in Mexico and I grow ever more appreciative for you and how you raised me; you respect my agency but correct me when I need it. You are patient and wise with your words. I still remember the car ride home from Lake Powell where we almost ran out of gas and we talked about the gospel. I hope you do something today where you treat yourself well (like buying a cool Mac mouse or BYU jersey) like you have treated me. Happy Birthday!

Sorry about the long email today. I actually thought I had nothing to say. Onto your emails.

Con amor,

Elder Bosque