Weekly Letter: September 19-25, 2011

For your information: I (Doris) looked up the medication Thomas was given in Mexico. Difenidol is a prescription not commercially available in the US or Canada, but is used for the treatment of vertigo.




The injection they gave me was Difenidol(I´m pretty sure that´s Spanish, but I don´t know). I will have to definitely be careful over here. They call Coke "La Reina"( the Queen) here. I have asked for water several times, and many times they don´t have any potable water, just coke....hmmm, not very convenient. I had already come to the idea that sugar or soda were not helping me a lot...so I stopped drinking so much. But then one day in the training meeting for District Leaders I drank some really sweet lemonade....and a lot of it (cuz I miss it a lot.) And then in the afternoon I drank a soda despite a feeling that I shouldn´t. That night I started feeling light-headed again. We got to the house, I crashed and the next day I woke up without a problem. So this week I know your prayers were answered.

Now our week didn´t work out as great as we wanted. Last week they challenged us to do 50 motivational interviews for those close to baptism in the zone. Basically, the District Leader goes with all the possible baptismal candidates, and conducts an interview, and motivates them to make the decision. You could call it the "final push" interview. Well, I had to do several "final push"es, and unfortunately, for the same reason we were not in our area very much. The Viveros area had several interviews, but the Zone leaders did some of them. The others we tried to do during exchanges, but sometimes they couldn´t. Then the sisters, well....it´s not like I can do exchanges with them. There was a district leader that once in the training meeting said that he received revelation, in that he could do exchanges with the sisters in his district. He´s become infamous for the same thing (the president had the look on his face that was like "I can´t believe you just said that.")

However, despite everything, we thought we were going to be able to have a baptism this week. We had obtained special permission that he could get baptized this week, because he doesn´t have enough times in church. So we put a baptismal date for yesterday after the church services. Everything was good up until Friday. He was really excited to be baptized this week, but then Saturday, the family called again to tell him to go to the hospital to watch over his grandmother. We had an appointment that afternoon, but we had to do some interviews with the sisters (and since we were over there and had no way to contact them....well, it didn´t work out). We got home late that night from the interviews, and then when we called all the appointments the next day to apologize, we about died when we found out that Edgar was not going to get home until later that night.

Oh well, we´ve talked to him, and we are not going to make the same mistake again this week. It was great to do so many interviews, and we were able to get 7 baptisms this week, however, we´ve got to see how we can do that and take care of our area at the same time. I think I´m going to need another transfer as a district leader, because I feel like I´m just barely getting the hang of how to work as a district leader.

So please pray for us. I love everyone of you. Changes are next week, and we´ve got to find a whole bunch of news or else if they clear out the area, they won´t have anybody there to teach. We´ve got to work hard to get a lot of fruits ready for the next week. Luckily, it is also the same week as General Conference, which is always great to get people animated to go. I mean, you just have to say "Hey, come see a prophet!" Well...maybe not, but still. I always love to watch General Conference, and I can´t believe that this will be the last time I will have the chance to watch it as a fulltime missionary....wow, I don´t like the way that looks writing it. It´s so...final.

Love you all. Keep praying for us.

Cariños,

Elder Blackham