This week went alright as things seem to be better. Anyway this week (on Monday) Sandra told us that she was willing to give her husband a chance. We programmed him for baptism in front of the baptismal font -super sick. He accepted and immediately started thinking about how we were going to get them married. On Wednesday we went to their house even though the dad wasn’t there and found out some terrible news. Sandra doesn’t have a birth certificate, so if you know anything about marriage in Mexico a birth certificate is super important, but the worst is that she is registered in Veracruz. She explained to us that she would have to go there to get her certificate. That’s like me having to go from St. Louis to Logan Regional Hospital where I was born to get my birth certificate. I was swamped, we wondered if there was another way to do it. She advised me that there was not a bus ride from Mexico City to Veracruz as it’s like 750 pesos and then to come back 750 then the marriage is like five hundred more, and that’s two thousand pesos in total. That’s a ton of cash! That night I prayed and asked Heavenly Father to help us, and show us the way so we could get them on the straight and narrow. I felt pretty calm in that moment and I figured that the Lord would provide a way. Thursday night I called my dl to report and he told me that they are going to do Valentine’s Day marriages free in Ecatepec. That’s where I am. I couldn’t believe it, but we still had the problem of the birth certificate. I still figured the Lord would provide the birth certificate, and the next day on Friday we were talking to a future missionary that has helped us out a lot with Sandra and Poulino, and he said that what Sandra told us wasn’t correct. He said that all you need to do is go to Polanco where a lot of government buildings are (that’s where we go to renew our visas) and there you can get your birth certificates from any part of Mexico. He told us that he had done it as he was born in another state. So we were pretty stoked. Two miracles and about 1900 pesos in savings that they won’t have to pay and we won’t be looking for. That makes things a lot easier, and the future missionary even offered to take Sandra to Planco to get her birth certificate. WOW, what a miracle. That was pretty cool, so they are going to go to Polanco on Tuesday and we will go get them married on Thursday, and he will get baptized on Sunday. That will be great and this is the first husband of a member that will get baptized. We are hoping for more, but because of the lack of references, and only working with part member families we are now having a little bit of success as this is our first baptism that we have had here. I hope it all works out. We had another baptism fall out of the sky. A sister that had been inactive for about 10 years came to church and it turns out that she has a 10 year old child that wants to get baptized. Hopefully that will work out, and we will baptize two this next week. The mission is changing a lot.
This week we had a zone activity, and about 30-40 missionaries that came and among them there was 5 from the United States. I feel kind of like Jordan. He said he was one of the few from the US in one of his letters. I don’t know why I still remembered that, and I don’t think Landon ever had an American companion. I haven’t either and I don’t think I will --plus I think if I had one I would get lazy and stop speaking so much Spanish. Everyone says I speak well, but I know that I can always improve so I will keep working at it. The Book of Mormon I was reading in Spanish and I almost finished it when president asked us to read it with him as a mission as a good bye present. He will be leaving sometime in May and we will be getting another mission president. I am in Alma 42 and we are highlighting all the times we see the work Christ or Lord and all of His attributes. It’s pretty cool! I’m learning a lot even though I wanted to read Jesus the Christ, but there will be a lot of time after the mission to read that book --plus I have it in English.
Things are great as we are having success. Pray for me and pray more for my comp as I feel like he is slipping into his old ways. I figured him out this week as he is very self conscience. He doesn’t want me to speak in English or have the phone for the fear that I will say something bad about him. He loves picking out my errors because it makes him feel better. Now that I have him figured out it will be a little bit easier to get along with him.
Que les vaya bien
Elder Hendricks
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