Mason's letter -- October 11, 2010

Hey familia.

Thanks for your emails. Sounds like everything's going good.

This week was a pretty good week for us. It has been really cloudy and cool lately. I love this weather and I haven't sweat that much this whole week. I actually got cold a few nights here, it was awesome. I also got a little bit of a cold the other day too, that wasn't quite as awesome, but whatever.

So we had a baptism on Saturday and it was really good. Everything went alright and there was an alright turnout of members. But the young women were going to sing a special song at the baptism, but they never showed up... so that kinda made me a little bit angry. This Saturday we will have a wedding and a baptism so that will be exciting. We have to go to the lawyer today to get everything set up and ready for the wedding. The ward is also really excited for that because it has been a struggle for one of the member families and a big trial when the kid that had his mission call had a baby with his girlfriend, so he went inactive for like almost a year. But finally we got him all active again and we will get them married and his wife baptized. She is really cool and wants to go to the temple one day. I hope that they can stay faithful so that they can go in one year.

On Tuesday I went to do a whole bunch of baptismal interviews in an area and it turned out really bad. The missionaries in the area (the other district leader) had not prepared them at all for baptism. He had 6 baptimal dates is what he said. So we went to the first two and they said that they didn't even want to get baptized this weekend. So I had to talk to them for a while and they just said that they weren't ready at all. I guess they hadn't even gone to church for a couple of weeks and had not been reading at all in the Book of Mormon. Well of course they will not be ready if they don't do those things! So I explained that to them and they agreed to be baptized later on in October when they start following through on their promises.

The 3rd and 4th were ok, but the 5th and her daughter (the 6th) were also not prepared at all. The first thing she also told me was that she didn't want to get baptized yet. When I asked her why she told me she had only read like 1 page in the Book of Mormon and that she hadn't yet prayed to see if Joseph Smith was a prophet! I don't understand at all why this missionary would say that these people are ready for baptism. That last one made me really sad because I was the one that put the baptism dates on them in the first lesson, but I told them that they had to read and pray EVERY SINGLE DAY to be able to be prepared and to receive and answer to their prayers and have a testimony so that they could get baptized that day. I then told this elder that he had to verify every single day to see if they were doing it and if they did then they would receive answers and would be ready by the date I put. Obviously he did not do that at all, and it made me really sad because I know that if they would've done that they would've been baptized. So my trip out there was kind of a waste of time. But oh well.

The zone has been baptizing well this month and it looks as if we will have a great month in the whole zone. It's good that we have turned things around lately.

Well that's about all for the week. Mom, Elder Brown goes home the 20th. He lives in Blackfoot Idaho, I think like 2 hours from the border of Idaho... so if you want I will ask him directions. And what did you decide about the shoes? Because I will probably be leaving San Pedro in a week and a half.

Love you all

Elder Mason Cardon