Hermana Anne Tolman: : Week 35

The most notable thing of this past week has been teaching our new miracle man, Alexander. If everything goes well he should be getting baptized this coming weekend but we have transfers next week and I feel like I’m always a little flustered and exhausted on the day of transfers so I decided to write about Alexander a week early.

We got to his house and yelled before we noticed the cardboard sign outside his house that says "CRISTO TE AMA ARREPIENTATE" and we said "oh no who’s this gonna be" but then this guy came out and then called his friend to come out and they were surprisingly normal.

The second guy, Alexander, was like "What does Elder mean? I’m going to be Elder. I want to be part of your church." And we thought he was joking so we laughed and he asked us for a folleto (I think the word for folleto in English is pamphlet?) and wanted to know when we were coming back and then when we came back he had read the whole folleto and told us that he loved the story of Joseph Smith because he feels like it makes sense that God would call the weak and simple to do his Work and that he would call not only a prophet and apostles but expect all of us to serve each other within the church. We invited him to General Conference and he said he was gonna come and then took out a Book of Mormon and he goes "Can I have one of those books?" And we said "pffft yeah we were just about to explain it and then give it to you¨ and then when we tried to mark a scripture to read with little pen marks he was like "no" and we were like "huh" and he was like "no don’t write in it just write what you want me to read on a separate piece of paper" and we said "oh okay" and he took it and handled it like the most precious and sacred gift he's ever received.

But THEN when we passed by his house on Sunday morning to remind him about Conference and his wife answered the door and told us he was asleep and she couldn’t wake him up (idk what it is but the Panamanians refuse to wake people up no matter what hour of the day it is cause you have to "respect el sueño") so anyways we were bummed and left for General Conference but then as we were sitting and listening to the Sunday morning session I had the distinct impression to go back to our area to get Alexander during the break and I said "that would be…wildly complicated and time consuming" because we were watching conference in a chapel that’s not in our area and that we'd only ever been to one other time and we always go in a bus with our ward but they didn’t have transportation during the break. But we said "what can we say, we will go and do and the Lord will provide a way."

So we manage to get back to our area and we show up at Alexander’s house and say "HEY the next session of general conference starts at 3, go get ready and we’re gonna eat our lunch outside your house while we’re waiting." And he didn’t even say anything, he just turned around and went back into his house to get ready and then we all just traveled blindly back to the chapel and we introduced him to this member who is roughly the same age (25-30) and served his mission in Nicaragua (Alexander is from Nicaragua). And everything was just perfect and good. And so anyways yeah. We’ve been teaching him all this week and we found out that a week before the first time we showed up at his house he'd talked briefly with the Elders in Panama Viejo (one of which may or may not be our district leader but we don’t know) and that he’d been googling our church the whole week long to learn more and then when we came he thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses so he didn’t come out but then his friend heard who we were and called him cause he knew we were from the church he’d been investigating and then told us that his whole family and his wife’s family had always gone to a church that believes that were all saved by grace but that that’s never seemed right to him and that he’s always thought salvation would be a two-way relationship and that God would expect action on our part.

Every time we leave a lesson with him we’re just dumbstruck cause he’s so prepared. He’s already read all of Joseph Smith History and always remembers the most obscure details from it when we teach about other stuff. OH and the other miracle with him was that he drinks a TON of coffee and we were like "oh no how is he going to have the willpower to drop coffee within a WEEK'S time" so we were praying for a miracle and we got to his house and he said "I went to the doctor and he told me I'll basically just die if I keep drinking coffee and that I need to stop right now" and we were amazed. So anyways yeah that’s my story for the week. I hit 8 months in the mission yesterday and also 4 times this week people thought I was from Venezuela.

That’s all for now,

Love you all bye!

(OH and by the way Alexander also explained that the CRISTO TE AMA ARREPIENTATE sign was put there by one of his friends to deter people from robbing them??)