Elder Marroquin

email 3/23/09
Well, I am here in Montevideo again and just thrilled about it. My companion Elder Marroquin is a very good missionary from Peru. We live in a house of four missionaries. Elder Nordgren, who I went to high school with, is training a Peruvian from Cuzco, Peru. I said some of those bad ketchua words that Matt taught me to see if they worked and it got a raised eyebrow out of the greenie from Peru named Elder Champi. He is a recent convert to the church of only a year and three months. He is pretty cool. Last night he asked about polygamy. We all stayed up talking for a bit about that one. The house is horrifically ugly and smells bad and even I cannot clean the smell away. Oh well, we don’t spend much time at home anyway.

Elder Marroquin is a machine. He may go home in 5 weeks but he doesn’t show it. He never talks about it and he works hard. He is funny and obedient without being over the top fanatic. He falls very well with me. We are going to have a great transfer here.

We had a baptism on Saturday, which was one of the most spiritual baptismal services I have ever been in. I was placed in charge of the music and became instantly loved in my new ward. :) That never gets old. Her name is Celeste and we will be getting her husband Alvaro baptized after General Conference if he can quit smoking. The whole story of the family is a miracle. They had a son in prison, another son who is about to get baptized as well in the other ward, and the story is too long that I don’t have time today. When we baptize Alvaro I will write more about it. It is a cool family.

I love the ward here. The bishopric is strong and we have the best ward mission leader that I have ever had in the whole mission. They called him on Sunday. The Bishop felt so inspired that the missionary work needed to be helped by the ward that he released his own first counselor and placed him in the ward mission leader position. Usually here the calling of ward mission leader is left for last after the other callings have been given out and often turns out to be a new convert with whom the missionaries need to help rather than receive guidance and help from. But in this case we have a veteran member who is very good and very capable of leadership and very excited about getting greater ward cooperation between organizations. I have never been more happy about a ward mission leader in all the mission. One thing that the Bishop said was that the ward had no excuse to not be progressing in the aspect of retention. He said the missionaries cannot be blamed because the ward has had a long list of excellent missionaries working there. It was the ward that needed to step up and stepping up the ward is. I felt at home in this ward on Sunday. I am very happy to be here.

I hope that everyone is well and that life continues to provide happy experiences. I gotta go. I love you all!!

Andy