Baptisms

email 7/4/09
Yesterday I went down the street to my last area of Barrio 12 to baptize Kariza Nuñez Vargas, an 11 year old girl of a member family that I was teaching while I was there. When the Elders gave her a baptismal date they asked who she wanted to baptize her and she said "the tall blonde that used to come". And thus I was called upon to baptize Kariza. Her parents are both police officers, named Leonardo and Mariza, and they are way cool people. I like them a lot. It was really good to see old friends and my old ward. My old ward mission leader’s wife is pregnant. I asked her what they were going to name the baby girl and she said "Mía", which means "Mine". I said that that wasn’t a good idea and that they would regret that when she was a teenager because she would have teenage boys calling her "Mine" all the time. So I suggested a middle name to make the name more safe: "Mía No-Me-Toques Gutierrez", or "Mine Don’t-touch-me Gutierrez". I thought it was a hilarious idea and it made her laugh, but I got a scold look from our Zone Leader Elder Perez.

Tonight we have the baptism for Dardo, Graciela, and Santiago. They had their interviews this week and Elder Layton, my old companion, did the interview and said that they seemed REALLY prepared. Elder Harmon and I are going to do another musical number. We have done so many musical numbers together that I have lost count.

I am driving now. I got lucky because my Utah license expires next month but my Uruguay license doesn’t expire until 2019. At the DMV place down here the lady asked me if my name was spelled right and then looked at me and said "I think we will just give you a license for 10 years, is that okay?" And I replied "That’ll be fine." That was a real blessing because had she wanted to she could have expired my license in August with my Utah one. The good news: I can drive without any problems in Uruguay until July 2019. I compared the pics of my 16 year old license to the Uruguay one and I have concluded that I have grown up a lot in 4-5 years.

This week Elder Harmon went up to Rivera and I stayed in our area with an Elder Martinez from El Salvador. He was really cool and really good at English. We had some good lessons together, including a lesson in the chapel with Lorena, the girl I wrote about last week. We do divisions every week for half the week or more. It gets tiring because we come and go on buses and don’t get much sleep at nights on the buses. I am really tired today and I didn’t even have to travel this week.

Have ye any questions for me? Anything y'all wanna know? I don’t know if there is much left to tell. Take care! I love you all!

Andy