I'm tired...

This was possibly one of the most exhausting weeks of my mission, and maybe my life.  It was just so taxing physically and mentally, I'm about to collapse.  In two consecutive days we went to two opposite ends of our large area.  Geographically, maybe only a few miles, no more than 3 or 4 miles each way, but through thick jungle, over rivers, and extremely slippery mud almost the entire way.  I'm tired.

One day we went to a village called Lanahuru (I think), and taught a new investigator family the first lesson, the Restoration.  It's past Lenaken, our usual village.  The next day we went to the other side of our area, to Imaus, which is described as 'a long way small'... I don't know where the 'small' comes from.  We couldn't even find any investigators at home!  It was our first time to that village, and we hadn't told anyone we were coming, but still...

On Saturday, we baptized 3 investigators: Martha, Susan, and Samuel.  They're not directly related to each other that I know of.  Planning baptisms in a third world country is a nightmare!  No baptismal font, no way of contacting others through phones, no set scheduling, unknown birth dates, no usual system for recording baptisms (known as MLS)... I'm not sure how it all worked out, especially since my companion knows even less than I do, so I shouldered the whole load...  Anyway, it all worked out, everything was taken care of.  The baptisms themselves went very well, despite the preparations.  All three asked my companion to perform the baptisms, and the branch president did the confirmations on Sunday.

That's about it for last week, we'll see what the next week brings!

Elder Van Wagenen