Monday, January 17, 2005
Today was a good day except for tonight. This morning after our planning session we visited the Zapata family out in Niyayos to do a first lesson follow-up. Brother told us that he’d only been able to read a little bit but that little bit turned out to be the first 13 chapters of 1st Nephi! He told us he wanted to read more but he kept on getting interrupted by people. He said it was good but that it was still far out of deep for him. We challenged him to pray about it and he said he’d do that. The rest of the day we got to teach a good first lesson to Sis Delfino and her son. It went well and I think we cleared up some of her concerns. The sad/depressing part was when we got back to Calintaan. We visited bro Andales and, well, he had drunk again. They were building a house next door and so he was helping them and of course thee marienda was alcohol. He didn’t have the strength to say “no” and he took a shot. When we visited him he gave all the normal excuses about how he’s just a man, Adam and Eve sinned, it really was “just one” etc, etc. Well so much for his baptism on the 5th of February. We’ll have to push it back again. After leaving their house we went out to the ocean and I just sat there and felt like crying. It’s so disappointing to see him mess up when we’ve visited him daily almost since I got here. He was talking about how he wanted to be the “fruit” of my work here on Mindoro and that he’ll be baptized before I leave. I’m beginning to lose hope though. He just doesn’t seem to really truly want it.