A New Year

Hello Family!


It was also good to hear and talk with all of you! Everyone looked so happy that also made me happy.
Oh that’s awesome that Rulon was blessed on Sunday, he is such a cute little baby!

Sounds like you had fun in the snow, I miss the snow.....Yeah it’s pretty hot here for the moment and will be I forever! Ha-ha.

Well as far as goals that I had for these last months are pretty big. For this month, as far as baptisms my companion and I, we have a goal to have 10 baptisms 3 with families. As a district we have the goal for 28 baptisms 7 families! It will be a lot and we hope to reach that goal. So far the only ones that are doing what they need to do to reach that goal is my companion and I, we have 5 baptisms so far for this month and that includes this week we have 4 and last Saturday we had 2.

The family that we are preparing for baptism there name is Family Rodriguez. and there are 5 in the family.
There is:
Manuel (dad)
Giovanni (mom)
Manuel (son)
Chirli (daughter)
Marcela (daughter)

They are so COOL! In testimony meeting this week Manuel stood up and bore his testimony and it was SO POWERFUL!! It was awesome...

As far as my goals when I get back I want to be able to go to the temple at least once a week and at least 1 a month with all of my family. (We are going to have to find a lot of babysitter’s ha-ha...) and my other goals like studying and work you know that good stuff...

The new year was interesting....they like to celebrate the new year with lots of beer and fireworks I got some video of all of that. I was half way asleep around 11:30pm and then a boat load of fireworks start going off and it woke me up and I could not go to sleep until like 3 am in the morning....it was rough. Yes there is always a lot of parties and music....

I have an awesome story to tell you about this family that will be getting baptized. With the son whose name is Manuel.

Well my companion and I were teaching the family and there were only 3 people present at the time, there was Manuel, Giovanni, and Marcela. And we were talking to them about there baptism for last Saturday and seeing how they were doing....

Well as always in the mission there are surprises...and they had one for us. I asked “So how are you guys feeling about your baptism this week" and then Manuel says” It looks like im getting baptized alone"...and I was like "what?? What do you mean?" , "Well" he says, "Marcela and my wife are going to Chinandega for new years to visit family." and I was like "Okay well when will they be leaving" and he's like "on the 31st and wont come back till the second of January...." . "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO???!!" (I thought)

Okay I said I need to talk with my zone leaders. So I called my ZL'S up on the phone and I was like "HEY??!! I NEED YOUR HELP THE FAMILY WONT GET BAPTIZED THIS WEEK, JUST MANUEL??" so after talking the options were these....

1. You talk them out of going with the family and get them baptized and confirmed this week.
2. You talk with your bishop and see if he can do the confirmation right after the baptism.
3. Pray for God to help you....
that is how it usually goes...

So...I tried letting the spirit guide me and I thought that we should talk about faith. But after about an hour of teaching she was not convinced...so I prayed while she walked off to do something...so I talk with poor ol Manuel about his baptism that he will be doing his baptism just by himself. His wife comes back out and she says "my son mauel wants to get baptized" and I was like what??!! "Well where is he, bring him here?" and for sure the kid did want to get baptized it was truly a miracle.

At the end I asked "Why did he want to be baptized now??" He was only present in one of our lessons before, why did he want to get baptized with only one lesson? He said, While I was in my room and I just woke up and I heard you talking about my dads baptism tomorrow and I felt this wonderful feeling in my heart and I knew that it was something I also had to do.

The two, Manuel and Manuel jr. were baptized on the 30th of December it was truly a miracle that I will never forget.

Love you all
Elder Buck