May 25, 2015

Mark 12:27 - many people are mistaken, thinking that God is the God of only the dead, that we only need to worry about him after death, that God doesn't have purpose for us, the living. But this is false. I know that God is the God of the living. He reins over us now. Not just after our death but now. We have to always remember that the living God is our God NOW and not just in the future. This means we must follow him NOW and not just in the future.

This week I had a special treat- Eliane, Jean and Lurdes, from Rio Pardo, called me! I got to talk with them and everything. They are all doing well and are still really active in the church. They confirmed that the other converts there in Rio Pardo are still active too! What happiness!!

This week we finally managed to get Luciano to go to church! He didn't wake up, and wasn't going to go, but when he didn't show up, we ditched Sunday School and walked to his house. He woke right up and showered (and his wife, Crislânia too) and they gave us a ride back to church! Yay! They loved the meeting and accepted baptism!

Guess what else happened on Sunday? The Incident of the Ghost Faucet! Here's the story- Sunday night, we met up with the other missionaries in the central park to do some contacts. We then returned to the chapel to pick up our suit jackets before going home for the night. (We leave our suit jackets in the chapel after church on Sunday so that we don't have to haul them around with us all day in the hot sun). Anyway, we got to the chapel and E. Collett went to the bathroom while we got the jackets. And he called us over- there was a weird sound in the bathroom! It was the sound of water. The sound was coming from the baptismal font! It sounded like somebody was swimming in the font. Well that was funny because the font was locked up. It should have been empty. We put our ears to the door to the font and yep- the sound was coming from the other side!

Well we don't have the key to open the font- we tried to get the doors to open or to look under the door to see something, but we couldn't. So I ran around to the outside of the chapel and found that there was a window above the font. The light wasn't on and I couldn't see anything, but there are open slits in the window. So Elder Pradera came running around with his camera and I gave him a lift and he stuck his camera (with flash on) in the window to take a picture of what was happening. The picture revealed that the faucet was running! The font was filling up - almost overflowing!!

picture from the window

We called the bishop and his counselors and everyone was in other cities. The ward mission leader who also has the key wasn't answering. We needed to do something!

Then I remembered that Elder Nielson had taught me to pick simple locks. We searched the chapel and we found a fork and a piece of wire. I spent 15 minutes trying to pick the lock on the door, with the Elders cheering me on. I kept almost managing it and losing control at the last minute! And the font was almost overflowing! Then E. Pradera had a great idea- "Is it possible to take the pins out of the door hinges?" He asked.

We ran around to find something to help and we only found a pair of scissors. So with the scissors I managed to pry the pins out of the hinges (sorry, primary, I destroyed your scissors) and we managed to pry the door open! This was the door that opens on the side to watch the baptism, but I jumped from there to the stairs and managed to turn off the water- just in time! Whew!

saving the day!

we did it!

Well we managed to get the pins back in the hinges okay (with a bit of difficulty) and we went home. Well after an hour or so the bishop called wanting to know if we'd managed to get the key with the mission leader. "Don't worry," we told him "we managed to work it out" J

The moral of the story? Don't mess with Texas J

Love,

Elder Jasperson