Pioneer Days/Sketchy Drug Dealers

Phew this has been a crazy week! There has been a lot of work going on. We spent 3 days at various pioneer days activities and there was some funny things that happened and some good things, and so it's been an alright week, but in Manassa we were at the days for 26 hours over the course of 2 days. 8 am to 9 pm both days. Being in the parade, working the burger shack, running a booth with supplies, trying to do church tours, walking around talking to the Puerto Rican drug lords, and trying to avoid the crappy AC/DC cover band/Worldly music blasting from the rides. So ya. Stressful.

Last Monday I had a pretty scary experience. We decided to hike flat top mountain next to Sanford, so we fashioned some spears to fight off the rattlesnakes and made our way to the top with La Jara elders. All was fine and good, no rattlesnakes. Well we got about 3/4 up and La Jara decided they were too tired, so we ran up the rest of the way and about 3 minutes to the top, this storm suddenly blew in. Very quickly. And so I was freaking out because I don't want to be the tallest point on the mountain during a thunderstorm, and it looked like a lot of rain, and it was probably a 2 hour hike. So we didn't go up the last bit. It was hard because we were so close to the top, but we didn't want to die. At that point we began running down the mountainside, praying the whole time that I wouldn't break my ankle or we wouldn't be struck by lightning. But all was well. We made it down in probably 15 minutes. But we learned something, next time we hike that thing we'll do it in the morning before anything blows in. I probably exaggerate and my companion thought it was funny how scared I was because it really wasn't that bad.

Anyways, I don't mean to freak out my mother with that but it was all good. Live and learn right? We've had a lot of cool things happen this week with our investigators. This one way less active recent convert lady called us just wanting to come back to church and turn her life around. So we've been working with her a lot, and had a great experience using the gift of discernment to know what she was hiding from us. It was like straight out of Ammon reading King Lamoni's mind. So cool.

We had exchanges this week as well, which was cool because District Leader came to Sanford and got to see some things about what we have to deal with. He did force a baptismal date on someone, but that got lost because the guy decided to go to catholic church instead of our church. It is getting pretty bad here, we got a text this morning "The mission is about to break 100 baptisms for the month of July, go invite everyone you can to be baptized!" It's like...ok...that's great we can throw bap invitations at people all day but all it will do is ruin our relationships and leave us with nothing. So we decided to PRAY about it and we're going to make an effort to have a baptism next Sunday but we're not going to be weird about it. It's all about the numbers right? Wait..

One of our investigators we had a great teaching experience with! We decided to teach him about prayer a lot and how to receive answers to prayer, and it got down to his main thing "Can I get baptized even if I don't know 100% it's true" Our eyes bugged out and we were so excited! We explained Alma 32 with him about how faith isn't a perfect knowledge, and we have to take a leap of faith etc. So he wants to talk to his wife, but we'll set a date next week when he comes down. Amazing! Things are moving forward!

Pioneer days were pretty cool. Tiring. But cool. Sanford days were really awesome, like a family reunion setting. The parade had a cool float with the temple on it and some other ones very well church themed. We passed out lots of pass along cards and pamphlets and that was really neat. It had a great small town feel to it, I mean they had all the kids on their bikes in the parade. Then they had some lunch, and some games, and we went through the town museum and there was an original call letter from Wilford Woodruff calling the saints to settle the San Luis Valley. The games were pretty awesome, there was a pie eating contest, and my favorite, a greased pig. They released 2 pigs into the field and had all the kids and teenagers and adults scrambling to catch them. Ohhh how fun it was for a city slicker like me.

Then we went to Manassa's and the town there pretty much has control of it. It's a lot more commercial and less churchy. They have the carnival there, and all the sketchy drug dealing carnies and the hardcore hip hop music blasting from the rides. We got a handcart to pull in the parade and had about 20 missionaries, passing out cards, water bottles, and stuff during one pass, then on the second pass we all sang some hymns repeated. Well on Saturdays parade they put me standing in the handcart, conducting the missionaries motab style. I really got into it and had several people come up and ask me if I was a drum major afterwards. We looked pretty good too. There was this funny drunk native guy that kept coming up to us and fist bumping us, and then he randomly bought my companion some corn on the cob, and then we saw him dancing in front of the band all by himself. Then on Saturday he found a friend. Another drunk native guy wearing a mesh shirt, and they started dancing together. Then they got arrested. It was a good laugh for us at the booth. Hey we found like 4 potential investigators off the booth, and a couple less actives. It was a good time for sure. I hope this letter hasn't sounded like we wasted time or anything. We didn't go on any rides just talked to lots of sketchy people that looked like they wanted to shoot us. Or we quickly went down to San Luis to get the Elders down there's car, (speaking of San Luis....you may have heard of the San Luis Statue Incident...where missionaries like 3 years ago took pictures with the shrine and put them on myspace...yep 30 miles from our house, that happened.) and I said hi to some guys and the Elders after were like.."ya those guys hate us and are drug dealers." whoops. Also this week was San Luis's Santana which is a big party where everyone gets drunk and fights each other, so the missionaries left for the weekend. Haha it's like I'm serving in Brazil or something. Right next door.

But ya, it's been an alright week. Always good things happening. Just gotta be obedient and keep your head up and the miracles will come. But we'll check ya later! Love ya!

Elder Gibb