Brian Email 3-31-05

Hi dad, and all,
This week is my first week of being senior companion. It's harder than
I thought it would be, people like to cancel appointments, and then it's
up to me to think of someone we can go visit or to think of a place to
try and find people. But it's fun too. Today we're going to play disc
golf. The course we're going to is one of the hardest in the country so
they have a lot of PDGA tournaments and things here. It's raining, but
we've been wanting to do it for a long long time, and it's Elder Frost's
last preparation day. It will be fun anyway, and we're playing with the
English speaking Elders, Elder Hall and Elder Allbright.

My Easter was pretty mediocre. I didn't see any colored eggs or very
much candy. I don't know how much Easter means to Hispanics, but they
sure love Good Friday. I saw on the Mexican news channel there were a
bunch of guys crucifying each other. A lot of cities down there had big
parties where people would dress up like Romans and whip people dressed
like Christ. There was a lot of blood involved and it didn't look very
fun or reverent. They were actually nailing people to crosses and
killing them, it was awful. I thought it was very sacriligious. Also,
all of Central and south America closed down for "La Santa Semana" or
the Holy Week. That made it hard because we are expecting papers that
prove that Vicente has divorced his wife in Mexico. We still haven't
gotten them. A lady in our branch said there is another spring holiday
that closes certain states for another week. Blah.
Nathaly is finally getting baptized this Saturday between sessions of
conference. She told her family and her dad said, "if that's what you
want to do, that's fine", but her mom was really upset. None of her
family will be at her baptism :( Also, we talked to Galo some more, and
he wants to come see Nathaly's baptism and then be baptized the weekend
after. He had some problems giving up wine, but he has been working
really hard on that. Oh, another little story... Our branch president
doesn't want Nathaly or Galo to be baptized. He interviewed Nathaly a
few weeks ago (which was inappropriate, she had only been to church a
few times and she was kinda freaked out by it, and he asked a lot of
deep questions), then last week he told her that she can't be baptized
yet. She hasn't committed any serious crimes or anything so she will be
interviewed by the other set of Elders, not by him. She had been
praying about her baptismal date and decided that she wanted to do it
soon, so it kinda hurt her when president told her that she couldn't.
She told us she had wanted to do it this weekend, so we said ok, and
we're doing it. His reasoning for telling Galo he can't be baptized is
that he has an earring, and he thinks Galo is lying about teaching at
the University and about being a dentist. It really just comes down to
that he just doesn't like the guy. It's frustrating that he thinks he
should be denying people baptism, he hasn't interviewed Galo, and has
barely talked to either of them. Two weeks ago when we told him that we
were having some good success, he told us, "I'll believe that when I see
it." He is very negative about the missionary work and sometimes he
likes to slow it down too.

Other than that, everything is going well enough. Elder Frost goes home
next weekend, and most likely Elder Gordon and I will stay here.
President Noel said that is what he was planning, but we never know
until transfers happen, anything could change.

I'm glad y'all had a good spring break and everything. It's always nice
to be out of school and work for that. I just found out the weather in
Ogden is 26 degrees and raining, have you avoided that? It's been
hitting about 80 here. It's way nice, even when it's raining, it's
really warm. But, I'm short on time today, I got a lot of letters that
I had to read (or skim in the case of three of them). I'm still happy
and healthy and I'm still praying for y'all. Have a blest week y'all.
Love Elder Harris