We had been working on scheduling a time for a baptismal interview for our friend Ivan. Saturday was going to work out, except when we realized on Wednesday that our district leader would be watching Conference and therefore unavailable. So we prayed and felt that he was ready for the interview that night. And the Elders were available, so it was just meant to be. And he passed!!! He is getting baptized this Sunday.
At the same time as he was getting interviewed, we had a recent convert getting interviewed to go to the temple to do proxy baptisms. Apparently the language barrier got in the way, and they gave her the longer, more intense interview to be able to actually enter the rest of the temple. Afterwards, they realized that she had been a member for less than a year, so she wasn't allowed to go anyway. So they had to start over with the simpler interview. But she passed both!!! It was super exciting for both of them to pass. We cried from joy a bit and laughed and cheered once they were out of earshot. Such a great night.
Some time during the week we had a good meeting with other missionaries. We learned things and got to talk to the mission President. Even thought it is only for like 8 minutes each, everyone loves it so much. The rest of the meeting was good too, even though they asked us to present a training at the last minute.
So I don't know if you remember, but a few weeks ago a deaf couple came to our ward for church. Anyway, on Tuesday we gave a lady a card in a laundromat. Then we found out she was deaf. So I asked her name and she spelled it and she said she was Christian and I said we were happy to meet her. Then I didn't know anything else to say, so we left and talked to some more people. The next day, we got a referral. Some guy from an ASL conference requested a few church DVDs in ASL. We called to find out if he was deaf or just had a deaf family member. I think it was through TTY. The phone went to a receptionist lady, who told us when he picked up the phone and what he was saying. Unfortunately we just asked for "Tyler", which was how his name was pronounced but spelled differently. He said that wasn't him. And that is the story of how we talked to a deaf person on the phone.
We have both been thinking a lot about these random experiences with deaf people. We got the phone number of an interpreter, so now we will hopefully get permission to go outside of our area to meet with her and learn how to contact someone in ASL. We are planning on stopping by "Tyler"'s house once we learn how. So that is our newest adventure. We haven't talked much about it though.
Conference was great. The most amazing thing about it is that we get answers to our questions in our hearts, and sometimes the questions that we didn't even know we had. Among a few of our questions, we both received impressions that we need to pursue this ASL thing a bit more. So that should be fun.
And of course, we spent all day raving about how great Conference was and how much we want to be able to have the talks printed out already so we can study them. Elder Holland's talk on Sunday morning was by far my favorite.
So that is what has been going on with us. Have a good week!
Love,
Hermana Pace