Story Time

Parker was able to get a voice recorder from a fellow missionary.  He sent us a voice memo in his email last week with the following story.  It's even better in his own voice, but this will be better for the purposes of our book:

Welcome to story time from the pension (apartment) of the Elders in Coronel Oviedo, Rama dos!  Last week was super busy! I woke up three times during this week before 4:30 in the morning to get to different meetings.  I took way too many hours of busses, and now we are back here on Monday and we are looking at a much more tranquillo week.  As you know, last week we had the baptism of Fabiola, which was awesome! As you know it is the responsibility of the Elders to do all the planning and work to set up the program and complete all the preparations for the baptism. Things got a little crazy, so I’m going to start the story off the way Dad always does, and in good fashion, with, “And there we were. . . .”  about five miles away doing service with a farmer family who live in Pindoty.  We had planned with the Sisters that they were going to go that day to empty the baptismal font and fill it up to have everything ready for the baptism the next day.  That evening at about 7:30, we get a call from the Sisters saying that they don’t have the keys to get into the building to fill up the font. And that President had asked them to make sure that it was filled the day before because they have been having issues with the water in the building and he wanted to make sure it was going to work well in advance.  We had the keys, but we were five miles out and had to walk back late, so we didn’t have time to do it. 

So, the next morning we got ready early and got to the church and started to empty out the font, which took some time because the pump is a little slow.  We cleaned it, and started to fill it back up.  This was Friday in the morning on the day of the baptism.  The font starts filling up pretty quick and it gets up to the first step and then (gurgling and water stopping sounds) no more water.  Elder R looks at me, and I look at Elder R and we both say, “No me diga!” (You don’t say!)

So, we start running around and we go into the bathroom and look around and the crappy push pumps to flush the water have been activated and they are stuck, so water has been consistently running through the whole building for who knows how long—probably since the last Sunday.  So, there is no more water in the building.  We quickly try to fix the pump so that the water stops running, and we turned the pressurizer off and we pray a LOT.  And then we went to lunch and were hoping that the tank will fill up while we are gone.

We had a great lunch with the F family, and afterward went right back to the church.  We turned on the pump, and turned on the font, and water starts gushing out and we were SO HAPPY. . . for about 30 seconds, until the freaking water turned off again and we didn’t have any more water again.  And I started screaming, NOOOOOOOOOO—and Elder R is just staring at the font.  By now it’s like 2:30 in the afternoon and the service starts at 5:00.  So, we start turning things off, turning things on, running around and trying to fill things up with buckets and we don’t know what to do.  For an hour, we are running around and trying to think of anything.  Elder R called every member that was in our phone and the Elders of the other areas trying to find volunteer fire fighters who could come and give us their water and fill our tank.  They wanted to charge us 70 mil (around $17), which made Elder R super pichado (very upset) that they wanted to charge us so much to fill up our tank and to come and help us. 

But, that gave me an idea.  I said, “Elder R, we have a fire hose in the church for emergencies when there is a fire.  What if we fill the tank with that?”  And he looks at me and said, “Go, go, go!”   So, by now it is like 4:00 and people are going to start coming soon.  We run and take the hose out that is connected to the fire pumps and start running the hose around the corner and through the building to the baptismal font. We had to undo it so there weren’t any knots, and I start turning on the water and it starts leaking out of the thing, so I have to grab a bucket and hold it there.  Elder R is screaming at me and I’m screaming at him, “WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!  OK, GO, GO, GO!”  And I crank up the thing and we start using the fire hose water to fill up the tank.  It was awesome!  It was coming out so fast—but the water was also kind of gross, like sandy and super chlorinated.  We didn’t care, because we needed water to perform the baptism.  We were like, WHOOOOO, we were super pumped.  But then, that turned off too, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” after about a minute of running.  So, we run all the water out through the tube and the water was only up to like a step and a half.  

 

I am freaking out and saying, “We have to call President (the leader of the congregation) right now and let him know.  And Elder R said, “Are you kidding?  We aren’t calling President.  He told us we had to do it the day before!”  I’m like, Elder what are we going to do??  I was SO stressed out!  Then the Hermanas (sister missionaries) come and ask, “Elder, what is going on?” And we told them, “Hermana, there is no water!”  “What?  There’s no water??”  “Hermanas, there is NO water!”  “NO ME DIGA!!”  So, they start running around too. We are trying everything. We ran to neighbors, we ran back out to the outside fire thing, and we found out that what happens in this neighborhood is they cut the water for a certain time until around 5:00.  We are stressing out, and praying so hard, “Heavenly Father, please help us so that we have water for this baptism!”  So the plan was, all right, we are going to open up the faucets at like 4:45, right before it starts.  Well, water started gushing out again, and I was never so happy.  We were whooping, and Elder R was yelling, “Agua, agua, AGUA!”   And then it cut AGAIN, after like 45 seconds of running!!  Hahaha  

We had just enough water to perform the service.  The water was at just below the knee.  Long story short, the President who performed the baptism had to push her down to the floor of the font just so she could get all the way under the water.  But it happened!  The water was so nasty, and it was one of the most stressful days of my mission for a baptism.  But we were super excited to see F get baptized.  The moral of the story is we need to plan better and anticipate all the things that need to happen.  And that’s the crazy story this week of the most stressful baptism of my mission, where the water cut and we barely had enough to baptize her!!  Love you all!!