Wedding Planner

Hi,

That is the chosen title of my email today because that is what I feel like these days: a wedding planner. Our three progressing families are couples that are waiting to get married, but unfortunately I haven’t been a very successful wedding planner lately. I am currently planning weddings number 4, 5, and 6 that of my mission.  We had one scheduled for Friday, the one I wrote about last week, that we had been planning for five weeks, and it was cancelled.  

This is what happened. I am a little upset with the officials, because between the time that they got their appointment to get married and last week they had changed the paperwork and did not let them know. So they showed up with what they had told them to bring before and not the new secret requirements.  It actually messed up two of our couples.  It was super rough for all of us.  They are headed today to go get a new appointment.  The problem is that they must get married in the registro civil, and to do that they have to get an appointment about a month in advance for when they can go and get married.  The country is a little unorganized so the requirements are not always the same. Sad. It is so awful that it is so hard to get married and keep the commandments in this country.  For those of you who live in Vegas: home of the 24 hour wedding chapels, you have no idea how much I wish that we had that here! But other than the two cancelled weddings, it was a good week.  

Basically we stay busy all the time taking care of these families and trying to find new ones.  It is a great problem to be so busy that it is hard to get everything done. I have a little over two weeks left! I can’t believe it.  I heard that President cancelled the end of the mission tour, so that is just another reason I’m so excited that mom is coming.  We can see Buenos Aires together :)

The best moment of the week was Saturday.  The Stake young men and young women had a theater event where each ward did a short play of a Book of Mormon story.  Since the MTC my favorite chapter in the Book of Mormon has been Jacob 5, and I have probably read it about one or two times a week since I have been on the mission.  And it gets me every time.  And as it would turn out our ward was assigned the Allegory of the Olive tree from Jacob 5 as our little theater production.  They did a modern dance version of the trees with the young women wearing green and brown dresses.  They danced and played the trees, and then they had one of the young men play the Lord of the Vinyard, and because we have very few young men, our little 12-year-old investigator, Liam, played the Servant of the Lord of the Vineyard.  

I sobbed the whole production of about 15minutes as I watched our little investigator play the part of the Savior.  I might just miss watching this family enter the waters of baptism, but some things are more important.  A long time ago in my mission I prayed to my Father that he wouldn’t send me anything or ask me to do anything that would influence me to develop pride.  And as I have watched the blessings unfold from that desire I am amazed, that I have been allowed to feel successful but in a quiet way.  I felt lately that my Father is proud and accepts my service.  This moment was one that has literally changed me, and the whole family was spiritually uplifted.

I can’t believe that Marc leaves tomorrow! How is he doing? Camron sent me a picture of you guys at Grimaldi’s.  I love Grimaldi’s!  (Ever since Whitney and Ryan suggested we walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and go to Grimaldi’s, I have loved it, for the pizza and for the happy memory of that day!)  That is on my list of the things we will be eating my first week. Mom, what are you going to do when the boys are gone? We’ve been planning so long to get them ready to leave, and tomorrow they will both be gone. When I think about them, I just cry. I can’t even imagine how you feel. Mom, you and I have both been doing very scary things lately!

I love this gospel and being a missionary, even if that means I will be doing wedding planning for the last two weeks of my mission. Haha. Oh, I hope to see these weddings! We shall see.

xoxo,
Hermana Walker 


PS. Nick sounds so good.  I love that he’s like if my emotional sister can do it, I can do it. Haha.