This wwek I did a couple of interviews for baptismal candidates in the other area in my district. They went well and one of them has a pretty interesting back-story. We´ll call her Jane Doe. She actuall met the missionary that´s been teaching her a year ago, when he was in his first area kind of far away from here. They taught her all of the lessons and prepared her for baptism, except for one minor problem. Her husband was not marrid to here, but rather to another woman who moved away years ago. Jane now has four children with that man, but he had no desire to work out all of the paper work and divorce his other wife and then marry her. At this point the missionary wsa tranffered out of the area. Jane however, has kept attending church meetings faithfully ever since then. As it turns out, Jane got tired of being held back by her "husband" and got separated from him. She told him that they can´t be together again until he works everything out. As part of this arrangment, she moved to where she is now, in her daughter´s house. That just happens to be in her missionary´s area, where they ran into each other shortly after she arrived. Now she´s going to get baptised here. What a "coincidence," eh?
So, are you all ready for the wierd part of the story. It turns out that her "husband" used to be a bishop. He served a full-time mission, came home, got married, got ordained as a high priest, and served as a bishop. Which means he´s probably not only married, but sealed to his former wife. Probobly why he was dragging his feet a little on getting all of that paper work done. It takes a lot of forethought to write the First Presidency and tell them how you got into such a sittuation. After years of inactivity he ran into his current bishop, whom he know in the mission. That bishop gave him a small talk and convinced him to go back to church. When he did go to church, he brought his new "wife" with him. And thus, Jane Doe came to learn the Gospel. What´s the moral of the story? Avoid the headache now and live the law of chastity in the first place.
Well, until next week,
Cuídense!
Elder Adam Russell Rich,
Republica Dominicana
PS--- Pic.--- Elder Zapata has a Monopoly game that we´ve been playing on p-days, which gave me the idea to make a version for this mission, which I´ve been doing for a few p-days now.
