From Father and Son This week

On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 12:41 AM, Tim Hackleman <timhackleman@live.com> wrote:

Dear Elder Punkin Sonshine,

How was your week?? We had a great weekend! I hope you are sitting down while reading this: Papio South beat Papillion Lavista Monarchs 44-34. The Monarchs' QB is one of the best in the state and we picked him off 6 times!!! 2 were pick-sixes!! Seth was so excited. He played every single offensive down.The crowd rushed the field at the end of the game. It was so much fun. It was crazy hot though. The game ended at 10:00 and it was 85 degrees and humid. Ugh!

We have 4 football games this week. Tuesday is Grant's first game, then Thursday both Grant and Nathan play, then Friday is Seth's away game against Bellevue East. You know your mom and dad, WE LOVE IT!!!

Did you have any baptisms this past week? You and your comp sure have been working hard! I am so proud of you. I had the ward bulletin changed to include your email address. Maybe you'll get some emails from some ward members. I know you are super busy, but we sure do love to hear what you have been up to.

I love you son! Keep up the hard work. I hope you are feeling well. Grant says that he fasts for you every fast Sunday.

¡Ámele! Papá

ALRIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is the best football news I have ever seen! Papio south beat Papio! Seth played every down. Nathan and Grant are getting ready to start. Utah won. BYU and BSU lost. Wow. My week has been made. Haha

We had one baptism. His name is xxxxxxx. He´s nine. If you are wondering if he’s crying in the picture, it´s ´cuz he is. They don´t have temperature control over the water in the bap fonts here so the water is arctic cold. He started crying in the font and said he didn’t want to do it. I told him in 10 seconds it will all be over just look forward and I will do everything. It was way cool though, especially to shed some light on a dismal couple days before.

xxxxxx, the other person we were supposed to baptize that I told you about last week didn´t get baptized. So on thursday we had a work visit with the zone leaders so I was in a different area with one of them and the other was in my area with my companion. It worked perfectly because xxxxxx needed to be interviewed by the zone leader anyway. He got interviewed at the stake center. His interview went great and everything was set. He was talking with my companion and the other zone leader outside the church for awhile after the interview. Our ward was having an activity there so the bishop and all the ward were outside doing their own thing. Well while they were talking his wife showed up. She has never been to church, I don´t know how she even knew where the building was but she walked up and shoved him and began chewing him out over how he was making the worst decision of his life and that their relationship is on the line if he decides to be baptized. She does this in front of the entire ward. And seriously dad, this guy is golden. This guy is how I understand when missionaries talk about how strong their love is for their investigators. This guy was ¨him¨ for me. I have never seen a stronger testimony in someone as new to the church as he was.

Well anyway, we had a visit with him the next day to make sure everything was ok and when we got there, he starting apologizing for everything that had happened and for wasting our time but he won´t be able to get baptized or even attend church anymore. It was all I could do to keep from crying. He returned his book of mormon, his manual for gospel principles class, and even his hymn book. All of which he had for himself already. He told us his wife won´t even allow the book of mormon in the house. He said that he knows this church is true, he has no doubt about anything we have taught him or what he has learned from coming to church but he knows how important families are and if he gets baptized now, he will ruin his.

It was easily the hardest experience I have had so far on my mission. I now know that the difficult experiences that I am going to have are not going to be something that I have to go through for myself, because I can handle that. It will be the struggles that my investigators go through that I have to witness and try to help them in any way I can but, sometimes, may come up short because of various reasons. It is definitely a testimony challenger but a builder as well. Sorry this letter is so dismal. It really was a good week with the exception of that.

We had this activity on Wednesday called Gastronomica. Every group (I don’t remember what it´s called in English. Relief society, young mens, Priesthood and so on..) cooked an authentic Peruvian food and then everyone came and ate until they were stuffed. I was the only person not from Peru. Everyone in the ward made my plate for me and all watched me eat it to see how I liked it all. You can see how many people were there from these pics. It was all soooo good. I did it on saturday and didn´t eat again until after our fast on sunday and it was still the easiest fast I have ever had because I was soo full. Haha

I have a bunch of pics so I will send some more to mom. Love you dad!