Dear Family,
Wow, so I never thought this day would
come, but I’m being transferred. Manoguyabo feels like my home. I actually
don’t want to leave this place. I have made so many friends here and have gotten
so close to these people. I never thought it would be possible to find this
sort of home away from home, but in complete honesty, Manoguyabo feels like
home. Elder B, Elder M, and Elder E are my brothers, and this ward feels just
like my home ward. But I’m off to start from scratch and meet new people. I
found out my new area: I’m going to a little town called San Juan in the 1st
branch. It’s close to the border of Haiti and yeah, I’m feeling a bit nervous.
My new comp will be Elder J. I think he is from Canada but is Mexican. It should
be good! I’m going deep in the jungle and so to get there I’ll have to be at
the transfer chapel at 6 in the morning to get on the bus to go to the south
transfer chapel. Let me explain a bit, there are 2 parts of this mission: the capital
and the south. The south is the part of the country where there is all of the
3rd world stuff. The capital has supermarkets and stuff like that, but in the
south, no. So I am here in the capital and we have our own transfer chapel and I
have to take a bus to the south transfer chapel and from there to my new area. It
will be like a 12-hour trip, but I’m excited. I went to the supermarket here
today for the last time and bought myself snacks for the ride! :) Anyway I’m
going to a super cool area I think. I’ll be in the same house as the zone
leaders!
But the big news this week is that P and
Y got married and baptized!!!!!! I can’t tell you guys how long I have been waiting
for that day! On Friday they got married, and Elder B and I got to be the
witnesses to the marriage! It was super cool! They were so happy and Y was
looking very beautiful. The whole thing went very well. There was a weird mix
up where they weren’t sure if they would accept our passport copies so we had
to call the president’s assistants and they came to be the witnesses. In the
end we had the assistants there, and the zone leaders, and the other
companionship here in Manoguayabo. So for this wedding we had P and Y with 8
elders! I’m fairly sure everybody thought we were nuts. A little later, Y told
me that she got kicked out of her mom’s house because she told her mom that she
was going to marry P and her mom didn’t want her to do that. I felt very bad,
but Y told us that she is happy with her decision.
Saturday I packed during my spare time,
and we had to go to the stake center to fill up the baptismal font. While it
was filling up, Elder B and I had a very good conversation about our three transfers
together. It was a good talk. Then we went out to work for a bit, but couldn’t
focus much because we were so excited for the baptism. We ended up showing up
to the baptism more than an hour and a half early! We had to refill the font
because it drained a bit after we had filled it up the first time. We just hung
around till people showed up and then we got changed into our baptism clothes
and got everything ready. Wow! Almost the whole ward showed up to support P and
Y! It was a very awesome day! We didn’t have enough chairs for all the people. I
got to baptize Y! I really felt my purpose as a missionary as I did the ordinance.
I had to redo the baptism because I forgot to say “amen” the first time.
Then the rest of this week I’ve just
been packing and saying good-bye to people. One funny story is that there is
this return missionary in my ward who is married and we are good friends. He
came up to us and said, “Hey since you are leaving, you need to come over to my
house and eat lunch”. So we said yeah of course. Anyway his wife made spaghetti.
It was the coolest lunch appointment ever! And yeah, I have plans to say good-bye
to more people tonight and next week I’ll be in San Juan! I love you all, and
stay strong. A big shout out to the ex-Elder Jake Stark! I love you bro.
Love,
Elder Bailey Stark
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