Dad, make all of the kids practice piano. Like a little of everything is good, but make them practice them hymns!! This week was one of the most stressful of my mission because of the flippin' piano. If you didn't already know they asked me to play the piano like 2 weeks ago for Stake Conference. For all of the congregational hymns I gave them a list of the ones I could play and they chose from those for me to play. Then the stake choir director asked me to play for the choir as well, so I had to learn 2 new hymns that I had never played before, which was stressful, but I had like 2 weeks to practice (on p-days and when we were in the church for correlation and whatnot).
Then we get to the stressful part. We get in to the first session of Stake Conference, the leadership session (1 of 3) and I play the opening and do pretty good, things are looking okay. Then right after the opening hymn they announce the program, list off a bunch of people who are gonna talk, and then announce an intermediate hymn....One that they didn't tell me about and one that I didn't know how to play!! So I had like 35 minutes to go out, find a broken keyboard in the primary room of the stake center, and learn a new hymn that I had to play in front of all of the stake leaders, the area temple president from Santo Domingo, my mission president, and the presiding area seventy - Elder Zivic.
Let's just say I crashed and burned on that intermediate hymn. I came back a little with the closing hymn. Then the next session was a general session on Saturday night, and once again I killed it on the opening hymn, and once again they decided to sing an intermediate hymn that they didn't tell me about!! Back to the primary I went, to learn a new hymn. But this second time I started with a prayer. I told God that it was pretty obvious I couldn't learn to play a song in a half hour. Not even just with one hand (which is what I tried the first time) but that I had to learn it for this congregation (some of which drove for over 2 hours to get there). Basically my prayer was a "Jesus Take the Wheel" song, except for with the piano, cause I knew I couldn't learn it, but Jesus already knew it, so he could play it through me. I closed my prayer, and I started practicing with faith, by which I mean that I practiced to learn both hands, not just the right hand, (which usually takes longer and I was running out of time)... but I practiced. And I practiced. And I practiced. And by the end of my practice time I still didn't know it well enough to perform it! But I went and I played it any ways. and I prayed while I played. And the congregation didn't know it, but the Spirit of God accompanied them with that hymn. It ended up way better than I ever practiced it, and I can't explain to you in worldly terms how that is possible.
From there on out, all of the other hymns were ones that they had told me about and I was more or less prepared for. Moral of the story is not to not learn the piano and expect God to bail you out of tight situations with a prayer. No - it is to LEARN THE PIANO! I don't even know the piano that well and apparently I'm the best in the stake here in Puerto Rico! They tried for a while to find someone else, because the missionaries are not supposed to go to the Saturday sessions, but they couldn't find anyone, so yeah, dad MAKE THEM PRACTICE - please and thank you.
Dude, that's so awesome that so many people are coming up, its gonna be a party, and the eclipse is gonna be awesome too! I totally could have gotten all you guys eclipse glasses for super cheap at my work if I had known, but like, I don't work there anymore so you're kinda on you're own with that.
This week has been pretty good. The members have been super nice to me ever since that fireside we had last week. And the work goes a lot smoother when the members are nice to you. As it seems Maelynn put into practice this last week as well. Nice job on those baptisms btw, sis.
Okay, I've got some extra time so I'm gonna do a member highlight:
One of my favorite members here is named Chispa. Actually his real name is Jose something, but everyone calls him Chispa. He used to be the town drunk of a pueblo called Aguada before the Sister missionaries came and baptized him and his wife about 15 years ago. He's been sober ever since. Everyone in the town knows him and he knows everyone in the town. So we'll be driving down the road together and he'll just be calling out the window to everyone. He has a little finca in our area and for our p-day today we decided to go help him work on the farm for a few hours. It was actually super fun. I got pretty good at husking coconuts, learned at least 3 different parts of the coconut that you can eat(la tella, la carne, y la manzana).
And I had a lot of fun just going wild rambo on some trees with a machete. BTWs its like 10x funner to cut down trees with a machete than it is with an ax. Plus you look so much cooler doing it. The thicker trees you had to smack them a few times, but if they were skinnier than like 2-3 inches in diameter you could do them in one swing and it just makes you look like such a stud when you do that. Chispa was super funny there too. He introduced us to the people who live next to the finca and he told them I was Hawaiian (cause of grandpas movie). Also, he doesn't know my real name, he just calls me "Kolicoqui" - partly because he doesn't remember what they called gramps, and because the coqui frog is like the national animal here, so "Kolicoqui" is the Boricuan version of Kolipoki. Okay, one more funny thing about Chispa is that he loves fishing, like a lot. It's one of the few things we don't see eye to eye on. But he loves it. And he showed up at church the other week with golden chain necklaces and golden fish hanging on them - a dolphin and a sword fish it looked like. And all he said was: "Te gusta mi blingbling?" Jajaja! so yeah...that's Chispa. He's cool.
love you all,
Elder Bailey
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