Ten Cuidado ‏ 5/7/12

Dear Family and Friends, I´ve written a few letters this week for mother´s day. turns out that the american one is sooner than the latino one. Soooo.... my letters will be late. But I promise I did write. In other news, we did this awesome thing where all the missionaries in my zone worked for 2 hours in our ward with the members, visiting less active members and contacting a little bit. Its been raining like crazy so we ended up starting an hour late. All the streets were flooded about 10 inches to a foot, but we were fearless. The natives here thought it was pretty funny to see 20 dudes in white shirts and ties stomping through all the water like a bunch of fools. But then the bishop and his wife joined in. I told her she had lots of courage and she said, this is nothing, covenants are sacred. That made my heart happy. So funny story, and the reason for this weeks subject heading, which more or less says be careful, is that this week I got electrocuted. Did I spell that right? Let me explain. We had went to visit this member a few times who has a big black gate in the front of her house. One day we saw a sign attached to the gate that said, Cuidado, tiene corriente. That means more or less be careful because this has electric current. We understood the vocabulary, but thought it was a joke or something to deter thieves because nothing had happened to us before. So we entered without a problem. Funny thing about this country is that the power goes out a lot because people are always rigging the lines to steal power for free. So one day, when there WAS power, I went to open the gate and got electrocuted up to my elbows for about a second or so. It hurt a little. My companion was laughing pretty hard. Just before I opened it we had a small debate about if we should enter or not, and he said that corriente probably just means that the gate is hot because of the sun. Turns out that somewhere there is a live power line exposed to some rebar or something that is eventually connected to the gate. When the members were trying to close it the night before with a stick there were sparks flying everywhere. I told that story to the members yesterday in fast and testimony meeting. They thought it was pretty funny. I{m sure you can already make the parallel between my story and following promptings from the spirit and other danger signs. Sometimes we get lucky and don´t get hurt. Other times we get electrocuted. In the words of my good friend Mike Neal, Don´t be stupid. It hurts. I love you all. Elder Nichols