The Beautiful Wife Points Equation

Okay, you probably don't know this Elders, at least I assume you don't. While in the mission, you may come across the saying "Beautiful/Celestial/ ETC. Wife points". As far as I know, I haven't heard yet, though I wouldn't be surprised, Sister's saying talking about "Handsome Husband points." Don't be alarmed when you hear this! It isn't false doctrine...per sé. It's just one of those underlying themes during the mission which helps...well, how can I explain this?? With keeping your sense of humor during the mission?

Here's an experience.

I was in my last area, called Los Jardines de Asunción. It was an area in the middle of Guatemala City, right next to the legendary Zona 5 or as the locales called it "La Limonada". No one really could explain to me why it was called that...I took it to mean that, if you were there after sunset, the gangs there would find you, stab you, shoot you and then turn you into limonada...limonade for you non-Spanish folk. That's not the topic for this particular article, but maybe at a later date.

So, my companion Elder Weston Ward...I swear he's a comic book hero, just look at the name Weston Ward...both names start with the same letter, like Peter Parker or Clark Kent, the C isn't a K, but the sounds are the same...hmmm...

Anyways, we were out tracting one day, during the beginning of the cyclical rainy season, when it began to rain...then it began to rain some more...and then a whole lot more. Of course we had on our appropriate raingear, but the water came down, so much, so fast we were utterly soaked to our bones within minutes. My companion remarked, "Just remember, this is beautiful wife points." I replied, "Tracting in the rain would get me a more beautiful wife?? How do you figure? What's the equation for that?"

Apparently the equation is Suffering + Preaching the word of God + unusual suffering = Beautiful wife.


I thought to myself, "Our discomfort for tracting in the pouring rain, encountering an unusual supply of mocking denizens that opened their doors to see two completely swashed...if that's the word for defining soaked beyond all soakedness, wrinkling fingers and toes, fogging glasses and finding, somehow someway every inconveniently placed, over-the-complete-shoe-and-into-my-socks puddle...basically a mini-pond complete with worms, for my feet to step into, 19 year old men speaking a strange form of Spanish, not to mention, the cars screaming by throwing a tide pool of water on top of me, and if we are going to talk about suffering as part of the equation, then let's not forget everything else, like the amoebic parasitic bu water(that's pronounced 'boo'), the lice, the flying fluttering sounds of cockroaches at night, the strange spasdic spiders that drop all of their legs when frightened only to grow them back to scare the bejesus out of you, the ginormous grizzly tarantulas that seem to somehow slip under the front door and onto your bedroom wall while you are sleeping, the community toilets complete with roaches and crawling things and only a bucket of water to flush the toilet, the bu, and more bu, the rat infestation that live in your roof and then crawl down and sleep on your head at night, the mice, the bu, the endless streams of Pepto Bismol and other medicines like Tinidazol to kill the worms, parasites, and bu inside my body, the heat, the rain, the fact I am taller than half the population by at least 2 feet, the gangs that want my 'dollars' when I have none, the biting, rabid dogs complete with all manner of insects known to kill a man within seconds living on them, the slithering snakes of all shapes in sizes, corals, boas, pythons oh my!, the steep mountain trails, the fact we can't ride bikes or have vehicles to ride on or in, and the lady who we pay to cook our food that only gives us some black bean soup complete with a chicken foot jutting out of the middle and turns on Dragonball Z to watch as we are trying to eat........... then by Jiminy Cricket, I better get one hell-uva knock-out of a wife when this is all said and done!!!!!!

And I do.