:o(

July 29, 2010 Thursday

Tonight we had an appointment to teach Luisa and Ricardo. Her car wasn’t there, and he explained she’d had to go to work; He didn’t want us to teach him anything because he didn’t want to get ahead of her. So we asked him how things were going with the Book of Mormon, and he assured us he was reading and praying. He said he was sure that it is scripture and that Joseph Smith is a prophet. Then he started talking about his job. He’s the supervisor of a daycare. He was hired in Perth and is over 14 folks from Broome. They all resent that an outsider was brought in, and the fact that he’s Latin works against him also. They are polite to him but then stab him in the back when he turns around. He needs to keep this job. He and Luisa both came here as students on a 3 year visa. He did a 3 year program to get the child care certification. Then he could get a job here and work two more years before applying for Australian citizenship. But whoever hired him has to be his sponsor to extend his visa for the next 2 years. If he doesn’t keep his job, he can be deported. So the pressure to succeed is incredible. There are some more loopholes he explained that are too complicated to try to write. We could tell he just needed to talk to someone about all this. He and Luisa feel very alone here (although they have some friends staying for a week right now). We just listened, and our hearts broke for him. As he talked, he explained that Luisa had come in to Australia on his visa as his partner. Partner is a word we hate—they aren’t married. We asked him about that. He explained how much he loves her but he doesn’t feel he can ask her to marry him until he has a good job and a home so he can support her so she can stay home and raise their kids. He told us as soon as he felt like he could ask her to marry him, we would be invited to the wedding. We didn’t explain the strict Law of Chastity that is part of the lessons. The timing wasn’t good. We will next time. We think we can probably get them to understand that his reasons for not marrying are part of Satan’s deceptions. Hopefully that will be the case. He is the sweetest, most hard working, sincere guy we have run into since we’ve been here. Our hearts just ached for him. Orson even got a big “abrahso” (Portuguese for hug & back slapping with his head on Orson’s shoulder) before we left.