Well, this week was the L family baptism! It was just the coolest
experience ever! They are such an amazing family, and they have amazing
blessings ahead of them! It was an extremely exciting time for us, for them, and
for the branch. We weren't expecting too many people to show up, but they
completely filled up the Relief Society room, and after I got changed into some
dry clothes and came back in for the end of the baptism program there was
standing room only for me. It was so cool to see how many people came and
supported them in this decision! It was the Blanchard branch's first family
convert baptism, and it was the last one for them as a branch because during
sacrament meeting it became a ward! The members here were so excited! One of the
senior missionaries here was just beaming with excitement! I thought it was
about to turn into some the scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory where
the grandpa finds out they got a golden ticket and got up and started dancing.
Haha he was really excited!
Sacrament meeting was really fun! Doing
the confirmation was a blast! It was just such a cool experience being able to
be a part of this family's journey, and I can't wait to go through the
temple with them in a year to watch them be sealed! That will be such an amazing
experience!
So the rest of the week was really slow. We set a
couple of appointments for this week, so we'll see if we can keep them. It's
interesting out here because people will set like 5 appointments with you before
they finally just say they aren't interested. It makes it frustrating, but oh
well. We'll see how this week goes!
We had a few really funny
experiences. We went to see our investigator, and while we were locking up our
bikes and walking into the trailer park where he lives, 3 cop cars pull in, pull
up to his trailer and arrest him. So with nothing else to do really we just
knocked on the doors around it. We were about to quit knocking but we just
felt like there was someone who was prepared, so we figured we'd just knock the
rest of them. Well we finally get to the last row of trailers, and we knock the
first 2 and no one answers. Then while walking to the third one a guy wrecks on
his motorcycle (nothing serious) and so we run over to lift the bike off of him.
We tried talking to him, but he said he had to go and then just left. So we were
walking some more and there was a guy working outside and so we went up to him
and talked to him for about 20 minutes and he kept telling us how he wasn't
invited to a birthday party a couple of trailers down. Haha so we tried to give
him a Book of Mormon but he said he wouldn't read it and tried to convince us
the Sabbath was on Saturday and that all the religions are doing it wrong... So
we just kinda left and started walking back for lunch.
So on our way back
there was a trailer with 3 confederate flags on it, and a lady is outside
working on her porch. So we walk up and ask if we could help, but she said she
had it. So we asked if we could pray with her, and she let us. After we prayed
with her she told us she used to have a "Mormon Bible" and asked what it was
about. So we gave her one and read the first paragraph with her, and we asked if
she would read the last 2 paragraphs for us and she said, "Where it says 'We
invite all men everywhere'? I already read it while you read that paragraph. It
sounds interesting!" So either I'm a really slow reader or she's just
ridiculously fast... Or both. Haha but yeah she's a speed reader! We had her
turn to Moroni 10 and read vs. 4 and 5 and she read them out loud and said, "Wow
that's powerful!" And we said, "You're right! It really is!" And she just like
sped read the rest of the chapter and she kept on saying, "That's true... That's
true... That's true..." Haha it was so cool! She said she'd read it and she
might have finished the entire Book of Mormon by the time we got back to the
apartment for dinner! Haha
The other funny experience was we
knocked on a door and a guy came and we asked if we could pray with him and he
started telling us him and Jesus are as close as he can get right now. Then he
told us that if you take the meaning of the names of the people in Genesis 5 it
makes a message, which actually was pretty cool! And then he told us that
Jeremiah 10:1-5 prophecies that we'll all worship Christmas trees, and how
they're Pagan and evil and a tool of the devil to trick us into worshiping
him.... I don't know anyone that worships the Christmas tree... And then he told
us that giants built the pyramids and the tower of Babel and that in Genesis 6
it talks about giants are made when the sons of God (angels) mate with daughters
of men (regular women) and how it produces supernatural humans, that are giants,
but they're also abominations and all this weird stuff. Haha Elder Anderson and
I (we were on an exchange) were like, "How is this making you and Jesus close?"
Haha but we asked him if he had heard of the Book of Mormon, and he said he's
heard of it, but has never read it. We gave him one and he asked us if there
were any prophecies about or in the Book of Mormon and so we told him the Book
of Mormon prophecies about a ton of things, but the Bible prophecies of the Book
of Mormon in Ezekiel 37:15-17. We read it with him and he really liked it! So
yeah, we're going to go back over there to see what he thinks of the Book of
Mormon! It was funny though. While we were explaining the Book of Mormon and how
it takes place in the Americas he went off for about 10 minutes about how
there's evidence that giants lived in Ohio and how there's mounds that prove it.
Haha I thought to myself "No, we aren't talking about Lebron James!"
Haha but I resisted! Anyways it was a fun experience!
Well, that's about
all from Newcastle this week. Hope everything is going well with you back in the
real world! Keep the faith, the church is true! Love y'all!
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