Exciting news! I
get to stay with my companion for one more transfer.
That means I'm staying here in Hemet for Christmas and New Years. Most
of our zone stayed the same. Two elders left and got switched out, and
one ward is getting a second set of elders.
This means
that I know where I'll be living for Christmas. Last year I discovered
that the mission office likes to hold packages that come in December and
hand them out at the mission party on Christmas Eve. So if you plan on
sending me something to open up BEFORE Christmas Eve, you'll need to
send it directly to me.
So, this week was a lot of fun. I think I have some pictures to send you of our Thanksgiving and Black Friday baptism.
I
feel like my mission is flying by. This entire transfer has gone by and
I haven't even written in my journal once. I need to catch up.
So,
the man we called The Straggler is a straggler no more. He got baptized on Friday 29 November at 10am. One of the elders
that taught him before me came back and got to be at the baptism. There
were lots of little kids at the baptism so it was a lot of fun playing
with them while the second speaker tried his hardest to give a general
conference talk. I've been to enough baptismal programs where the exact
same talks are given to where shorter is better in my book, but it's not
my baptism, so I let them do what they want.
The Parking
Lot Miracle seemed to be getting complacent until
their phone got shut off. That day they came to us and told us how they
are looking for jobs with renewed effort, and asked us exactly what they
needed to do in order to get baptized. They still need to get a divorce
finalized so that they can get married and get baptized. But that's
what they want. They plan on having our bishop marry them as soon as
humanly possible and we are super excited. I've never married anyone
before! So that should be interesting. It'll feel weird to marry someone
only until the end of their lives instead of for all eternity, but I
have confidence that they will progress towards the temple once they are
baptized. The ward loves them a lot and they are very grateful for all
the love and support they have found just in the short time they've been
coming to church.
Speaking of which, they actually missed
church for the first time in a month. The reason being that they didn't
have any clean clothes, so they drove all the way to Colton to do
laundry and got stuck there. I wish I would have known so I could have
offered to let them do laundry with a member family somewhere here. In
fact that thought crossed my mind in our last lesson when I realized
that the guy was wearing the same shirt as the last time I saw him and
that it had a spot on it. Oh well. We are teaching them again tonight at
the Stake President's home.
Oh man Thanksgiving was fun.
The in-laws of The Straggler had us over to their home and we ate and
talked and lounged around and watched the little kids shoot some .22s.
Then their grandfather showed me his gun safe that was full of historic
rifles from World War II and Vietnam. I think I saw seven or eight
rifles in total and he told me about them and I got to be a little bit
nostalgic for a minute before we put them back in the safe. My companion
didn't really care but I thought it was really cool.
Earlier
that day, we got to play flag football with all the missionaries in
Hemet. I think we played for about three hours. I was so sore the day
after. And the day after. And a little bit the day after that. I think
I'm better now. But goodness, I didn't think I would make it to the
shower when I rolled out of bed Friday morning. We played hard. But I
was lucky enough to be on the coolest team. At first we were playing 14
on 14, and it was kind of crowded, so we split into three teams. My team
was selected according to who was the most fun, not who was the
superstar player, or so the captain told me after we got together. We
were the only team that selected a team name - the Sunbeams - and we
practiced our team victory celebrations so we had a different one for
every touchdown we scored. It went pretty quickly from that point on,
because with the three teams we switched out the teams every time
someone scored, so there really wasn't a whole lot of defense going on.
But it was so fun. I loved being on TEAM SUNBEAM.
My
old companion is now the newest AP. That's kind
of cool. My current companion served with him in the Jurupa 2nd ward as
well. So we called him and reminisced for a little bit after transfer
calls. It was super cool.
Well I love you guys tons! Have a very happy December. God is awesome!
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