When it gets cold outside and you've got nobody to love - 11/25/13

It got a bit colder this week. In fact, we even got some rain this week, and I got to wear my raincoat that my grandfather gave me for maybe the fifth or sixth time this year. I was told that I look like a secret agent in my big long raincoat. I like it. 

I am so very blessed. The mission has been good to me this week.

The people that were progressing last week are still progressing this week. The ones that gave me headaches are still being sketchy and giving me headaches. In a way I guess that means nothing has changed.

The Straggler has moved his baptismal date. He's being dunked on Black Friday at 10am. Not a whole lot of people will come, but that's the way he wants it. We had a lesson with him last night and he was a bit bummed at how his Catholic parents reacted to his invitation to come to his baptism. But our teamup who knows the family well did an excellent job of bringing things into perspective. I'd like to think my scripture references helped too, but mostly it was the 80-year-old sage we brought with us. I call it teamwork. 

Maybe it's just the title, but I feel like I should be baptizing at least once a month as a zone leader. So far it took us a whole month just to squeeze out this one guy. I'm in such a fertile zone, with such a good companion, you'd think we would see more fruits of our efforts. But I think my reward is the peace and love that I feel on a daily basis as I buckle down and work consistently. It would still be nice to baptize more. 

This week is going to be a fun one. We have Thanksgiving dinner lined up with the in-laws of The Straggler. The missionaries all plan on playing flag football together that morning. I've got a baptism on Friday. I think we have a hefty service project lined up on Wednesday. Meetings on Tuesday.

Oh speaking of service... we did so much service on Saturday that I didn't even get to start proselyting until 5pm. We were loading and unloading U-Hauls all day, got home, and no joke, somebody knocked on the door of our apartment and asked us if we could unload another. It was pretty weird. All this was on exchanges, too. I exchanged twice this week, one day was all on bike.  And today I get to do some more service that I'm really not looking forward to. My Mondays are supposed to be my sacred days of rest! Oh well. 

Le sigh. I have so many good things to talk about but my brain is tired. I love you guys. Talk to you later.