Howdy all!
It’s been a bit of a slow week this week….. I guess I’ll let you know about it below….
Alright we’re below now. Basically, this week has been walking and having investigators disapear off the face of the planet. The investigator who we set a baptismal date with has not been picking his phone up. We literally have tried calling 3-5 times a day. We even saw him in the other side of the street (but it was too busy to cross, and the next crosswalk was about an eternity away), so we gave him a call to catch his attention. And he didn’t even flinch. I think his phone must be broken or stolen or something. One of our other promising investigators turned out only to be investigating because he thought being baptized would help him stay in the country. Oh boy, that was a bit of a mess to sort out, one we are still trying to sort out….. We haven’t been able to meet with one of our other promising investigators, because she was busy, and another one of our investigators have seemingly vanished.
Been kind of rough this week for us. But it was also very good. The sisters in our district had two fantastic baptisms. One of them was really quite a miracle. I went to go the interview for her (“R”, she’s a 13 year old girl), at her flat because they didn’t have transport to make it to the chapel. It’s just Rose and her mom that live there, which presented a bit of a problem… We’re not allowed to go into a home if there’s not a man 18 or older present. So We and the sister missionaries were trying to figure out what we could do when all of a sudden, the mother say’s “Oh, my husband is here!” Great right? Not so much. We go in and start meeting with the family when the father says “Are you here to baptize my daughter?” We answer in the affirmative and he freaks out. He said, if you baptize my daughter, it’s it for me, I’m through with this family. The mom starts getting into an argument with him, and then she asks “R” if this is what she wants….”R” is freaked out so she didn’t say much… “I don’t know”,”I’m not sure…” stuff like that. The mother starts telling us that she feels that Satan is intervening to stop the baptism from happening, and tells him, “if it comes down to never seeing you again, I’m okay with it!” at this point, the father leaves the flat. “R” is terrified, and the sisters and her mother are trying to console her. They turn to us…. Well, as it turns out, the male left the house, so we only have time to share some quick comfort, share our testimonies, and then have to stand outside…. where the drunk father is speaking angry Tongan into the phone. We have to stand there about two or so yards away from him for about fifteen minutes. The sister missionaries come out, and we return to the car quickly without a word. When we get to the car, the sisters explain to us what was going on. They had never met the father before, as it turns out, he’s violent, and isn’t supposed to see his family.” R” still wants to be baptized, but because the father was right there, they wanted to push the interview back…. And her baptism was the next day. But it turned out all right in the end. Elder Van Orden and I fasted (it got really hot, and we were out street contacting that entire morning), but we got there an hour before the baptism started and we got through the interview and “R” got baptized!
The rest of the week was pretty boring in comparison. Basically, the only other notable event after that was going to talk again to that group of Muslims Elder Van Orden and I ran into before. Turns out, they get less friendly when you are able to actually answer their attacks on Christianity. Not that they were terribly unfriendly, just one of them mostly. It got to the point he had to take a couple second time outs to vent and deal with our answers while his friends kept asking us. Oh well. It is what it is.
Well I love you all and I’ve been keeping you all, especially the Simpsons, in my prayers. I hope that everything is going all right at home, and that neither Brigham or Emily pull a surprise engagement on me!
Elder Shelton
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