Howdy all!
All right. Most. Stressful. Week. Ever…. Best. Week. Ever. I’ll try to condense what happened this week into a single email……
Alright. So to start off, I guess I should let you know that there’s a superstition out here that every baptism has it’s “hiccup”. I’ve seen a hiccup in every baptism I’ve been too, but it’s never been anything too major, (one exception, but it had less to do with the baptism than the family situation). If every baptism has a hiccup, I guess you could call ours a violent case of explosive repeated hiccups. To start off, we set up the baptismal interview with our zone leaders only to find out that because she’s still 8, she falls under the ward’s jurisdiction. Alright. So the baptism is in less than a week, and suddenly we have to make sure she gets interviewed by our bishop who usually has a crazy enough schedual. But we set up the interview, and all goes well (well, relatively, we got roped into choir practice because we were at the chapel, and if you thought the Sheltons can’t sing….. well then you’ve just never met Elder Perkins…….). By this point, it’s Wednesday. Three days to the baptism and we gat a call from our ward mission leader that suddenly we have no speakers for the baptism, and that it all is falling on us now to do it. He said that he was possibly even going to miss the baptism for his son’s game, although he said he should probably be back. Either way, suddenly everything falls on us for the whole program. Talks, prayers, musical items, the actual ordinances of baptism and confirmation, literally the entire thing. We’re both having a bit of a freak out at this point. We’re trying to think of who we can get to do musical items, and we’ve got nobody. The stalwart families of the ward have other commitments for that day, so we’re in a real bind. (obviously, the two of us can’t do the musical numbers if we want her to have positive memories of her baptism). So we call in a favor from the sisters in our district who actually can sing, and they say they can. Great. So now Elder Perkins and I just have to give the talks and do the ordinances, because the other two missionaries volunteer for the prayers…. Alright, now it’s Friday. So we’re both trying to write talks that will be something for this little girl to remember, when we get a text from the sisters that says the APs are telling them they can’t come. Great. So we call the APs and we have a talk. They said that they’re trying to keep missionaries productive, and because it’s so far from the sisters area, they didn’t think it was appropriate they come. After explaining to them that we literally had no ward help, they caved in a bit and said that they could come, but they should try to invite some investigators or recent converts or less actives. So it’s now Friday night, I let the sisters know, and they say they’ll come. Because the ward mission leader has been out of town, we have to create the actual baptismal program as well….. in about four hours, and we don’t have computer access….. great. So we call one of our members, and they let us use their computer to draw up a program in the time we have, except there’s one catch…… they don’t have a printer. Fortunately, I made the wise decision back in Merimbula to buy a USB, so I draw it up before we have to turn in for the night, and save it to the USB to print off at the ward tomorrow before the baptism.
So we wake up the next morning, and as we head to the chapel we find out that we can’t get in until someone with a key comes, and the person presiding wasn’t planning on coming until an hour before the baptism. So we have to set up, fill the font, and print off the programs in all less than an hour. We then get a text from the sisters saying that they can’t come! At this point, I’m pretty stressed out, I’m sure I aged 20 years this week, and I’m just trusting in God that everything will turn out okay. We start to fill the font and get set up, and then go to print the programs. Well, the computer we’re using has had problems printing for basically forever. Forget printing double sided, we can’t even get a single page to print. We have about half an hour till the baptism, and we need to get these programs done, so I start just fiddling with the printer and it magically spits out one copy of one side of the page. I have to manually work the printer to print out several more copies one at a time, then we flipped the pages over, and then manually printed the other side onto them. All five minutes before the baptism starts…. when the sister missionaries show up. They were playing a joke saying they couldn’t come, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I did neither. Well, it all went pretty well after that though, she got baptized, and we’re all in the clear for it now. I guess our next struggle is going to be trying to keep her active. She’s very happy with her decision, and now she’s officially a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Whew.
all right. I guess it’s time to answer some questions….
So tell me, what does it mean to have an islander stomach, that you can eat a lot? yep.
We got the pictures with Elder Lavulavu (I’m curious as to how you pronounce his name, Brig says I say it all wrong), very cute! Pronounced like lava, but instead of the final “a”, say “ew”(like in “cute”, or president “Lew”). twice.
I’m glad you still get to see him. Does he play Rugby with you in the mornings? Not often. He lives a long way away, but they do come on the odd occasion.
All right, well, it’s all been good, we’ll talk to you next week!
Elder Shelton
