Wednesday 11 May 2016

Mother

'oh, don't tell my mother til I've pulled myself together'

Well, now that we've pulled ourselves together after a long week, I got some updates to throw out there :) 

First off, on Saturday, we had Marlene's baptism!! It was awesome! On Thursday we went to visit her and go over stuff just so she was all ready and stuff, and it was just A+++. She was beaming the whole time, and was just stoked in general. We organized with her son, Kenny, to baptize her, and though Kenny is one of my favorite members in this area, he is notorious for never showing up to anything on time, no matter how hard his mom might try, or how hard we might try. Seeing as how the baptism was on Saturday, we told them, 'Okay, you need to be at the chapel at 3:40 so you're not late.' They both very much encouragingly told us they would be there on time, but when we showed up ourselves ten minutes before the baptism, we found Marlene standing and waiting, absolutely beaming, but with a distinctive lack of Kenny. The people conducting the service were rushing it and being all like 'it's 4pm we GOTTA START' and we were busy trying to chill them out so we could kill time for Kenny to show, but they started anyways. Thankfully, Kenny made it in time, and was able to baptize his own mom, which was truly amazing to see :) The gospel really does bless families, and the joy we saw in their little family of two that day was so incredible :) 
 
 


So, we proved the world wrong this week by showing that office elders CAN baptize. WOO!!

It has been another week full of hectic-ness again, as per the usual. Our week itself was going by super well, for what it was. Being the last week before transfers, we had a lot of organizing to do, and a lot of hours spent at the airport, but we were still able to get 4+ hours in our area almost every day, which rocked. We had a few really sweet lessons, and a few tougher ones. One of the tougher ones was with a guy named Nunu, who we really like, and is a really nice guy, but it's been tough to get stuff through to him. We've felt that in the past maybe he didn't understand the importance of a living day prophet, and so we've been focusing on that, paired with the doctrine of the Sabbath Day. We taught what we thought was a really straight forward lesson, presenting the reason why we keep the Sabbath holy, what the blessings are that come with it, and how it would help him. At the end of the lesson, though, when we invited him to come to church with us, he told us that he still wouldn't come, for a few reasons. It was hard to hear it, but it made me realize some of life's distractions in how they keep us from following the path we should be on. For Nunu, maybe in his life he's got some things that, while they are really important to him, are holding him back. It made me think about maybe what I might be putting first in my own life, and holding me back a bit. We can all do a bit better at that I guess. Just a random thought I had. 

A strange moment we had from this week was yesterday, when we were teaching a lesson, and we heard a giant crash from just outside the door, and TONS of dust came flying up. When we went to inspect it,  part of the ceiling on the outside of the house had fallen and crashed down :P it was crazy! I've never been in a lesson before where I could say the roof came crashing down, but now I can :) we helped clean up for a bit, but they always tell us, ' no Elder, you'll get dirty!' so after a bit, some guys came in with shovels and cleaned 'er all up. 

The weekend was crazy for us, but between the baptism and getting to call home, there couldn't have been a better timing for it. Heavenly Father knows our situations, and he gives us what we need when we need it most :) 

Gotta run, just heard we gotta buy a boat ticket for a sister who wasn't allowed to get on a plane :P Sorry, love y'all! 

Elder Massey
Elders Penner and Massey with Kenny



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