Dear Familie and Urvurone,
Jeffrey, what's the deal??!?!? The most I had pulled was 4 teeth at one time!! Well, I guess our mouths have it out for us.
As for the lack of pictures, two things; first, you know how lousy I am at taking pictures, and I don't mean low quality. I took a bunch of pictures before because stuff actually happened, like the Winter Carnival! Second, the mission banned us from using DropBox. Don't ask me, I don't know why, but I haven't been uploading the ones I have either.
Yup! "Escuses, escuses"
Well, moving on now. Brother Marshall is pretty cool, so much so that it's turning out to be hard for me to break out of my habit of actually asking to use stuff around the house. (He scolds me every time that I do.) Some of the other things that he has made include Jambalaya, Breakfast for dinner, and that's all that I can think of right now; my brain is on perpetual sleep mode. As for the "instant baptism," the whole affair was rather interesting....
It started off alright, with Lucy and Joe arriving a half and our early, the program lined up, and the room set up on time. By 7:00 we even had to start setting up more chairs, so it was well attended. We had a prayer, song, and talk, and the first baptism was for Joe. A quick adjustment of arms, and it went quite smoothly. And then things were weird.
The reason that we had Joe go first, when we had originally planned for Lucy to do so, was because the man who was going to baptize her hadn't showed up by 7:15, when Joe was baptized. By 7:20, we'd finished with Joe and he was back, dressed, and in the room. At 7:25, after a failed attempt at using the time for a Testimony meeting (no one stood up), we started singing because there was nothing else to do. 7:30 showed us sitting there in relative silence, with a lot of whispering about the lack of a baptizer going on. At 7:36, Bro. Gann made it, and Lucy was able to get into the font and be baptized. But the fun doesn't stop there...
Lucy was already down, up, out of the font, and back in the changing room, when two other people and I all realized something. Bro Gann had said Lucy's full name correctly and had done the prayer right, but he had used her Maiden Name, not her married one. We had to send one of the ladies in to tell her that we needed to do it again, which lady came out and told us that Lucy needed to put the jumpsuit back on. Well, it finally worked out (Lucy got back in, the name was said right, nothing was sticking out of the water, all was well), and the rest of the program went really well, with the slight frustration of two kids in the front row making a little more noise than an airliner.
All in all, I think that it went really well...
The confirmation went well too. I actually was able to confirm Lucy, and the Bishop confirmed Joe. Still weird to talk in front of a bunch of people, even if it is while being surrounded by a bunch of other men and everyone has their eyes closed. Oh well, at least there was only one fumble per prayer, and no screaming kinds that I could hear.
The next cool thing that happened this last week was a lesson by president Cannon, teaching the up-and-coming youth and pre-missionaries about what the mission involves. In short, the kind of things that turn your hair white and drive you to diet Coke. (Note obvious Robert Kirby reference...) Labeled "stress," he went over a few of the things that aren't often mentioned to prospective missionaries who are starting to get prepared, such as the fact that money matters, comps aren't perfect, life isn't going to be baptisms falling in your lap (especially in the first three months), and leaders are there because they have been though a lot of the same things that you have, and know a little bit about how to help.
Yes. All of the things that you told me, and a lot of the things that I didn't listen to at the beginning. Still important to know.
Well, that should just about do for this week. Thanks as always, and hope you have a great rest of the week! Jeff, try not to die on me before I get back...
Love and Insanity, Elder Stuver
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