Double Date

So that title was kind of clickbait. Gotcha! What I meant was that we have two people with a baptismal date. Mark accepted a date this week, Cameron is progressing toward his baptism, and we have some others that are possibilities to be baptized soon. Good stuff goin' on here. This week we also had the craziest experience with a service project. It was a nightmare. And by popular request I will also be doing another spiritual spiel at the end.

So Mark Andrews accepted a date to be baptized on the 14th of December. He wanted to be baptized, but didn't fully understand what baptism is, what it means, or why it's necessary, so we taught a whole lesson about it. It went really well and he still wanted to be baptized even after telling him what he is committing to do. 

He is totally socially converted. He has come to church six weeks straight and always tries to meet new people. He loves all the members and has 3ven had dinner with many of them. He also has built a great relationship with us. He took us to a nice restaurant this week for lunch and it was amazing. We just got to get him converted to the gospel, but he's doing great overall.

*WARNING* *Long Story Ahead* *It's also kind of a meaningless rant*

So last week we got a call from someone who had heard we do service. She said she needed some stuff moved out of a storage unit so she could bring it with her in her move north somewhere. She said it should be pretty quick, especially if we got four guys to help. We show up on the day we scheduled with two other missionaries, and we were really hoping to be in and out quick because we had a dinner to get to. So we get there at four, thinking we'll knock it out in an hour. 
     She had rented a mini van and we were going to put everything from her storage unit in that, then she would drive the mini van to her new place in another state. "Alright, I guess there isn't that much stuff since she only brought a mini van," I thought. We walk in and she opens the unit and it is filled to the brim, there is enough stuff to fill five mini vans easy. And she wants it all crammed into one. 

So we start going and fit maybe 30 percent of the stuff in when we run out of space. And we are behind schedule, so we told her we had to go, and she knew our time constraints from the beginning. We said we could help put the other stuff somewhere else tomorrow if she can figure something out.

So Friday comes and she decides to buy a pod in Deland, 25 minutes away, and that we will put the stuff from the van in there and then refill the van. So we got the Elders up there to help her. They unloaded it, she brought it back, and we start filling the van again. Again, we ran out of room. So we put all the other stuff in a Carolla she was leaving behind, just so it was out of the storage unit, because that day was the deadline to have it emptied. We still had more stuff that couldn't fit in either vehicle. Like big stuff. And we ran out of time again, so we said we had to leave and wished her luck. 

So we left and she ended up getting the Deland sisters to help put the van stuff in the pod. This meant she had to leave a bunch of stuff that didn't fit just left outside because it couldn't stay in the storage unit any longer. So the sisters helped her unload it again up in Deland, we finished putting the extra stuff in the van on Saturday after waiting a half hour for her to show up, and then she got the sisters to unload the van one last time and got the pod shipped.

It all kind of worked out in the end, but this was the biggest nightmare ever. What made it worse was this lady kept telling us we weren't packing it tight enough and we weren't doing enough for her, after we had spent over eight hours total helping her instead of one. I think God was trying to teach me the biggest lesson in being patient and staying calm and polite. I think I barely passed the test. 

Sorry for the rant. That was just my interesting mission story for the week. Now that I ranted about my problems how about a little spiritual spiel? 

Spiritual Spiel
As many of you know, Christmas is coming. I'm so excited, mostly for the Light the World initiative. I want to talk specifically about the new nativity video coming out, called The Christ Child. It should be out to the public by now, I'm not sure, but it is an 18 minute nativity video made by the church that is as accurate as they could make it. The people speak Aramaic, Christ was a toddler when the wise men came, things like that. It is super well done. I have shown it to about 10 members, and I can feel the spirit each time I watch it. I feel so much peace and joy, like for reals, as I watch it and ponder it. You should all watch it to see what I mean. 

I share this because this is an amazing opportunity for each of us. We each have people that could use a good Christmas message, who would love to watch a video about the birth of Christ. I invite each of you to think and pray about who you could invite to your home and watch this video with. It's only November, which gives you plenty of time to think. I know that as you share goodness and serve others, including by sharing this video, you will be uplifted and helped also. 

That's it for this week. This may be a new record for my longest email, sorry about that, I hope you made it this far. I hope you guys have cool experiences as you share this video with your friends and neighbors. Have a great week!