The second part of that title is exactly what our recent convert said about the gospel. I love that man.
This week has been better in weather. But it seemed much worse. We ran out of miles on the car for the month and so we walked most of the week. We spent all day saturday walking. I think the Casey's and Kum and Go got sick of us using them for the restroom or snacks. We just got tired. At one point I just gave up and laid down on Ray's porch (he was not home) to just relax my back. It felt so good, even if it looked awkward.
Jacob is still on for baptism. He's taught us both the restoration and the Plan of Salvation for the most part, with us just asking questions to kickstart his memory. He's even resolving his own concerns and everything. He's a great guy. He's having people fly in for the baptism and has requested Elder Bright, the missionary who left just before I came in, to baptize him, so we had to figure out how to get him down here for this coming saturday. The branch doesn't really even know what to do with two baptisms right in a row, and more dates sure to be set here soon. But they're an amazing branch so they'll do great. They fellowship like CRAZY and it's perfect. One investigator who we're teaching now explained her experience of going there (and this was even ten years ago) a lot like how Glenn Beck explained his first time going to church. But it's the members' responsibility to be the friends to the people, because they'll be around much longer than us missionaries, so it's good they're doing that here. We've even been seeing a major boom in Less Actives coming back to church, which is AWESOME. The boom, I believe, has little too do with us, beyond just the fact that hardworking missionaries in an area do loads for the area anyway. And I'm not claiming to be hardworking myself, that's just what a member told us we were yesterday in PEC. So that's always good. You also know it's a good sign that members like you when they start teasing you (which they do a lot of here).
We had District Meeting here in Knoxville this week so we had it in our branch building. Well, I had gotten letters that morning so I took them with me there to read before and after the meeting. But, I made the mistake of leaving one of them behind. My branch president found it on the pulpit sunday morning and, seeing it was from a girl, found me in the hall where I was greeting people and continued to threaten to have me read it aloud. I tried a few times to grab it from him, but it doesn't really help that he's in the National Guard Reserves, so the only way I would have gotten it back would have been by tackling him and using the unfair tactics I've learned from water polo to get it back. Finally, when he saw I was thoroughly embarassed, he handed it over. TOTALLY seems like something Dad would do. Which is why it's good Dad granted me with the sense of humor to think that was hilarious and not just embarrassing.
We also had exchanges this week and I ended up staying here and going to Pella with our District Leader. We had a whole line of stuff arranged and after the first two appointments fell through I admit, I lost some hope on our second to last one (the last one being jacob, and I knew that couldn't fall through). So when we got carried away talking to some Baptist Missionaries (way cool thing I noticed. They never once bore their testimony on what they were saying. This girl was going to school for three years and knew all sorts of interpretation of scripture but could not just say I know this to be true because I've asked God and received a confirming witness, as we can. The spirit is always so strong with testimony, and people don't know what to do with that. They're always just based on knowledge and suppositions.) and ran into another appointment's timeslot, I just allowed it to. Well, the appointment that we only ended up having about ten minutes for was with this guy who had seemed sort of interested when we first met with him and taught him a first lesson. And in this second appointment, he went on about how he's been to church before because his now deceased wife was LDS and has read 60 pages or so out of the Book of Mormon and considers it scripture and accepted a soft baptismal commitment...yeah, he was way cool. Even tried to reschedule work so he could come to church. Well, I guess we see what happens when I assume.
Things are going well here. Just working hard as always. This is the last monday Prep-Day of the transfer, so I'll talk to you in a week and a half!
Elder Gates
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