Hi everyone!
This week has been ridiculous. I don't even know where to start. I guess first, it's been a beat down of a week. And it felt so long. I'm so glad to have finally gotten through it. We had a lot of appointments cancel, a few of which were pretty important. One of them was REALLY important because they're supposed to get baptized this Saturday, but now, I don't know. We might need to push it back a week
or two if they keep flaking out. Also, one of our investigators dropped us. So that's sad, and a little bit frustrating. We kinda saw it coming though. On top of that, it was transfer week. Even though neither of us got transferred, it was still a crazy few days. Monday night and Tuesday we played host to a missionary who was going home. And after he left, we were also temporary companions for an Elder who had to wait for his new companion to come down from Cedar City. It was just a complicated couple of days.
And Crazy Lady is at it again! That lady who randomly cussed us out for 20 minutes a couple weeks ago (and we still don't know why), well she did her best to cause more trouble. So last week, one of the kids we were teaching that she wanted baptized (even though it seems like she was determined to try to thwart us as much as possible) didn't pass his baptismal interview. We kind of expected it a little bit. He knew everything, but he didn't seem to have a testimony for himself yet. So the District Leader told him to push it back a week and work on getting at least the beginnings of a personal testimony. Well, Crazy Lady didn't like that, and she flipped out again, and on Tuesday she called the Mission President to complain. The dumb thing is that it wasn't even our call as whether or not the kid could be baptized. It was the DL's call. We agreed with his decision, but it wasn't our decision. So a President got an earful, and then when she found out that it was the DL's decision, she called the DL and he got an earful. And she still hates us (mostly Elder Burt) for some reason. But thankfully, it was able to be resolved. And the kid got baptized on Saturday, so maybe Crazy a Lady can leave us alone now.
One of the people we're working with is having a really hard time. He's struggling with his testimony and with his relationship with God. I won't go into details, but it put a damper on our week. A couple
other people we're teaching are also having various struggles. It's just tough, because as a missionary, you really love these people and want them to be happy, and to make the choices that will bring them
greater happiness, and when they struggle, it's just hard.
So that's that. Kinda depressing. But in addition to the bad and crazy stuff, there was some good stuff too. The highlight was definitely that we had two baptisms. That was what what kept me going throughout the week. I just wanted to get through it and make sure that those baptisms happened. And they did. It was the baptism of Dakota, Oakley, and their 8 year old brother (being 8, he didn't meet with us, he went through the bishop). I'll include a picture at the bottom of this email. Oh, and they're goofy. They're picture really says it all.
Now for the just plain weird. Well there was actually a lot weird stuff that happened this week. But I'll just highlight the best one. In order to really appreciate this story you'll need to see it, so I'm also including a couple pictures. So, we were on our way back from an appointment that had just cancelled and we happened to glance at some random guy's house, and lo and behold he had a live goat on his roof. It was so weird to see, and to make it more perplexing, we couldn't see any way it could have gotten up there. Even if it were really good at jumping, I couldn't see it getting up there. So apparently goats are flying now. If it was an omen for how are week was going to go, I'd probably say it was a bad omen. But anyway, it was a weird thing to see, and we got a good "What on Earth is happening" laugh in.
Well, that's my week in a rather large nutshell. It's been tough. Its been exhausting. It's been a knock down. It's been depressing at times. But I made it. It's interesting how God works sometimes. Sometimes He helps us out of our sticky situations. But more than often I would say, and this is what happened this week, He allows our trials to happen, but He strengthens us in our trials. He doesn't
always take our trials away because then we wouldn't grow, and we wouldn't learn to trust in Him. But through our trials he never stops loving us, and He will strengthen us. And from time to time, He
provides a little comic relief, like a goat on the roof.
Well that's all for now! Have a great week!
-Elder Oswald
PS-I'm past my 16 month mark!
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