Elder Inman Letter November 24, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

Time is going far too fast with all the holidays going on! There are many ward activities planned and even stake activities. This is easily the best time of the year for proselyting though, as people are generally thinking more about Christ or at least family.

We had a pretty dang good week. Monday we put another kid on date named Bill Bailey. He is a 9 year old with a less-active mother. his mom has said that he is simply too distracted to teach. The real reason, was that SHE was too difficult to teach and didn't want to come back to church haha. We resolved that and he is preparing to be baptized December 20th :) Our evening appointment was with Jessa Efinger who just got baptized actually this last Saturday (details of that later). This was her pre-baptismal interview lesson...And I had a super awkward moment. For one, Jessa is in her young twenties. But we were at her fiance's apartment (who just got reactivated this week!). We were actually in the commons area where people come in and play ping pong or whatever. It was Jessa, Jeff (the fiance') and their fellowshippers who are barely older than I am. We were alternating questions and it came my turn to ask the question about what the law of chastity was. To this point, no one was in this room except for us. Right as I asked Jessa what the Law of Chastity was, another girl walked in right as I said it...everyone got super red...and the girl walked out hahahahaha. It was super funny but super awkward. maybe that girl needed to hear that question I don't know haha.

Tuesday we had a "Mission Leadership Training" which was blend of Zone Conference and Mission Leadership Training. 3 zones attended and we hosted it here in Missoula. It was good to see lots of missionaries.

Wednesday was interesting. We had a screw in our back tire so we were car-less for 2 hours trying to get that fixed. We then drove to Frenchtown (about 15 minutes out of town) to get additional baptismal suits for the 5 baptisms happening at our building. We only had sizes for an 8 year old, or for Goliath sized people. We needed something in-between :)

Thursday we weekly planned forever because I don't know any of the people in our area book. We got to attend institute afterward which was sweet! Bishop Rogers is the institute director and he's the church's "go-to" guy when someone is preparing to be baptized that has been part of a polygamist group. There is a town here called Pinesdale that is full of Polygamist colonies. Thursday I also met the drummer of Pearl Jam!...he at least thought he was. I doubt a homeless man hanging out at the public library was at one time a world famous drummer making tons of money. He was higher than a kite and told us that ACDC wanted him to play in their band because their drummer just got into some kind of lawsuit. Oh the people of Missoula...

Friday we spent nearly two hours cleaning the baptismal font with the sisters. It is a way old font and probably hasn't been washed in years. There was black mold at the top and the floor was disgusting. So we got on our knees and scrubbed for two hours with bleach and it looked immaculate! I will include some pictures from that. After we got home, Elder Burnham locked the keys in our apartment so we were stranded in the cold for about 45 minutes. Finally we met the landlord who had us sit down like we were children and we had to read a 5 page packet on the rules of the apartment.

Saturday we had our 5 baptisms in the ward! And oh what a morning. We got to the church at 7am. For 45 minutes the font was putting out 33 degree water. We finally got a hold of someone and discovered that the night before, the maintenance guy removed a piece from the boiler and took it to the other building. So I frantically started boiling water in the kitchen on the stop tops to start getting at least SOME warmth into the font. They came to fix it 15 minutes before the first baptism and meanwhile I was throwing buckets of boiling water and mixing it into the ice water. We stirred it with a squeegee. It looked like we were making some kind of potion. Despite our efforts, the water was just under lukewarm. But chu know...whatever (nacho accent). To add to the problem, thje font was not nearly full enough. It only went up to Jessa's thigh and she is a tall girl. She had to be baptized 3 times and practically had to sit down. She had a good attitude about it though :) immediately after her baptism we started filling the font for the additional 4 baptisms that were yet to happen. Elder Burnham did all 4.

After the baptisms, we changed into service clothes to help clear out two previous missionary apartments. One of the apartments smelled like dead mouse. It was the sisters apartment too! We found the source of stench to be expired condiments and rotted food that had been out of the refrigerator over 2 weeks.

5 confirmations took place in sacrament meeting yesterday! Never had that before! I did two of them. For Gina Mae McCallum and Patricia McCallum. Very cool experience :) We gave another blessing at the NueroBehavioral Clinic. I am not a fan of going there, i'll be honest haha. We later met a man named Ken who wants to join the church to receive financial assistance. he will be upset to know that he'll need to commit to giving up the drugs he's on, smoking, drinking, start paying tithing, and live the Law of Chastity first.

Overall it was a great week :) We have another baptism this week with a young Single Adult named Robert. We've been working with him really closely and he is making big leaps! Thanksgiving will be an interesting day...we don't know really who's feeding us haha but we will get it figured out! I am so grateful to be a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. I love all of you and am so blessed to be part of this family. There is no other family I would or could be happier in. This Gospel changes lives including my own! Have a fantastic week!

 

 Jessa's Baptism. We are holding "he is the Gift" pass-along cards for a facebook post in the future.

 Gina Mae (younger) and Patti (older)