A Crazy Weekend

It was a crazy weekend. We tried with all we had to get Alex baptized this Saturday like everyone had planned. We were planning the interview on Tuesday. But he rescheduled for Wednesday and then didn't show up so we got it done on Thursday. We were hopeful because we didn't see him all week until Thursday but we got the interview done. We scheduled to see him the next day a 1 too. We were planning on finalizing things at that appointment and then seeing him the next night for the baptism. But he didn't show on Friday either... So we were again nervous. We devoted a lot of our Saturday to tracking him down. We ended up finding him at 6:15. The baptism was scheduled for 7. He needed to be at the church at 6:30 to get ready and take pictures. He told us at 6:15 the he forgot about his nephew's birthday party. It was that day at 6:30. Ridiculous. So we postponed an hour. We made the phone calls to postpone. If we didn't have other people participating in the program and people already at the church I probably would have called it off with him right then because he wasn't taking it seriously. But I knew our WML really wanted to see it happen that night. So we postponed to 8 (but we told Alex 7:30). He texted us at 7:40 and said he was on his way but got pulled over. Then 5 minutes later we got another text from his phone saying they were taking him in because he had warrants on unpaid fines. So he got arrested. Ridiculous again. So we had to call the baptism off. Fortunately at this point only about 8 people were able to make it and we told them all the situation. It was so disappointing that it was comical. Our WML, Brother Hodge, didn't know what to do haha. We all just sat there and laughed pretty much. Alex is just the most eccentric and flakey person in the world sometimes. I really dont know what to do next... I am glad it turned out this way though. He was not ready to get baptized. He will need to be interviewed by President Greer next. I hope I described that whole situation well.

That was a disappointing but not too surprising part of our week. It would have been worse if we didn't have other things to focus on. We have a lot of good things going on so it's not too hard.

On the other hand we have Shane and Marina and Mikey's baptism tomorrow night. They are good to go. They came to church yesterday and they are all excited and everything. We finally finished up the whole family. They will all be baptized after tomorrow. It just took awhile. It is wonderful to see the change that has been made in Marina and Shane's life. Their whole countenance has changed. Everything about their home is different. It feels a lot better in there. I hope they can keep it up.

Here is something I learned over the past month. In Leadership Training early in September, President Greer was answering questions to close our meeting. One of the questions sparked a discussion that led me to ask "If you go to the Celestial Kingdom can you go down a level or two to visit those in other kingdoms?" I always thought the answer was yes of course. But President said that he wasn't sure. There is not official church doctrine on that. And then last week when Elder Richard J. Maynes was here another Elder asked that same question to him and we got the same answer. So that blew my mind. I had lived for 20 years thinking the answer to that question was yes but now I am not so sure. I sure the real answer to that question is much too complicated for us to understand and that's why we haven't received and answer but it was surprising to me to find out that we might not be able to descend down a kingdom to visit others. It would make sense either way...

I thought I would share that with whoever reads this email. Just for fun.

We got 8 new investigators last week and achieved the dirty 30 again in pasco zone! We have so many investigators it's not funny... I think we're still up near 50. I don't know how to handle it. We will have three less as of tomorrow with our baptism and we are in the midst of dropping many others. But we just seem to be finding too quickly to get down to a reasonable number. I would gladly drop half of our teaching pool because I don't feel like they are going to get baptized but Elder Burgess is more hesitant. It's hard when you're a new missionary to drop people... BUT IF THEY AREN'T READY THEY AREN'T READY!! Harsh, but true.

I miss you all. I can't believe it has been 13 months... It's going fast.

Love,
Elder Paxman