Four Baptisms

Lots of stuff happened this week. Like usual.

On Monday after p-day we had the interview for Shane and Marina with President Stapleton. President Stapleton is a member of our mission presidency and he needed to interview them because Shane and Marina have both committed serious crimes in the past. 20 year old missionaries aren't mature enough to handle that sort of stuff! Or something like that. But! What we found out is that Marina and Shane drank coffee right before their interview for baptism. They looked at it as one last cup before we get baptized and cant drink anymore. Lame. But they told the truth in the interview and that was nice. Because of that we are waiting a couple more weeks to make sure they're ready. Also, Shane is on probation so we weren't sure if he could get baptized right away. We talked with President Greer and he let us know that because it is just a misdemeanor that he is on probation for rather than a felony we are good to go on that front. So the new date is October 2nd. A Tuesday. Because Shane gets Mondays and Tuesdays off from work. The only problem with that is that they wont be able to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost until the 14th because of General Conference. Hopefully they don't slip up with the word of wisdom in between that time or we will have to wait a few more weeks for that... I'm not too worried though. I don't think they're going to drink anymore coffee.

The boys got baptized. Jyheam Lemarcus, Jaysean Ray, A'mi Latrell, and De'vonte Trevon-Maurice Mack. They all have very black sounding names. It matches the color of their skin! I baptized Jyheam and Jaysean then Bishop Pierce baptized A'mi and Brother Tippetts baptized De'vonte. The whole baptism went very well. Everything ran smoothly. The only downer was that Sandra was too sick to come. So she missed out... That was really sad. But she did go to the confirmation the next day.

We were not able to go to the confirmation though... We ditched church. On Friday we were told that Elder Richard J. Maynes of the presidency of the seventy wanted to meet with us on Sunday from 10-1. So we had to skip church to go to that meeting. The reason it was on such short notice and on a Sunday during church was because Elder Maynes was in Tri-Cities unexpectedly. One of the senior couples in our mission, Elder and Sister Garrett, just got in a really bad car accident and Elder Maynes was coming to see them. He flew into Pasco but didn't realize that they were in Portland. However, President asked him if he had any time to meet with us. He had an hour and a half on Sunday. So we met with him. He had a lot of great things to say. I think President Greer will institute some of the ideas he shared.

Also on Sunday we went to the Streble's home. Brother Streble is our stake Patriarch and Elder Burgess hadn't had his Patriarchal blessing. So we set it up with him and Elder Burgess had that yesterday. It's crazy that he is 23 and didn't get his patriarchal blessing. The reason he waited so long was because his mom didn't want him to get it in Samoan. She wanted it in English. But while he was living in New Zealand he never got around to it. So it kinda just slipped through the cracks. Sister Streble and I visited while Brother Streble gave him his blessing.

Our area is kinda coming back down to earth. Things were just going too well for us. Because of the four baptisms this weekend and two more falling off date we only have 5 more on date for baptism. Alex should get baptized this Saturday and Shane Marina and Mikey should get baptized on October 2nd. After that we only have Michael Votaw, who we put on date this week for October 27th. So we have to focus again on finding those prepared people. We have been devoting a lot of our time to Marina and Shane and the Mack family. We are soon going to be passing them off to the ward.

Michael Votaw is pretty cool. His wife is an active member. She is a tiny little small Japanese lady. He is a Mormon waiting to happen. He just has been "too busy" for years. Now that all the kids have moved out (the last one moved out last week) he has no more excuses to not go through the lessons. He is good friends with Bishop Pierce so we hope to be able to teach at our home.

A new family that we are now teaching is that referral that I mentioned a few emails ago. The Mathews gave us this referral. Their names are Marilynn, Jonathan, and Brian. They seem very interested. We are going to try to teach in the Mathews home. Because that is most effective. We have high hopes for that family. It was a really good referral.

It is good living with Bishop and Sister Pierce. They have food for us a lot (as if we don't get fed enough). They're a fun couple. The living arrangement is pretty small but not as crammed as I thought it would be. I'll probably only be here another 5 weeks anyway.

Well. That was our week. Busy busy busy. I got to see Elder Dutson again for the first time in about 9 months. And Elder Camba for the first time in a couple months. That was really nice.

Love,
Elder Paxman