January 19, 2011

Hello everyone! I hope you had a great week! I had a pretty good one here. Well for being in Pincher Creek it was a pretty good one. We didn't get too many lessons. People in this ward are hard to nail down for a set time for a lesson. They are usually alright with us stopping by and letting us teach them in the evenings. So we were able to get a lot of those which was good. That means a lot of our mornings and afternoons are pretty empty. And there isn't too much service that we have found to do here. So we do a lot of stopping by older people in the ward or stopping by potential and former investigators and when it comes down to it... tracting... yea... haha. It's not too bad though. We aren't supposed to do it too much here. A lady got mad at the missionaries a while ago and wrote a big thing about it in the newspaper and the town got all mad. Apparently the missionaries were being too overbearing. But the Bishop has said he doesn't want us doing that much for a while. Which is pretty understandable. But it doesn't leave us with much to do in the daytime.

Thursday was good. We had a lesson with our investigator who was getting baptized. He finally came into town and I met him for the first time. He is actually pretty cool and seems like a pretty solid investigator. We just went over a couple of things like making sure he's still obeying the word of wisdom and law of chastity and things and went over the baptismal interview questions. He seemed like he was pretty good still. So we had the baptismal interview the next night. Our district leader, Elder Grace, came and had the interview. That went really well. He was only with him for like five minutes but he said he passed. So that was awesome. Grace said he didn't have very long answers but his answers were great. So that's cool. Then Saturday morning we went and filled the font. The font here is weird. You just lift the floor in the primary room and it's under the floor. Then we had the baptism at one. That whole thing was just ridiculous. Elder LaFond said they had everything planned out so I didn't have to worry about anything. When we got there, nobody was conducting the meeting, nobody could play the piano, nobody was asked to give prayers, nobody was asked to be witnesses. We didn't have anything to do while they were getting changed. So it was kind of just thrown together at the last minute. I conducted. There was a member of the bishopric to preside, which was good. And as for the prayers I just asked two of the missionaries that were there to say them as I was saying it. So they were volun-told. And we just sang acapella and we sang some more while they were changing. But hey, it happened. And that's all that matters right? He will be a good member. Then Sunday came and Presidnet Hummell (from the branch we also cover) was supposed to be there to confirm him (he also baptized him) but he woke up sick and couldn't make it so they asked LaFond to do it when we walked into church and he was freaking out. He did a good job though. So that was pretty exciting. Pretty much the most ridiculous baptism I have ever been a part of. It was exciting though. And I'm going to make sure it never happens again while I am around. haha.

Then Pday was pretty fun. We got together with the zone, the one time a month we can. And thought we were going to be playing basketball. We ended up not though. We thought the young men from Raymond were going to come play with us but the missionaries in Raymond, Reese and Dodge, didn't call anyone even though they said they would. They didn't even show up themselves. So we kind of just played games. Farkle and Catan and they played magic (this weird card game that is like pokemon and dungeons and dragons mixed... something I will never play! haha)

That's pretty much our week though. Nothing too exciting. Just another week in good old Pincher Creek. hey... that rhymed! (I don't know how to spell that...) Thanks for everything guys! I hope all is going well with you all! I love you all!

Love,
Elder Townsend