Thurs, May 7

This has been a most interesting week!! Regular missionary stuff, but lots of teaching and joy as we have shared the Gospel. We have had a few canceled appointments this week with other things getting in the way of appointments, but never the less we have carried on.

The biggest news is that Christy set a baptismal date of May 23. We will set one in May for Mark tomorrow if we can get a hold of him. He has not returned our calls today, so we'll probably have to walk over to his apartment tomorrow and invite him over. The other missionaries told us that they hope we are having some because so far no one else in our zone had. They are all working really hard, but it just is not happening for them.

We have had a couple of interesting experiences. Yesterday Bro Stradling, (2nd ward mission leader,) stopped us in the hallway at church to tell us something. He took us into a class room and was talking about "tongue wagging," that was going on in the ward. We wondered what in the world he was talking about and why it had to be taken care of right now! (We were late for the other ward PEC.)

Just as we shut the door President Little, (a member of the stake presidency,) opened the door and was also looking for us. He asked us how the baptism went with the Stacks, (two weeks ago.) He also asked us "if there was any more trouble over getting them confirmed." We told him it had gone fine.

About this time Brother Stradling pipes up and says, "President Little, there has been some tongue wagging about this. I've just talked with the Bishop, blah, blah. Anyway what the whole thing was all about was that Brother Stradling was upset because we had talked with our Zone leader, Elder Cragun, about the baptism, who had in turn, (with our permission, ) talked with the Stake Presidency about it. The ward was upset that it had gotten to the stake.

We told him we had talked with Elder Cragun, who was our leader. President Stradling felt we were out of place in telling anyone. President Little spoke right up and said that we had done the right thing. He said it was better to over communicate that under communicate. He backed us all the way. (Whew!) Brother Little felt we had followed the right chain of command.

The truth is that the ward did not handle it well and we were getting it in the neck. I think they did not know who to blame, so they blamed us cause they knew we would be leaving sooner or later. They had every opportunity to take care of it because it was actually yanked out of our hands and they were so excited they ran with it. It's kind of funny as I think about it. They were actually upset about the program, and also the fact that the Kevin , the father did not get the baptize his own kids. The fact was that the Mom filled out the program and chose who would do what; and Brother Stradling and the Bishop got it. We never did see it until the Baptism day.

In other news we taught Alan again. He is the man from Africa. He looks like he is about 18, when in fact he is 32 years old. He is amazing. We are going to teach him again tomorrow.
He has a challenge understanding everything, so we take it slow and make sure he understands.

Eric called and canceled on us this week as well as our three boys that had something else going. We had taught them already this week, so it is okay. We also taught a less active this week. She has been less active for 20 years and wants to get back. We are hoping to teach her husband who is not a member too. We will see. She is a delight to teach and we are thrilled to be able to teach her.

Tami also canceled this week. We have had so much rain, that her road had washed out. She is doing well, though and loves to have us come. In other news, her husband was baptized . . . in the Baptist church this past Sunday. She was bummed about that and that was a blow. I was really naughty, I told her, "Oh well, it doesn't mean anything anyway!!" We had a good laugh about it.

We were supposed to teach Cef Christy this morning. I guess he forgot. We went out earlier in the week and gave his mom a blessing. She fell and broke her arm last week. :-(