April 1, 2009

Jerome is doing well, as flakey as ever. We were supposed to go help him at his pawn shop in Nashville today he was going to call us when he came to pick us up. Never got a call, and he didn't answer his phone when we called him. Oh well. No investigators have made it to church yet. Our mission standard is two times before they can be baptized but our bishop would like 3 or 4 times. Hans committed to come and be baptized once his cast comes off. Jerome is using his busyness with his store as an excuse that won't be able to hold up much longer because he's selling it, and Connie is amazing. I gave her a reading assignment last time and she spent 3 hours studying it!! She was so excited about it that she asked for 3 reading assignments when we last visited her!! The only problem with her is that she's not married to Barry, and she can't move out because she has no where to go and she's pretty much a mother to Robert, Barry's son. So she needs to get married. No big deal; we could get that arranged in less then 24 hours, but she's actually still married to her last husband, who got deported. So she needs to get a divorce before she can get married. Then she can get baptized. The South is crazy.
The mall last week was nothing too spectacular. Its part of the Opry Land stuff I found out. It's right next to the Gaylord Opry Land Hotel. Other then that it's just a mall.
So the reason that I'm writing you on Wed. instead of Mon. is because today is the first of the month, and President Hutchings wanted us to work to the end of the month in order for us to get the most baptisms possible. We did well but fell short of our goal. We got 85 people baptized and 84 confirmed. It's sad if you look at it as we missed our goal by 15, but its really really exciting if you think that our average prior to that was 54 a month. Last month we qualified an extra 30 people for celestial exaltation! That rocks.
We cook for ourselves most of the time but it's usually really simple quick stuff because we only have an hour for meals. We need to be out no later then 6, and we're never home between meals. So we spend about 15 min. in preparation and another 15 min. in eating. Then the next half hour is cleaning, or making study journals for our investigators, or making calls or what have you.
So I think I've told you about the Leguard twins from Australia. That's where we're watching conference on Sunday in their Western Room. They fed us lunch today and told us a story how when they were younger back in the 'bush' as they call it. They were working on the farm with their dad. He was digging a well and had 2 people helping him. The twins went off and found a bobcat. They caught it in a burlap sack and waited until the people helping their dad were not paying attention and then they tossed the bag with the wild bobcat in it down the well!! Their dad had a sledge hammer and ended up killing the bobcat. They twins say that he almost killed them too. The finished the story with, "Oh back in the day we were cheeky mugs weren't we?" So despite all the grief I've given you over the years, dad, remember I never threw a wild bobcat on you while you were stuck 10 feet deep in a well :)

Love you!!

Elder Carpenter