I had some good news this past week. When I left Rotorua we had a father and his boys set for baptism, and it went through! Just stinks that I wasn't able to be there for it. Seems like every time that I find someone that's really awesome, and they get set for baptism, I get transferred out shortly there after. No good. Also had some pretty bad news recently too. Turns out one of the guys from my first area didn't make it to baptism. He was the man too. When I was there we were teaching him three times a week, and within about four months he'd almost finished the Book of Mormon. After I left he just kept going strong, going to church every week, always participating in class, just really on to it. He had to wait to be baptized until August, since he was on probation. August came and went without him being baptized, and now he's got a girlfriend and doesn't attend anymore. It crushed me just a little bit to see someone that I spent so much time with, and saw get so far, end up not making it through. Who knows. There's always more time.
Well. Had a pretty decent week here in Kawhia. I keep getting reminded over and over again how much fun it is to no longer be in leadership. We were out for a run on the beach the other day and it hit me again how happy I am here. Nothing like a jog on a never ending and totally deserted beach to help me realize that I pretty much don't have a care in the world right now. So good. My dream is that I get one more super awesome companion, and finish up here.
We had a really good experience with a non member family a few days back as well. We went with one of the members to follow up with a girl that's in the family. She'd previously been set for baptism, but had gone to Aussie for ages so it fell through. I didn't know any of the family, so I was pretty much just following the lead of my comp and the member. We sat down and they started talking about if the girl could be baptized, etc.. The Mum had a few concerns, and as I sat listening I could see it all going dangerously close to becoming a sales session. She raises concerns about why she isn't totally alright with her daughter being baptized, then the other two respond with this and that in an attempt to quickly resolve the matter and get this girl set for baptism. That's not at all my style. I'm not at all cool with baptizing someone who has no family support. I've seen it done and it never seems to work out. So instead of focusing on her daughter, I changed up the convo and ended up teaching the mum. Turns out she doesn't understand a whole lot of anything about us. For starters she was under the impression that the Book of Mormon was our bible, and not an additional bit of scripture to go hand in hand with the Bible. I shared a bit from 2 Nephi 29 (not the "thou fool" part, but the part about a testimony of two nations). Once she understood a bit more about our scriptures, I focused on the part from 2 Nephi 29:9 about God being the same, and tied it into the restoration. It's hard to explain, but man was it awesome. By the time we left she asked us to leave a copy of the Book of Mormon, because she wants to read it, and her attitude was totally different. I don't have any idea if she's start to seriously investigate the gospel, but for that moment, she knew she'd felt something. It's always amazing to watch the Spirit work.
Well, I hope it all made sense. If not, say a prayer and maybe the Spirit will help you.
Ka Kite!
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