Early in the week was business as usual. Service, teaching, service, teaching. On Tuesday one of the sister missionaries that we replaced came back out to visit (she's home now) so we talked to her about the area and the all the stuff that's happened. It was weird seeing a "dead" missionary in the flesh like that. Weird sentence. But that was cool.
Then on Wednesday we spent the day driving around getting and oil change and getting an estimate for the damage I did to our car. Did I tell you guys about that? I hit a Coca-Cola sign at the gas station cause I didn't realize it was being held up by a concrete pole instead of the usual plastic stand thingy. It was a tiny little bump but it was enough to give some stress cracks to the bumper and because the bumper is all one panel they have to replace the whole dumb thing. Well, they might not if they don't think it's worth it but they still don't know. You can't even tell anything's wrong with it unless you point it out. This happened like a month ago but it's getting taken care of now cause of reasons that aren't worth explaining. Bleh. Anyways Wednesday was lame. Thursday was too. Let's fast forward to Friday.
Friday was district meeting followed by our baptismal date's baptismal interview, plus my interview with two of Gloucester's baptismal dates, my first two interviews of that kind. Our branch president hadn't met with our baptismal date one-on-one yet so he came to our district meeting and met with him a half an hour before his interview with our zone leader. He did speak in our meeting which was good cause he did a good job but bad cause I had to follow him with my training. I was nervous. I wish I did better. But the meeting was great. We were afraid of the pre-interview meeting with the branch president cause we didn't know if he was going to let him get baptized for various reasons but lo and behold he said he was good to go so our zone leader interviewed him next and all was well and angels rejoiced. Unfortunately the two people I was supposed to interview cancelled the baptism during the district meeting (it was a mom and daughter and the mom called it off) so that didn't end up happening. Sad. But they now know why and they're working on that and it's looking good so yay optimism! That was Friday, it was kinda stressful. But it worked out.
Right after all the interviews and stuff we tested out the baptismal font and found that it had bugs all over it (it's been a while since it's been used...) and the water heater wasn't working so we were trying to get that all worked out. I swept the bugs. Elder Gaunt worked out the water heater and fixed it. That wasn't a very exciting story. I'm rushing this so bad.
Then Saturday comes. We got a lot done to prepare for the baptism plus taught a bunch (staying busy!) and did some service. I weed killed an entire property's worth of weeds and it was really really fun. I was whipping that gun all over the place and getting some long distance shots and stuff. It was cool. Elder Gaunt shoveled rocks. I got the weed killer job cause I have idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.
Yesterday was the real kicker though. We had the baptism and it went marvelously well. We were able to have a lot of people be there cause it was after church which is good cause he doesn't really know too many people in the branch right now but now he does cause they were all there. Elder Gaunt did the baptizing cause "it was his idea" as the baptismal date put it. Elder Gaunt also gave his departing talk thing and sang Joseph Smith's First Prayer so it was like the Elder Gaunt show yesterday and everyone was invited. Good last day in the mission for sure. After all the goodness we drove downt to Gloucester to see one of Elder Gaunt's converts that he baptized in a different area. They were super cool. We ate sausages. Then we had another dinner appointment before going back to our little property complex farm place and teaching a lesson to someone we've been trying to teach since we got here. He's engaged to one of the members here and he's super cool but we've never been able to sit down with him really but yesterday we did and it went great and he'll probably be baptized soon and all was well. In the middle of that lesson we got simultaneous calls from Elder Jones and one of the APs (actually the same one that was our zone leader) about transfers. Elder Jones is coming up here on Thursday to be my new companion. The reason why that's weird is because we get along terrifically well to the point where Elder Jones asked President Perry at mission conference if he could serve up here with me cause he loved the area and his health problem and all sorts of reasons. President Perry really liked the idea which was shocking by itself but I think we both didn't want to get our hopes too high so we didn't plan for it too much. I thought it was a perfect fit (although I'm biased) but deep down I knew things like that don't just happen. Well it did and I think the mission president and the APs are kinda sighing at this whole decision but they seemed to all think it was a good idea. In summary: we can't believe it.
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Anyways that was our crazy weekend. I didn't get to explain all the details but I hope this e-mail is sufficient for your needs. Thank you!
-Elder Ryan Parker
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