Monday: We went to the Marcado…holy cow that feels like ages ago. It’s a Mexican market wanna-be. Actually it was cool because they were selling a lot of the same kind of stuff that I saw at the markets in Mexico when I went this summer: wooden dream animals, black pottery. Anyways, the most important thing is that I got my TSAM ring. There is a guy there that said as soon as we walked up:” TSAMers right?” (Texas San Antonio Mission). He knew what we wanted by our tags. Its kind of tradition that when you serve in South zone, which is the zone I am in, you go to the Marcado and get a hand carved silver ring that says TSAM. So now that I have that I consider myself a true TSAMer and I have officially grown out of greenie-hood. Yay! We had FHE with Toby and his brothers, and the Swaim family and we did a reenactment of Nephi building his boat.
Tuesday: We had dinner with the Browns who live under a hill (like hobbits) and have a lake in their front yard and said we could go fishing there sometime. I love fishing! Tuesday night we had a lesson with Gary and Clarissa about eternal marriage and we brought the Partridges, a young couple. It went pretty good…she wants a forever marriage, he would like it too, except he’s still at level one in trying to decide if he even believes the Book of Mormon. But he really wants to know and encourages Clarissa to read the Book of Mormon with him every night.
Wednesday: Zone Conference!!! It was awesome. President told us that he felt impressed that we need to encourage our investigators to pray more during the lessons. He said that until they ask God themselves, they will never get an answer. Then we had New member lessons in the evening. (There are a lot of converts in the ward so we set up a class every Wednesday night to re-teach the lessons to the converts). And Gary came! When the sisters first met him he was a huge jerk to them and to Clarissa and wouldn’t even talk to them, but now he’s coming to new member lessons and reading the book of mormon and spending more time with the kids and Clarissa.
Thrusday: Tschetter’s for dinner!!!! Brother and Sister Tschetter had three kids that all grew up. I guess they decided the house was too quiet so they decided that they wanted more kids so they opened up their home to foster care. Originally they wanted to take in 3-6 year old kids, but over time their house turned into a last chance house for teens. The Tschetters get all the teens who were kicked out of all the other homes for bad behavior…but the Tschetters are awesome and the kids change when they come to their home. So now the Tschetters have 12 kids (excluding their biological three). They take up an entire bench at church. When I saw that I thought, “Hey! I know what that’s like.” I feel like I can relate a lot to this family. They are so cool.
Friday: We went over to Gary and Clarissa’s hoping to just catch Clarissa so we could talk about one of them moving out so Clarissa could get baptized on the 19th. But providence ruined our little plan and as we pulled up we saw Gary’s motorcycle out front. Great…should we bring up the moving out thing again with Gary? We didn’t want to offend by being too pushy…but we decided that we would talk about the stuff we had planned and just prayed that the Spirit would direct us if we were supposed to do something different. So we went in a taught a good lesson. I love teaching with Sister Kleisler because we thing the same way. We smoothly transition from one topic to the other. We know what questions we are supposed to answer and what questions are for the other companion. It’s neat. So we reemphasized the need for them to separate and asked them to pray about it and they agreed.
But anyways, at the end of the lesson we asked Gary to say the closing prayer. “No, I don’t think I’m ready. I get nervous and embarrassed.” Well, we had just had a zone conference all about getting our investigators to pray so he wasn’t going to get off that easy. After some gentle prodding and after we fell to our knees waiting for him to pray he finally knelt to the floor himself and began to pray. It was the sweetest prayer ever. He was talking straight to God and told Him how thankful he was for his blessings, and then told Him how much he wanted to be a good father and a good husband to his future wife (meaning Clarissa), and then he asked for help in knowing how to handle the situation of them separating so Clarissa can get baptized. It was so sweet and when the prayer was finished I looked up and Clarissa was just in tears. It felt really peaceful and joyful, but nothing super amazing. Then Sister Kleisler asked, “Gary, how do you feel right now?” BAM! As soon as she said that the entire room filled with the Spirit and suddenly we were kneeling on sacred ground. I felt like I was in the temple. The feeling was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Our hearts brimmed with pure love straight from our Father. I was so happy and my heart got so full that it starting leaking out my eyes. We all just looked at each other in wonder and we couldn’t stop smiling. “I feel really warm right now and really happy,” Gary replied. “That’s the Spirit!” we chimed. Wow, I didn’t want to leave because I just loved the way I felt. I wish I could send that feeling to all of you so you could feel it. It would dispel any doubt that may plague your mind. Unfortunately the greatest poet in the world could never describe the joy and the clarity that rested on our hearts in that moment, and that feeling only comes when God wills it. I feel so blessed to have been lucky enough to be a part of that experience. It was as if eternity opened and poured out pure truth upon all of us. We had a heavenly confirmation that our Father in Heaven approved of what had just taken place.
The rest of the week blurred by until Sunday. The week before Toby’s baptism has begun. Ugh…I had the week before baptisms. We were worried about Toby not being ready, but we went through the baptismal interview questions and we determined he is more than ready to make the commitment. But Sister Kleisler felt awful after church. During lunch she was on the couch in some kind of despair and agony because she was worried about Clarissa’s life that seemed to be falling apart. We started talking about Clarissa’s Baptism and how it was three weeks away. I had been having thoughts about moving it up, but I wasn’t sure if it was the Spirit or if it was my own selfish desire to get it over with. I started saying to Sister Kleisler, “ I don’t know if this is a good idea but—“ “You want to move up the baptism?” I was worried cause I didn’t want Sister Kleisler to think I was trying to push it up for numbers so I squeaked a little, “yeah.” She all the sudden jumped up and said, “I was thinking that too!” We felt so good and peaceful and all our worry about Clarissa disappeared as soon as we said it. So immediately we ran over to Clarissa’s and told her that we think she should move up her baptism to this next Sunday. She had been having a really hard week because they have tons of debt and their rent is overdue and then we kept telling them they had to separate. Because of all of this we were nervous that our suggestion would push her over the top, but on the contrary, her eyes lit up and she seemed relieved. She liked the idea and said that her a Gary would figure out their living situation before Sunday. Yay!
Then we went knocking. Our phone rang about an hour after we left Clarissa’s. She was calling us, “Hi guys, I just wanted to let you know that after you left I got a call from Gary saying that all the meat cases in the grocery store went out and since he’s the manager he has to stay late and they’re going to pay him over time! The extra money will really help with our finances.” She felt like it was a blessing because she moved the baptism date up. Then we hung up and were super happy and kept knocking and then she called again and left a message, “Sorry I keep bother y’all, but after I got off the phone with you I started praying to thank God for blessing us with the overtime and as I was praying I got a call from my aunt who needed a babysitter next week and she said that she would pay me for it.” Holy moly cow! Is this not awesome to anyone else??? Heavenly Father is blessing this couple so much. I’m getting chills as I write this now. What an awesomely awesome week! Two baptism next Sunday!
Well, it’s time to go. Today for Pday we’re going to the Tschetters to play kick ball since they have an entire team. Wahoo!
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