Week 41--April 28, 2014

Here's how he titled his email...

The week our investigator got Shanghaied the day of his Baptism

Well this week has been an interesting one, as the subject of the e-mail so nicely indicates. It has also been a pretty hard one, but that's okay!

Well I'll start with some happy things that happened this week. First, we got to got to the temple on Tuesday, which I always enjoy. It is such a great feeling to be able to go to the the House of the Lord. My prayers are always answered there. We went with Brother and Sister Wilson from our ward, and did some names for them, which they appreciated very much. I have some pictures but I will wait until next week to send them.

We picked up a new investigator this week that was so enthusiastic about learning about the church! Her name is Stormy, She is the mother of 5 kids, and was raised Southern Baptist. We had a super good Restoration lesson with her on Thursday, all was well. Now here's the catch, her husband is meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and after first being okay with her meeting with us, they discussed it as a family and decided that they did not want to investigate the church and therefore Dropped us.

Then there is Kenny, he got back from LA this week and gave us a call and said he wanted to schedule a lesson, which was pretty cool. We set up a lesson with him for Thursday, and (as we were asked to) gave him a call on Thursday, to which there was no answer. So we went over for the lesson and he wasn't there, so we called again to which there still was no answer, so we left. The next day we got a voicemail from him basically chewing us out for not calling him and not showing up to our appointment, and how he is starting to loose faith in us because we "lack basic organization and planning skills." Oh how it frustrated me! We did call, we did plan for it, we even rearranged our schedule so we could go see him. Then when he isn't there and doesn't answer his phone and then calls us out about it, it makes me angry, but I just deal with it and move on, We ended up having a lesson with him on Saturday, and it went very well, we taught about Faith and Alma 32, which ironically Dad suggested a few weeks ago via letter. The lesson went well, and we tried to commit him to be baptized. He said No.

Saturday was the National Day of Service and we helped out with a Mormon Helping Hands project repairing trails at Box Springs Mountain, it was a lot of fun and we got a lot done.

Sunday we had 3 investigators at church none of which were Tony, I'll get to that a little later,

and I was asked to teach Gospel Principles class. I taught about Baptism, and everyone there seemed to enjoy the lesson very much, and we were able to answer a lot of concerns that J.S. Ross had. It was good.

Now for the story of the week. How Tony got Shanghaied. We had lessons everyday this week with Tony, they all went really well. He got interviewed on Thursday and was cleared to go. We met with him Saturday night and I gave him one of my White shirts and a tie. Everything was all good. Now we get to Sunday, we go to Ward Council and talk about the baptism, everyone is excited, and happy that the ward was having a baptism. So we are in Sacrament meeting and Bishop announces it and Tony isn't there. So we go over to Brother Batchkoff (WML Ward Mission Leader) and He and I go looking for him because he usually walks to church, go to his house nobody was home, call his phone and it was turned off. We go back to the church to see if we just missed him, but he still wasn't there, and we missed the sacrament. So then I teach my gospel principles lesson, and we go out to try and find him again, and one of his roommates answers the door and says that Tony's brother picked him up and was going to give him a ride to church. So we try getting a hold of him by phone again, and then a number that we had never seen before called us and it was Tony. His family cornered him and made him go with them right before he was going to leave to go to church, and they made him go to Mass with them, and then tried to Anti him to the church. After talking to him on the Phone I calmed him down and we tried to see if we could get him to another Sacrament meeting, which he didn't make it to, therefore he didn't get baptized, but we were able to have a lesson with him. Then Our Zone Leaders chewed us out and said "get his butt down to the church and get him baptized" and "Just Baptize him today" and so on. I refused to do either because it was contrary to mission rules, and they would not leave me alone about it. It really irritated me, because I did everything I could to make it happen and they wanted me to do it anyway for the number for the month of April. It isn't about the number it is about the people! 

Tony is set to be baptized next week, he talked to his family and figured things out.

That's it for now

Elder Bangerter