Leading in the Area

WHAT THE HECK IT'S THREE WEEKS ALREADY?! What on earth happened to time? Elder Snook's gone now and I'm taking over the area. Every exchange, except one, in this area results in people canceling their appointments and me figuring out what to do and where to go. Although I try to space out the appointments so that they're close to each other we usually end up biking one end of the area to the next. Usually whoever's my companion nearly dies of exhaustion. So like I said before Elder Snook is gone. He said farewell to everybody at church, which ended up in the heartbreak of many individuals because Elder Snook's been in South Mountain for eight months. Yesterday was not p-day because it was transfer week so we had a recent convert come out with me. He has asthma and is NOT in any good biking condition at all! The poor guy couldn't take all the biking that happened today. All our appointments and visits fell through yesterday so we had to bike around a lot! The recent convert wants to serve a mission too. Well he got a pretty good look at the reality of missionary work. I hope I didn't kill his desire to go.

 

     Fred Massengale passed his baptismal interview on Saturday! HOORAY! Starting off the new transfer with a baptism is the way I'd like to start things out. His interview took forever. Seriously we waited a whole hour for it to be done, which for missionary standards one hour is an eternity when it comes to interviews. 45 minutes is considered to be very high, but an hour just doesn't happen. The important thing is that he passed though. Fred said that he's leaning towards having me baptize him which will be very exciting since I've never actually performed the ordinance for someone myself. We also have two other investigators with baptismal dates. One for Christmas Eve, the other for New Year's Eve. This will be one incredibly awesome Christmas season if both of those go through! They're both making progress right now so I'm confident things will pull through.

 

So here comes the explanation of the newest pictures:

                      Last p-day Elder Snook decided to pull out two couches and a TV for our p-day activity. He also asked everyone to bake, or buy, something and bring it. We had sausage, cheese, and crackers, several different pies, Oreos, chips, etc. We also tried watching "The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd" in Russian because one of the sisters in our district is waiting to get her visa so she can go to Ukraine where she was called to serve. It sounded really weird in Russian. We also tried watching "The Testaments" in Japanese and that didn't sound very good either. The zone leaders came to the activity too. Needless to say it was one of the best p-day activities that I've ever done. After district meeting I took a picture of me with Elder Snook and me and the zone leaders. On Sunday we took two pictures with the sister missionaries who work in our ward. The one on the far right is the visa waiting sister missionary. Later on Sunday evening Elder Snook went to say good-bye to a member who happened to own a Roman sword. Naturally I couldn't pass up the opportunity to hold it and get a picture of myself holding one. Before Elder Snook left we took a picture with the Spanish missionaries.

 

I'm hanging out with the Spanish missionaries right now, who are both being transferred tomorrow. This means that I will have been living in the basement for the longest time out of any missionary there, once they leave. This week has been very eventful and crazy for me and I will continue to need prayers and help as I'm taking on the responsibilities of leading in the new area.

 

Love,

 

Elder Boothe