2.28.11

Alright!

Hello family! Thank you again for all your emails! Sound's like everythings going good back home. Something I was thinking about this week, I only have one pair of contacts left, so I'll need some more by the end of the month, if you can do that. If not I can just wear my glasses, but if you get the time just send those down here to Tennessee.

So much happened this week. I'll start with last Monday. After P-Day ended, which is at 6 p.m. Monday nights, we went out to see people on our home teaching list, it's more like a list of 35 inactives, but we call it home teaching. So we stopped by this mans house, his name is Brother Humphry. We introduce ourselves and what we're about, and he stops us in mid sentence and say " You Elder people always come around here, and I keep tellin' ya, I'm not a member of your church, and I never was." So we were obviously suprised, since he's on the ward list. sooo... what you're telling me is you're not a member? you've never been baptized? are you sure? But it turns out he really wasn't a member, and we were just talking for a while on his porch, and then he tells us " You guys can stick around and talk to me if you want, but lets go talk in my shed and get out of the cold", After he said that I was a little worried, thinking about why this guy wants to take us into his shed instead of just going into his house, but when we got to shed, before he opened the door he said "Alright boys, welcome to my man cave". haha, what a cool guy huh, so we went into his man cave and chatted it up for a little bit. Of course we were planning on teaching him the first lesson, but we come to find out he's been taught by the missionaries for years (makes sense considering he's on the ward roster) and he just refuses to accept organized religion. So we talked to him for a bit. He was a way cool guy, oh, and he was white, which was interesting, and old white guy in the middle of the ghetto of Tennessee, and he was really rascist, which makes sense, most older white people around here are, that's just how it is, and he said the N word a lot, I would see Elder Badger smirk every time he did, haha. He was very kind to us though, when we left he gave us 20 dollars and told us to go get some dinner, we tried to give it back but in the end we took it. What I learned that night was this - I really want a man cave.

Tuesday was a great day, it was nice and sunny, and we tracted pretty much until our feet wanted to fall off. Those day's are always good. A lot of yelling through screen doors. "WHO ARE YOU?", "We're missionaries", "WHO?", "CHURCH PEOPLE", "oh...WHAT DO YOU WANT?" "We share a unique message about Jesus Chri..." "WHAT??", "WE WANNA TALK ABOUT JESUS!"... Alot of that going on, haha.

Wednesday was the actual day that transfers happened, so that was exciting. My trainer was officially made Zone Leader and Elder Peay got his new greeny. His name is Elder Fry. I really like him, haha. So he's the new kid in the house, he's really cool. Right after Transfer Meeting we took Elder Fry out to eat at this all you can eat chinese place (we go out to eat on special occasions, like transfer meetings and district meetings, and zone meeting, pretty much any meeting) We used the 20 dollars Brother Humphry gave us, greenies don't get a lot of money because they come in during the middle of the month, Elder Fry came at the very end, so he probably had like 25 dollars, so we payed for him. Then we got to work.

I think Wednesday was the day we ran into Thomas. We were walking through Beacon Apartments going to see a potential investigator and just so happens that we run into Thomas and Brother and Sister Bauer, and guess what, Thomas is smoking, with Brother Bauer... ugghh. So Thomas didn't get baptized on Saturday. We found out Brother Bauer gave him the cigarette, Brother Bauer is a bad example for Thomas... and I love the guy, I really do, but I was pretty frustrated.

The rest of the week kinda blended together. On Friday though, Elder Badger and I had like 40 minutes to spare, so I was like, well lets go tracting, and Elder Badger said he felt like we should go see this kid we contacting the other day on the street. So we pull up to his house, and this huge neighborhood bball game is goin down. We walk up and start talking to all these kids, and they start smack talking us and want us to play some ball, so we take off the ties, pick teams, and ball it up. Elder Badgers a baller, he drains everything, and I'm just really tall, so we end up killing them... twice, it was a lot of fun haha. After we beat them we asked if they could all sit down for a second so we could share a message with them. We shared a spiritual thought, and some of the parents around the area came out and wanted our information, and we made a couple appointments. So that was awesome. There are so many good kids around this area, they just have so many bad influences, so the parents really like it when we stop and play ball or just invite their kids to church and stuff, and I can see that it really does make a big difference.

Saturday was a good day, The biggest thing that happened was we taught Thomas. The smoking thing has been tough, but we know he can quit. I think I mentioned the 15 step program I found in the house, well we decided to go through that program with Thomas, and he loved it. The only problem was that there was a lot in the program he couldn't do, because he couldn't buy all the supplies he needed, like Mouthwash, Vitmain C, Fruits, Grapefruit Juice, ect... He lives with his God Father, and they really don't have much money at all. We decided we could help him out with all of that so we actually ended up buying about 50 dollars worth of groceries, so Thomas could do these 15 steps exactly as they are for a week straight. So we're both fresh out of MSF money, but I felt really good about it. When we brought him the groceries he gave us the biggest hugs ever and promised he'd quit smoking. I want to see that boy get baptized so bad... He's so ready for this step in his life, he's trying so hard to change. I love him.

Kierra and Stephanie still need to get married before baptism. We actually found out Kierra's baby daddy has been asking her to marry him! She says she just doesn't know if she's ready because she feels like 23 is too young, lol. I told her that where we're from girls get married at 19 all the time. So we're still working with them.

Oh yea, I just remembered something else. We were teaching Stephanie and her kids about baptism, and we decided to do this thing that some of you might have done, idk if it's pretty well known or not, but you teach baptism with a hard boiled egg, and a gatorade bottle, and show how you need to be baptized by water and the spirit (or fire). The gatorade bottle is the kingdom of heaven, and the egg is trying to get into the kingdom of heaven (the gatorade bottle). He can't fit through the top. So you baptize him in water and peel off his hard shell, now he's clean from sin, but he still can't fit into the kingdom of heaven. That's because only half of his baptism is complete, he still needs to be baptized by the spirit (or fire). The way you set this up is you pour rubbing alcohol in the bottom of the gatorade bottle, then you light the fumes in the bottle and put the egg over the whole it will make a vacuum, and pull the egg into the bottle, or... after baptism by water and fire, the egg can enter the kingdom of heaven. We try to do this little experiment for the 1st time with Stephanie, it can't be too hard right? well I think we put too much alcohol in the bottle, and I borrowed a lighter to light it instead of matches, and a huge flame came out and burned my hand real good. Stephanie and her kids loved it though, they thought it was the coolest thing ever that the egg went in, and they didn't notice I burned my hand. So that's good haha. I tried not to let them notice I was in pain for the rest of the lesson. My hand is fine though, it's healing up nicely.

Overall, the week was great. We're getting work done. Thomas' new baptismal date is the 12th of March, I know he'll be ready by then. We've been struggling finding new investigators, but hopefully the nice weather we'll help us find more people. I love you guys! Talk to you next P-Day.

Elder LeBaron

Oh, I almost left out the best news! I hope you don't mind me mentioning this Ben, I just want my family to know. Today I got an email from Benjamin. He's working on his papers right now... because he's decided to go on a mission. What a stud right? I'm so proud of that guy. That email meant the world to me. I love you Benny.