Back and Better than Ever: Nothing Blew-Up This Week (That also means no fireworks)

Dear family and friends,

What can I say....? This week was interesting and it passed by really quickly. I felt like I was here just the other day doing the same thing. But that's okay, here we are again, another week down and a lot more to go. This is a random thought but also a good one. The other day I was randomly reading through the bible and I found a verse that talked about how much greater is the worth of the day of death than the day of birth (in Ecclessiastes?). And as I think about it it's true. Out here I spend I often say today is my anniversary of when I started my mission but how often do I look forward to think about the last day and how I want that to be. I plan on that day being a day of joy and after having served my best, knowing that I will be blessed and that most importantly my family will be blessed. That's what I am excited for. I've still got 10 months left so I've got time to work. And I need to use it well.

So this week we had an interesting time getting an investigator ready for his baptism that never went off. While we weren't at church Sunday, our super missionary work stake president took one of our investigators in for an interview and fixed his baptismal date for this Saturday that was two days ago. We didn't know about this date being fixed until after church when one of the members of the ward, with whom this investigator was living for the last two weeks, called us to tell us the news. So during the week we spent everyday with this investigator, his name is Henry, to get him ready for his baptism. Henry is 19, so he doesn't need his parent's okay to be baptized, he lives at home with his parents, and he doesn't really have any problems with the word of wisdom. So in order to get him ready we taught him and ran through a practice interview with him. That part was good. It was the fact that his father was not okay for the baptism. Henry told us something like his dad would be fine if he was baptized Jehovah's Witness but not Mormon. No!! Anyway, during the week there were a lot of prayers that were said to help Henry's dad. On Friday we were supposed to have the baptismal interview, but when we showed up he wasn't there. Apparently he was out talking with his mom and uncle about his baptism. So our zone leaders left because Henry wasn't there and we weren't sure when he was getting back. And we stayed for a little while to talk. As we were leaving we saw Henry and his friend coming back. He was not the least bit happy. After discussing a little bit we decided that we would come back later because we were supposed to eat with that family that night. We went back to the house for a little while and around 6 at night we headed back over. Out here the sun sets around 6:30-7 all year round and so when we got to the member's house it was getting dark. The thing is that this member didn't have electricity (I saw them hooking up a small generator on Saturday) but instead they had little battery powered lights that you can glue on walls or in closets where there aren't any lights that were glued on the walls. That was a great example of a humble family. And as we sat around talking waiting for Henry to finish his shower we laughed and sang and just had a good time even if it was in the dark. Anyway, we talked to Henry and he said that he wanted to push his baptism back a little. So as we were leaving we called our ward mission leader, who called the stake president, the stake president then called Henry, talked to him, we went to sleep, woke up, went out to our lessons, during our second lesson we get a call saying that Henry's baptism might happen that day (which was Saturday) and our ward mission leader wanted to know when we could have his interview. I called the zone leaders, got the interview set, called the mission leader to let him know, finished the lesson and headed straight out for the interview. But. When we got to the member's house Henry had just left to go hang out with his friends, we called him, he wasn't sure about his baptism for that day, but he agreed to ask his parents one last time, because he respects their opinion. He calls them, they said no, he calls us back and says no. The zone leaders again have to leave having done no interview. I called the ward mission leader, he wants me to talk to the member. The member calls Henry's parents and they again say no. So, ha, breathe, the final word was no. All that happened in less than 24 hours. Ha, it was crazy. But Henry has decided to push his baptism back and normally we will see him this week and we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, this week we had a multi-zone conference with President Bize. We learned about the five aspects of missionary work, which are finding, teaching, baptizing and confirming, integrating, and reactivating. He also wants us to be really organized, and seeing that he was a CEO for a big insurance company it makes sense that he wants us to be organized. For the fourth of July we didn't do anything special. That was actually the day we spent most of our time at Henry's house, so I guess we did get to have some fun for the fourth of July.

Dear family and friends, I know this Church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I love the prophet Joseph Smith and all that he did for us and I love the Lord.

Love you all,

Elder Squires