Mom

     Things have been a lot better this week; everyone is starting to focus back on their work. I heard there were sooo many people at Elder Wiberg’s funeral!! That is awesome--he was truly a funny guy.

     The sisters are stealing our baptisms!! They baptized a guy that we found and taught a lot before we got transferred.   They ended up baptizing him and two more people that we have taught!! Haha, I guess it doesn’t matter who baptizes them....but, I am still counting them as mine!

     I have been continuing to read the New Testament and I’m in the Book of Acts....it is straight up crazy. The whole book is about the twelve Apostles who were just preaching the Gospel and destroying people. I forgot which one...Simon?? who was stoned and carried out of the land because they thought he was dead and BOOM, he woke up. The people tried to kill the Apostles like a million times!!  Acts is like the coolest book ever.

      Also, I learned a fun fact from Elder Boyter (he is like the coolest senior couple ever--they have a blog too!) Anyway, Elder Boyter is amazing. He was one of those guys that was called as a bishop when he was super, super young and after that has served in some big time callings--so he has been around the "Brethren" quite a bit.  Anyway, Elder Boyter got on the topic of who presides in the home.  For instance, If President Monson walked into our house, Dad would preside. IF President Monson walked into our house and Dad was gone....not me or Chris, but YOU would preside! That last part I didn’t know!! I still remember when the missionaries would come over when Dad wasn’t home and they would always ask me who I wanted to say the prayer, BUT they should of asked you! Interesting right??

       The other day for our District Meeting, we went to the senior couple’s house to bake cookies for the people at the hospital that took care of Elder Wiberg. I felt like I was at home!! While the other missionaries were in a circle talking, I was drinking Diet Coke and talking with Sister Moulder while she made the cookies. So, even though I didn’t help bake the cookies, I drank three cans of Diet Coke and ate a lot of cookie dough while I kept her company. She's a pretty cool lady.  This is her second mission.  Her first mission, she served in SLC in the church office as the Family History person. She worked with all the Missionaries who have autism. She said it was amazing to see how focused they were. She worked with this one guy who traveled into all these villages and gathered all the family history. He even went to Sarawak!! So, she is one out of ten people in the world who knew what this missionary had done and that’s why she got called to Sarawak as a family history specialist. She has some really funny stories about the missionaries that she worked with. She said one missionary was the fastest person she had ever seen on a computer and that he helped big time with this project they were working on. Then they had to switch to another project, and she couldn’t get him to switch projects.  He just flat out refused to switch because he was too focused on the other one.  She told me about another elder who was brand new.  He was getting trained and apparently he was training on a pretty complicated job. So she said that on the elder’s second day on the job, he ran up to her and put a note in her hand that said, "I Quit!!!" I told her how much you loved working with kids who have autism.  It was really interesting to hear Sister Moulders' stories about her first mission.

    This week has been good, we were meeting with this one guy when all of the sudden we heard a huge BOOM and then what sounded like a water fall! He got up and ran to his bathroom, climbed onto the ceiling, and yelled for a rope.  You could see water just shooting out everywhere, so I climbed up and gave him his rope. He tied the pipe down with his rope and that stopped the water from gushing out.  Then, soaking wet, he just sat back down and was like, "Okay, we can continue"--like nothing had even happened!!! It was hilarious.  Also, for the first time in 14 1/2 months, I stepped on.....CARPET!! It was the nicest feeling in the world. The second counselor in the Mission Presidency, who owns a lot of palm oil plantations, had us over for dinner.  It was amazing!  We had pork, chicken, coke, and cheesecake!! It was the nicest meal that I have had in 14 months.

     Transfers happened today and Elder Crosland is going to be an AP!! That is way cool! I am so pumped for him; he is a way good elder. I think he is one of the few AP's I have ever met who doesn’t seek out leadership positions or doesn’t look at being an AP as a "promotion."  He just serves wherever he is asked to go and does his best. One of the songs that I have really grown to appreciate on my mission is, "I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go." Story of my life!!! 

     I love you mom!! Thanks for always supporting me!!

Elder Madsen