Karlie's Baptism!

Hey so we had a pretty good week this last week! First of all thanks for the emails haha I got to watch Bryson eat some cereal which was awesome! I was wondering why in the world mom sent me the scripture about hell fire and damnation until I saw the picture she sent in the other email hahaha "ohhh.." I said. Anyway yeah! So Karlie was baptized on Saturday! Pretty crazy situation there...not as bad as stefani's back in buena vista, but still! So the parents just got divorced not too long ago and the mom got custody of the kids, so they can legally be baptized without their dad's permission (which has been the problem...the dad is super unsupportive and doesn't want Karlie or Keegan who is 8 baptized at all). So we talked with the bishop of the ward about it, and he was fully aware of everything. He called the two parents and on Friday morning, about 26 hours before the baptism, we got a phone call saying that the baptism was off because the bishop wanted the dad to be okay with it. Darn!

So we went through our whole day and come 8:30 at night I felt like we needed to go by the mom's house. We did and said said "what's up? ...did you know the baptism is back on?" What! I guess the dad said okay and either way, Karlie put her foot down and said that she's not going to wait anymore. She's had missionaries teaching her since November and she wanted to be baptized soo bad. So at 9pm we were on for the baptism at 11 the next day! We got everything together and the service was awesome! A family friend Nate Bridges did the baptism. Karlie had the biggest smile on her face when she came up out of the water! It was amazing! Her dad didn't even show up though, so we have no clue what his problem is. But yeah yesterday we did her confirmation. I got to confirm her, what an honor! But to be honest, we didn't even really do anything. Karlie's had missionaries in the double digits. All we did was take care of the record and programs and service. The other missionaries did all the work, and in fact Karlie is the one that did the most of it. She knows what she needs and wants and she's willing to do whatever to achieve that. She's definitely a sharp 10 year old girl! But yeah this was definitely a miracle baptism for us!

So yeah other than that, things are going pretty good! Slowly but surely since the work is pretty slow in this area right now. But either way, we should be having another baptism coming up by the end of the transfer! This transfer's already half over! crazy! We're stoked for September 7th...our first ever Mission Conference with Elder Bednar! Gonna be crazy! It'll be in Salina. I heard from Elder Linville this morning too! He had a miracle baptism as well back in my old area in Buena Vista! Soo awesome, I'm proud of him! We're soo blessed to be in this mission! We have had so much success! We have high expectations, but we should never over look the work we have accomplished. I heard the other day of a member's nephew who served in Hungary and didn't have a single teaching appointment for two whole years! Big difference! So yeah I love this mission to death. I don't care how close I am to home...in fact it makes great comic relief and a nice ice breaker for door contacts. I love serving here!

Have a great week,

Love,

Elder Payne!