Funerals and Interviews

We've had a pretty slammin week this week, not gonna lie. In fact our whole district is tearing it up right now! We should be having 4 baptisms this weekend if everything goes well, one of which will be Kelly on Saturday! We've been busy and teaching all week and have almost doubled the amount of lessons taught. It's been great! We taught Manny yesterday which was really good because we haven't been able to catch him for like 2 weeks! He's still kinda in the same spot, so we're gonna try to meet his parents and show them what exactly Manny has been teaching and have them sit in on a lesson. We're trying to pull an Alma 20 out of this (more or less, but hopefully less) so hopefully that will work out! Kelly is doing really well and has taken off to Nevada for his new job. He'll be back on Friday for his interview and Saturday will be the big day for him! We're sooo excited! The George's are just one of the awesome families I've met on my mission...yet they're the only ones to have fellowshipped two different investigators at the same time. That's where we taught Manny last night, and they fed us stroganoff and "Grandma Bitsy's" banana cream pie! We're well taken care of here in Ephraim. We have about 28 or so offers for thanksgiving. I'm afraid it will be a flashback to last year in Cedar. Too much food! But definitely lots of blessings. The people here are wonderful to us, whether or not they go to church.

Well this week a local 2 year old hispanic boy had a seizure in the bathtub and drowned all within about the 30 seconds that the mom was out of the room. Anyway it has really shaken up the society, especially all the hispanics in the county. The funeral was on Friday, and since we have a few Spanish investigators that were going, we thought we'd show up as well. They did it at the Catholic church here in Ephraim. Kinda interesting...I've obviously lived in Thatcher my whole life because I've never been to a Catholic service before. Thing is though that the whole place was packed, so we had to stand next to the door squished between a bunch of hispanics way in the back. It was roasting in there and my legs were tired and I couldn't really understand what all was going on too well because the whole service was in spanish, except for like 5 random minutes when the pastor spoke in broken english. Anyway, there was definitely a different spirit there...a sullen and cultural spirit. It was a cool experience! Unfortunately though Irma, one of our investigators, got super pumped up to cultivate her Catholic roots because of the funeral, so she's cooling way off now. Darn! But her kids are still okay with being taught, so we'll keep going by. There names are Miguel and Erica, 22 and 20 respectively. Also, we haven't made real contact with Patricia since the funeral, so we're hoping that the same thing won't happen to her as well. She was set to be baptized this Saturday, but we'll have to push her back at best now. Keep up the prayers for her!

Other than that, we had interviews with President and Sister Center before/during our district meeting on Thursday. Well they got a little behind schedule and I ended up starting my interview about five minutes before I was supposed to start the district meeting haha so needless to say, I had a short chat with both of them. They're really awesome though! I can't imagine how tough it's gotta be to handle 180 kids haha. They do a wonderful job. Anyway, as far as interviews go, I got to interview a 10 year old girl for baptism over in Gunnison on Saturday! Her name is Hunter, and her dad of course joined us. She's definitely a spunky little girl and she knows a lot about the gospel! The dad went to EAC back in '79, which was cool to hear. It's always strange when I introduce Thatcher to people and then they gasp and say "I used to live there!" That's only happened a handful of times on my mission. Anyway, Hunter is good to go for baptism. I don't know if I should say this but it's nice to have an ex-assistant in your district. Elder Stewart and Elder Becerra doing work over in Gunnison! They found seven new investigators two weeks ago and taught over 30 lessons last week and are planning to have 10 on date for baptism by the end of this week. They're crazy!

Well that's about all I can think of for this week. Thanks for the pictures of grandma and grandpa! Tell them hi for me and that I love them! I'm looking forward to that package, I won't lie! And Keith when you're done hunting over there, come to San Pete and get rid of some of these deer please. They're everywhere! haha

Love,

Elder Payne!