WEEK TWENTY SOMETHING  (23)

Hey guys! This week was super good, but it feels like forever since
last week though. Well I guess I will get started!


So James got baptized on Saturday, January 7th! It was a little rough
for him. We had to wait until Wednesday to have the interview because
the Fickles said he wasn't keeping the word of wisdom so we had to get
that all figured out. On Saturday we went to go start filling the font
and then we went to go teach a lesson. When we came back we checked on
the water and the font was empty. We don't know how but the plug came
out so we got the idea to get the garbage cans from the classroom and
some pitchers from the kitchen and turned on the hot water in the
bathroom sinks and dump them into the garbage cans, then we would dump
the water into the font. I did both sinks in the men's bathroom and
Elder Huntley did the same in the women's bathroom. It usually takes
the font about four hours to fill up and we had two hours until people
were getting there. So for two hours with no breaks we just went back
and forth filling up the font from the sink while the font ran to help
it go a little faster. By the time people were getting there it was
getting pretty full and I think we did a pretty good job. It was a
little shallower than it should be, but James isn't that tall so it
worked out. It was also a little colder than it should be, but James
is pretty tough. When they got in the water people asked him if it was
cold and he said no so that was good. The floors got a little flooded
but we just mop them up right before people got there. So that is the
story of James baptism! He got confirmed yesterday and then went up
and bore his testimony since it was fast and testimony meeting.
James and Bernie both got callings yesterday as well, we don't know
what they are yet though.


During James interview Elder Huntley was interviewing a family for
baptism from the cottage Grove area. There were five people total he
had to interview so it took a while. Since he is the District leader
he is the one to do the baptismal interview.  So in the mission when a
missionary speaks a different language like Cambodian or Korean they
get to take a two-week break whenever they want, but only one. So one
of the sister missionaries in Saint Paul decided to take hers and so
she  switched places with one of the sisters in our district. So
Sister Frank, who is in our district, is up in St. Paul learning korean
and Sister Heath is serving in cottage Grove right now. I thought that
was kind of cool since I really wanted to speak a language.


We have been over to the Berniers a lot this week and Amanda has been
reading a lot of the Book of Mormon. So every time we come over she
always has a bunch questions of where she has been reading.  We have
also been teaching Rourke the lessons so he can get baptized.
Amanda has already had the lessons when Aiden was taught them. Unfortunately
they did not come to church, but they really wish they could have came and Amanda
said she was going to bear her testimony yesterday so that's cool.


We were able to do some emergency service this week. We were
driving to the church to use the computers really fast and pretty
close to the church when we saw a car that had spun off the road. So we
pulled over and went to go talk to them and there were some teenage
girls on the way home from school and the driver was on the phone and
the other girls wouldn't roll down the window to talk to us. They just
held up a finger to tell us hold on. Well finally this lady, who I
guess a knew them, came and started talking to them. Well being the
Boy Scouts Elder Huntley and I are we had some snow shovels in our
trunk and we were able to dig them out and push them out.  The lady
that stopped thanked us but the girls just drove off and it was kind
of awkward. Another person we were able to help was this old guy named
John. He was shoveling his sidewalk and driveway and we offered to
help so he went inside. When we were about done he came back out with
some granola bars and money, we only took the granola bars. So that
was cool.


We did a little tracting this week too even though it was pretty cold
when we did. This whole week was in the negatives with the windchill.
The secret is you just crank the heat in the car until you're
sweating and then go outside and it feels nice. So it wasn't that bad,
but we didn't really meet anybody who was to interested. A lot of the
doors we knocked on no one answered, but after we were a few houses
down we would see them pull out of the garage or they would go out on their
porch to have a smoke. This one guy just started laughing at us when
we told him who we were, but that's OK ha ha.


Last Monday after emailing we went and saw the boot! For those that
don't know the Red Wing boots they are a famous boot store that is
based out of Red Wing. In the store they have this super big boot that
is the worlds largest boot! Don't worry I took pictures!


So one night we went to go see Alex again after the holidays and when
we knocked her dad answered and said she wasn't there she was at her
moms, but he said that she told him that she wasn't interested
anymore. I really did not believe him at all, I just think that he was
annoyed of us showing up all the time. So we will try again later and
maybe try stopping at her moms instead. After that we went to go to a
dinner at the Voigts. Earlier that day, at James's baptism, Angela
Voigt told us that dinner was going to be at 6:15 because Angela would
not be home until then. Well I didn't think that we had a dinner that
day with them, but when I told Elder Huntley he said that we had
dinner with the Voigts today. Well apparently he thought I said that
the Voigts we're going to feed us since we didn't have a dinner. So
long story short we show up to their house and knock on the door and
they weren't answering. Well finally Brother Voigt came and answered
the door and was surprised to see us. He asked if we were coming over
for dinner and we said yes. Well they actually had family over and did
not sign up to feed us that day. They still did feed us some pretty
good lasagna though so it all worked out in the end.


Well that was my week! I think it was a pretty good one ha ha well I
look forward to talking to y'all next week!


Elder Bullock

James' baptism