Week Two in Orlando!

June 19
This week was also really slow in the finding, teaching, and testifying areas, but it ended really well...with a baptism! And it just keeps going on!So, last week I think I explained that I was one of the office missionaries, which was supposed to mean that we would only spend about 4 hours a week in office....well....... This last week we spent a lot of time trying to work out the FOM Messenger, which is a newsletter that the mission publishes to let the missionaries know what is going on in the mission, the baptisms that have taken place, and other such items. The office missionaries used to do the entire thing by themselves, but in order to let us go out and teach more the President decided to give it over to Sister Decker, the wife of our area physician (he covers 4 of the 5 Florida missions, but he lives here in Hunter's Creek). She is a really nice lady, but she hasn't really worked that much on projects of this size, so we ended up taking about 3 hours on Wednesday to finish it. This was all fine and dandy, but so far that week we had only taught 1 lesson (to a less-active woman who is living with her fiancee and doesn't really understand why Joseph Smith is talked about so much), and we had four appointments lined up for that night. We then got a call from Sister Darrington telling us to redo the template to make it better looking and to get a standard that Sister Decker could use, which President authorized us to spend at LEAST 4-6 hours on during our Thursday teaching time!
Because of this delay, I got to go on an exchange with Elder Short, one of the missionaries in our flat. One thing you might remember about Elders Short and Simon are that they are Spanish-speaking missionaries, so we ended up going to a Spanish appointment for 2 1/2 hours of our exchange bible bashing a Sunday School teacher from one of the Catholic churches on John Young Parkway (it's the main street that runs through our area, no relation to Brigham...). It was really awesome to listen to the Spirit in that meeting because, even though I didn't know either accent (Puerto Rican and Guatemalan) that the two men were speaking, I could understand exactly what they were saying in the conversation. We had a talk given to us on spiritual gifts, including the gift of tougues, on Sunday during Gospel Principles, and I can testify that it's true! The Lord really does give us the gifts that we need to understand the needs of our investigators and to testify of Him in all that we do.
So, I mentioned that we had had 4 appointments the night before that had all cancelled. One of these appointments was with the Jimenez family, who moved here from Tennessee and were taking the lessons there. They live a really long way away from us (about 15 miles away, on Nacoossee Road, which runs right into part of the Church cattle ranch), and we had driven there the day before (twice, once to meet Brother Scarborough, who we haven't been able to get in contact with ever since... so I don't have any new info on him, sorry!), so we haven't been able to get in contact with them for about 4 weeks because they are always busy when we try to go to that side of the area. Well, while Elders Barton and Simon are working on the Messenger, they get a call from this family to come visit them that day at 3:00. They go out and talk to the husband, O'Neal, for about an hour on the economy with the exchange they take, and O'Neal decides to hire the exchange and buy him a car (O'Neal works for a huge South American oil company fixing their machinery, and he showed Elder Barton a check they had written to him for $960,000 dollars! He is a generous guy, so he tries to give the money away to help people that really need it.). They finally get around to teaching the first lesson, and Elder Barton starts committing him to come to church. O'Neal cuts him off and says, "How many times do I have to come to church before I get baptized?" Elder Barton tells him he needs to come twice in this mission (apparently it was like 7 or 8 in the Tennessee mission), and so he begins to commit O'Neal and his wife for baptism. O'Neal cuts him off, turns to his wife, she nods, and he says "Give us two weeks, and we'll get baptized." !!!!! How awesome is that! There really are people that are preparing to hear the words of the Gospel and are striving to do the things that are right for them. You just have to be patient and work through the hard times!
This is really the big point in our week. All the rest of the week we have had very little success in teaching people (including members) because they have cancelled every appointment made after Wednesday (except for the dinner appointments, which we are really grateful for!). Tracting has also been uncharacteristically difficult this week. Even Elder Barton has said that he's never had as hard of a week talking to people as this one, but we will continue to work hard and trust that the Lord will bless us for our efforts!
Landon and Lisa Young are actually about Mom and Dad's age, with 5 children from both of their individual marriages to other people. One of their biggest struggles has been daily scripture reading, so we burned them a MP3 CD with some awesome Book of Mormon chapters (you can't get individual verses) on baptism and the Atonement, so they are doing much better at that. We got to meet with them yesterday, and they told us how much they appreciate us coming over and talking to them. Thier relationship with each other has really improved, and they came to sacrament meeting yesterday (the week before, Lisa was working at the hospital, and Landon didn't bring the kids). Lisa is really shy, and she still won't say prayers in front of us, but she has a really good understanding of why she should get baptized and what the gospel can do to help her in her life. She is still working for July 5th as a baptisimal date, and she's doing just fine! Since Landon is a member, his two kids (Chamberlain, 14 year old girl NOT named after Wilt Chamberlain, and Stockton, 13 year old boy named after John Stockton) are members of the Church, but Lisa's three children (who I have only met in passing) are not. The Young's have asked us not to teach them until after Lisa gets baptized, so there will be more about them in July.We didn't meet with Rusty yesterday because he had some other committment to fulfill, but I'll keep you posted on him.
my first baptism was on Saturday! We held the services for Chadd Spicer, who is a 20 year old that I had never met before until his interview with President Darrington on Friday (he's been out of town for the last few weeks). It was really interesting being the witness at a baptism, especially since the ordinance had to be repeated 4 times to get it right! I don't have time to talk about it now, but if you want more info make sure to leave a message in my inbox about it. Also, if you can believe it, I've been out in the mission field for a full month! It really goes by fast, but there is still plenty of time to learn from the Spirit!
I am playing the piano for tomorrow at Zone Conference. I've worked really hard learning this arrangement of "I Know that My Redeemer Lives."
Finally, I know that this is the Lord's church, that this is Christ's true, complete gospel that we share with others, and that the Atonement that Jesus Christ went through was not just for us, but for me individually and for you individually. I know that as we work to follow the commandments and develop the attributes of Christ that we will be blessed in our lives and that we can come closer to eternal life, the gift of being able to live with our Heavenly Father forever. It's awesome to be a missionary! I really want to know what's going on. Every letter counts! Have a great week!