Last transfer I was called as a District leader, and I will be staying as a District leader wherever I go. I will know tomorrow, but I do know that it is a car area. Elder Chaney will be staying here, and he will actually be training a new missionary. Basically for me that means he will need to be to the transfer meeting early tomorrow, and as such I will need to be with him. Well, the District leader training will be after the transfer meeting, so I will be staying there from 9 to 2:30. Either Lunch will be provided, or Ima be really hungry.
I will let you all know next week where I will be, although I can tell you I will NOT be in this zone (at least I'm 95% sure I won't be). Just as a recap, I've been in this zone for 7 transfers now. We'll see.
Well, so you all know, I did say last week that we were planning on a baptism for yesterday. Well it did happen! There was a lot of stress and work to get it to go through, and Sunday evening was going to be the ONLY time we could do it. The weeks around it just wouldn't work and the day we planned wouldn't work either. The bishop was there, (the new one for the ward called at the beginning of this month) and I was tellin' him, there's no way this can't happen, we gotta make sure it goes through. He was like yeah we do! It was quite the intense process.
We filled up the font and set up all the chairs. If you don't know, baptismal fonts usually take over an hour to fill. This one took about an hour and a half. Don't worry, we were there with plenty of time, and we actually started the baptism only 5 minutes late. They usually start 15-20 minutes late. I think we did pretty good.
Anyway, her name is Khamilah, and her parents are divorced. But both sides of the family agreed to have her baptized and none of them are members. It was really awesome there with the speakers, the spirit was really strong. I felt awesome, leaving Solemint with a baptism. Going out of the area with a BANG! For your benefit, attached are pictures of who was baptized and her mom with her mom's boyfriend.
Well also so you know, I ended up being called in a couple days before Sunday to be one of the speakers. I was told to give the talk on Jesus Christ, and I could go anywhere with that that I wanted. Well, I went with the Atonement. I used President Packer's talk from General Conference in November. The youth speaker before me was told he would speak this month, but wasn't given an exact date. Well it turned out to be this Sunday. He was to talk on Dating from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet. He did pretty good for an impromptu (last minute speech for those who don't know).
Well when it was my turn, I thought I'd have a little fun by using a quote I heard from Tucker Jeppson before he left on his mission. So, I get up there and say that he did pretty good on his talk, and how he mentioned the dating after his mission. I proceeded to use the quote which was "Any money spent on a woman before your mission is money spent on another man's wife." Well, the ward got a good laugh out of that one. Then came the best part that was a real ego booster for me. I announced that I would be leaving the ward for transfers on Tuesday, and then from the ward comes this "ooohhhhhhh" of disappointment. It at least made me feel good knowing that with Elder Wright and with Elder Chaney I worked hard, and also tried to have fun (good missionary fun). So I know I did my best here, and the ward could tell.
I also said that we would be stopping by before I leave to say goodbye. After Church, just as we were about to leave, I went and shook a member's hand and he said "so when are you coming over?" There was no "are you going to stop by?" or anything, he just said, "when are you coming?". Which I thought was cool because I wanted to stop by them before leaving, and they said I could stop by after the baptism.
It's really been great serving in this ward. The members are awesome, even though the work was a bit on the lower side. We did our best to build it. Also, I have 3 transfers left, so where I go will probably be my last area. There is still a chance that I could get transferred after that, but not likely. Hope all is well at home!
--Elder Huffaker
