The Scattered Remnants of Pumpkins

Boo! Happy Halloween! Ah it's weird being out longer than a year, as I run into holidays that I remember last year. Good times. This morning there were smashed pumpkins all over the road. I guess the tradition is people get rid of their pumpkins that way. It was a little weird looking, but hey, that's a small town for ya.

It was a bit of a roller coaster week. Now with Johns baptism, our teaching pool has decreased by 30%. So that can always be tough but we still have good things happening and good things to look forward too, so we keep on going with it. John is doing great. He wants the institute manuals for every book of scripture, because he says he doesn't have much of a base in the scriptures so he is going to go and buy those. Yep. He says that for some reason, ever since his baptism more people are coming up and introducing themselves. He also feels way different, in a good way. It's the light in the eyes. Makes you more attractive to people.

And last P-day, something crazy happened. We were going to play basketball as a district, and the Zone Leaders were going to come. Then the Manassa District showed up. Now, under Pres. Pfile, Zone P-days were absolutely no go. But they called Pres. Anderson and got permission I guess, so that was kind of cool! Really historic in a way. President Anderson has made a lot of good changes I would say. A lot of things that are way different, but still good. Like he has no qualms about flushing/whitewashing/shotgunning or whatever you want to call it (2 elders go in at the same time, neither one knowing a thing about the area) different areas. And he's killed the whole senior/junior/District leader etc. thing. Tons of missionaries going Junior when they've been out a while, and ya, it's gotten rid of the "hierarchy" so it's really good.

Another thing that happened, a member of the ward was moving some bread around her car, and we offered to help, and she was like "well, no I'm good, but my friend drives a truck for a bakery and gets all this leftover bread, so do you Elders want some free bread?" It was crazy! like a de ja vu from when I worked at Cobs and gave the missionaries free bread. I guess I'm just getting the favor returned haha! So that was a pretty cool thing to happen, and we have been enjoying our bread.

Ok weird story: So for mutual this week, they decided to have a stake mutual activity with a kind of Halloween theme to it. But other than the traditional haunted house etc. they decided to reenact scaryish stories from the scriptures, to scare the kids (?), and then bear testimony to give a spiritual aspect. Well, our ward was given the assignment to reenact the tarring and feathering of Joseph Smith. The Elders Quorum pres was like "hey Elders, we really need some extra help for this" so we decided to go along and BRT the ward a bit. I wasn't 100% comfortable beating up the prophet of the Restoration (Played by our ward mission leader) so we mapped it out that I would be one of the first people to get to him (and we were dressed in old, mobby like coats. Not missionary clothes) and he could pretend to punch me, and I'd just fall down and lay there the rest of the time. Elder Park would hold a tin filled with leaves (feathers) and throw it at him. We thought afterwards it would be funny if Elder Park had just started yelling in Korean. Anywho. So it went pretty good, they were sitting in a little clearing, and the youth were in a big group talking to them, and then our group of about 11 people slowly came out of a ditch and started walking towards him. One of em had a pistol loaded with blanks and fired it up in the air, and we all just started yelling quotes that mob people would say. I took mine from "The Restoration" and "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration". But I made it about 5 seconds before he knocked me down and that was pretty fun. So ya. That was our service for the week. Approved by our Priesthood leaders, so there wasn't any worry there. The kids actually were pretty touched by the whole thing, and there were a bunch of non-members there. Some of the kids tried to help Joseph Smith out.

And Tony (catholic) had picked up a book on Religions of Celebrities, which was really just a christian guy attacking religions he didn't like. Buddhism, Scientology, Mormonism. Yep. Anti. So we told him it was a book of the devil and he told us how much he loved the Book of Mormon and how he really didn't like that book. We told him to throw it out or give it to us (so we could throw it out) The next day he gave it to us and we destroyed it. But he came to all 3 hours of church on Sunday for the first time, and loved it. He contributed more than some of the members!

And with Chris. We were supposed to meet with him Friday but that day he got his phone wet and we couldn't contact him for 4 days. That was a scary 4 days. But now it's all good, set to meet with him Thursday. Hopefully we can have a baptism in November!

Well I think that was the week. After Halloween, the next thing a missionary looks forward to is Thanksgiving. Transfers have come and gone, no surprise I'm staying. Next transfer is going to be crazy. We'll see what happens.

Have a good week!
Elder Gibb