I Love Food

Thanksgiving. Sooooo much food. That's pretty much enough said for the week but I know that wouldn't fly with my parents so I guess I'll expound.

So Wednesday we had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner which wasn't your traditional Thanksgiving dinner. They decided that since everyone was going to be eating tons of turkey on Thursday they decided to do something different so as to not turkey every one out. So instead they did barbecue. And then ceviche. AT THE SAME TIME. It was so good. Fajitas, chicken, ceviche, potato salad. I ate enough to last for me several days but Thursday our Bishop invited us over for dinner with him and all his family plus his wife's family. I think there were like 7 or 8 families there? All with several kids. It was a mad house. But 4 turkeys and a ham later, we left with enough food in our stomachs to last us a long time. All in all a great Thanksgiving. To top it off, the weather gods were with us and Thanksgiving Day and the following day it was over 60 degrees outside. It was a Thanksgiving Day miracle! And then Saturday came. That's a different story.

But then to top it all off, we had another baptism this weekend. I don't know where we keep finding all these people but we do so here is the story of William (as you can guess, not his actual name - or is it a her?!?!? The world may never know). Anyways some missionaries had talked with William (Will for short) a few days before I showed up here in Othello. They didn't get the chance to teach him at all so I got to teach him the first lesson and start the whole process. It was pretty slow at first but little by little he kept progressing here and there. We had invited him to be baptized once or twice but he never really accepted a solid date. There comes a time about a month and a half ago where we don't see him for almost two weeks for one reason or another since he hadn't done much and wasn't making a lot of progress. We decide to give him one more try and knock on his door, but we went in with the intention of dropping him for the aforementioned reasons. We sit down and start talking and come to find out he had read almost half the Book of Mormon. Since that was some pretty marked progress we humble ourselves and continue on the teaching process and set a date for about a month out. The date kept getting closer and we still were pretty far behind on the lessons since we had to help him overcome some concerns, which caused my companion and I to discuss pushing back his baptismal date a week so we didn't have to cram in the teaching last second. We bring a member over the Friday before his baptism (not the day before the week before so like 9 days) and on the way to the lesson that member said he saw Will in the store the night before and expressed how he was ready and excited for the 29th. I didn't feel like letting his hopes down to get baptized on that date since he was looking forward to it so much so we say sure and then express that we would have to meet every night for the next week to finish off the teaching process. He responds that he doesn't work since picking season is done (and then we thank the cold weather) so we start coming over every night until last Saturday, which was the baptismal service itself. Not a lot of people came, but the Spirit was there. Last night William shared with us how he has felt like he was walking on clouds since Saturday night. We asked him after the service was done Saturday night how he felt, and just the way he responded back with "I am filled with joy and happiness" is something that I won't soon forget.

The quote for the week comes from one of the lessons with William during that week of cramming in the lessons. We were discussing tithing and money and what not when someone made a comment about millionaires having lots of money but no faith. William said:

"I'm a millionaire, but with faith."

Classic quote. Gotta love the humble people in the world. Well, hopefully everyone's food coma has worn off since Thursday night and now we get to start working it all off, just in time for Christmas! Let the Christmas music binge listening begin.

Have a holly jolly Christmas,

Elder Kupferer