Frozen pipes, fire trucks, and baptisms
As you can tell by the header this was a really long and eventful week, so I apologize if it is a little longer than usual. I will attach as many pictures of this week as I can. Let’s start from the beginning:
Monday started off well actually. We met up with our district (9 other missionaries) and all went bowling along with 3 other people that aren’t missionaries. I had to say goodbye to a missionary that was going home early for school so that wasn’t awesome. We had gotten pretty close of the past few months.
We woke up on Tuesday and quickly discovered that our pipes had frozen and we had no running water, so we went to another nearby missionary apartment to shower and get ready for the day. We came back at night and our water still wasn’t working so we went back over and slept at the other missionaries’ apartment in Newport.
Wednesday we had a really productive day and stopped by the house to discover that our water was running again! All of our stuff however was still at Newport’s apartment. We rode with a member to get Jeffrey to the church for his baptismal interview which took a lot longer than we expected but it went well. We also rode with to take him home so by the time we got back to our car it was way past cerfew so we just went to Newport where all of our stuff is and slept there again.
On Thursday we took all of our stuff back to our house and then worked all day and met some really great people down in Chester. We came back home at night and we were absolutely exhausted. We walk inside and one of our Fire Detectors starts going haywire. It would beep super loudly once or twice and then nothing for 10 minutes and then suddenly it would beep like wild for a few minutes and then just go silent for half an hour. We called our housing person and they told us to find somewhere else to sleep, so we went back to Newport again.
Friday comes around and at this point we are just excited to see what is going to come up that will make us stay at Newport again haha. As we were driving to an appointment in Chester we got a call from our housing person telling us to drive home and call 911 so they can get someone out to test our house and find out what is wrong with our system. So we drove home and I made my first ever 911 call! (milestones!) A big fire truck pulled up and a couple guys tested everything and decided that it was just a faulty detector but also said we aren’t allowed to sleep there until we get it replaced… So once again we got to go sleep at Newport’ s apartment!
Saturday morning finally rolls around and we are supposed to have a baptism at the church at 11. We get there early and the church is super cold like a refrigerator and we turn on the water and discover that the water heater isn’t working either! Turns out that the church had run out of propane! We made a ton of calls and they had guys out there later that day that got it all fixed before we had church on Sunday, but we had to reschedule the baptism for Sunday after church.
Sunday comes around and I have never felt the spirit so much in a single day! It started with a really powerful testimony meeting and then of course we had Jeffrey’s baptism! You could tell Jeffrey was really feeling the spirit too because from start to finish he was constantly wiping away tears (that’s why he doesn’t look super happy in the picture) and it was my privilege to perform get to baptize him. Jeffrey is truly unlike any other and I am so happy for him and the path that he is now on!
I’m sorry again for the super long email, but the moral of the story is that when things start going crazy just know that it’s because you are getting close to something amazing, so keep pressing on!
Until next week,
Elder Klingler
Pictures include our big sleepover at Newport, the fire truck in front of our house, a picture from Jeffrey’s baptism, a picture of us with the greatest family called the Yarbrough’s (they’re like my second family), and a picture of my companion and I warming up with a cup of hot chocolate after spending an evening biking around in 10 degree weather!
