I have to start with this story.
We had another lesson with Ashton, our nine year old investigator that
is getting baptized on the 19th of March, and it was.... Well
interesting.
We were teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the third of five
missionary lessons. In this lesson, we teach these simple principles.
Faith
Repentance
Baptism
Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost
Enduring to the End
We decided to have the lesson at the Mount Vernon church building so
that it could be just him, his mom, some Ward members, and some
siblings of his. One of his siblings is two years old. We held it in
the gym and created a circle of chairs that all pointed at a
chalkboard that had the principles we were going to talk about.
Everyone sat in their chairs, and we began the lesson.
We had just finished teaching about faith and were leading it into
repentance, when Keyon, Ashton's two year old brother, runs behind the
chalkboard and just stands right behind it for about five or so
minutes. After he had been standing there for only 30 of those
seconds, this wind of the smell of diarrhea smacked me in the face and
I think I almost went into shock and fainted. It was bad. Elder Isom,
standing on the other side of the chalkboard, began coughing, I
assume, from the lack of breathable air that surrounded both him and
I. This went on for FOUR MORE MINUTES as we continued the lesson.
Soon enough, everyone recognized the absolute poison they were feeding
into their nostrils. Everyone kept looking around to find where in the
world that stench was coming from. Keyon, being totally embarrassed
and recognizing that everyone could smell him now, just BOLTED for the
exit, while leaving a trail of his remains behind him. To get to the
door, he stepped over one of my feet and I'm not even kidding you. His
poop was SO FREAKING close to getting on my shoe. It literally missed
me by six or so inches and it gives me the shivers just thinking about
it. I still DEEP CLEANED everything I wore that day, because I didn't
want that odor to follow me any more.
Nevertheless! It was a team effort in cleaning up the carpeted Gym
floor. Miraculously, none of his droppings left a stain after we had
cleaned it all. After the longest 20 minutes of my life, we CONTINUED
the lesson with Ashton and were somehow still able to teach an
effective lesson to him and teach him the importance of Baptism and
the Holy Ghost. He's super excited for his baptism and so are we.
It's kinda crazy how a Elder Isom and I were able to keep our
composure in this situation. It was definitely the Holy Ghost that
brought the Spirit back after the leaky diaper incident. If anything,
this experience taught me to focus and to focus on the people that
need this Gospel so badly. We were so close to giving up and Heavenly
Father absolutely helped us through that time.
As I reflect on the mish so far, I think of how much this Gospel has
changed me and also the people around me. I can't comprehend the
importance of this work, and I hope to continue to strive to do
everything I can to further the Good Word that we as missionaries have
to offer. Lately I've gotten several emails and letters and I can't
thank you all enough for that. It's one of the tender mercies I've
been through out here and I wouldn't change any of it for the world.
Stay awesome.
Love and miss you.
Elder G
Sent from my iPad
Left to Right : Elder Leavitt (He was in my first District in Canal), Elder Yeates (District Leader), Elder Durkin (Greenie), Elder Spencer (Came out with me), me, Elder Isom.
The District when there was six of us. Elder Durkin and Elder Spencer left and got mid-cycled transferred to a new area. We've been a District of four for two weeks now.
We helped build a train set for an elderly woman in our Ward. She has
a hard time lifting and bending down to put it together so we happily
obliged.
Some of the Elders in our Zone. Elder Houghland (one with glasses) was the one I originally was taking a selfie with and everyone else joined in. Freaking Elders.
If you look really closely, you can see a car antenna. That's really, really, really long.
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