I'm glad to hear that you all had a
fun trip down to California and Disneyland! Some good quality time with
family and relatives is always good for the soul. I look forward to
seeing you all in five weeks or so.
This
week has been admittedly very difficult for me. I have been sent back
to the North, and it is much worse than the last time I was here, if
that were even possible. I have been sent to clean house, in more than
just the literal sense. on day three we had the Zone Leaders come help
Clean the apartment with us as well as the missionary that I replaced up
here. I've had to clean out an gut 9 apartments over the course of my
mission. This one I've had to clean twice. Basically I'm done with the
nonsense, so I arranged for the fellow who was here before to come back
and pay for his sins. The place was not livable.
Basically,
I've been put on babysitting assignment for my last 6 weeks. This is
the worst possible way I could end my mission. And though the last 6
days have been hell and I've hardly slept and lost my appetite and I
feel awful most of the time, we are seeing some improvement. President,
the Zone Leaders - my old friends Elder Hunsaker and Elder Finch and my
district leader Elder Beauter - one of my old MTC companions- have all
stepped up behind me and promise that they will parachute in if things
get too out of hand. But in the end, I'll still have to be in the lions
den 90% of the time. I hope I can help change this fellow some. He has
made some changes in the last few days and I am pleased with his
progress but he still gives me grief. I have cause to mourn daily
because of the wickedness of my brethren.
Do
not worry about me. I've done this before- and even though it was the
most difficult part of my mission, I did learn things about working with
others possessed of opposite personalities. I have a hard time
accepting that this is what the Lord want's me to do now in my last
chance to affect the people and be exactly obedient and see miracles.
But Elder Henry, my companion will at least work during the day. We'll
see if we can focus as much as we can on doing the work.
Yesterday we were really busy. We only had about 40 minutes to do studies before going out. We taught a less active at 9:00 A.M.
and then went near by to visit an investigator in the hospital.
Unfortunately, he was unable to entertain us at the time, so we went
back to the vehicle. as we were walking down the street I talked to a
man who was passing by us and struck up a conversation. After learning
that we were Mormons he told us that he had read the Book of Mormon. So I
asked him what he thought of it. His response was -"It was Divine...but
I never was able to find a baptizer. I went to a couple church's but I
could never find a baptizer." I asked his name and he told me it was
Monte. I said "Monte, today is your lucky day. My companion and I have
authority to baptize." He started getting excited and I told him we
could have him baptized in a couple weeks. To which he responded "why
wait? If you have the authority lets just do it right now." We explained
that there were a few lessons and preparations that needed to take
place first and we needed to do it under the direction of a bishop but
that it could happen at as fast a pace as he wanted. He told us he'd
jump through whatever hoops he had to, but he really wanted to do this.
So we put him on date for November 12th
and promised a few blessings that would come into his life as a result
of entering into the covenant of baptism. I'm not even joking. I've been
working on bringing baptism into our finding situations and making the
invitation to people on the street and God provided someone who brought
it up in the conversation before we did. How's that for faith
promoting!?!? We will hopefully be able to meet with him today.
Love you all and I'll give you an update next week.
love,
Elder Higginson
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