Branson

This was not a diligent work week. It seems like the more I did the behinder I got.  And since I didn’t do a ton of writing stuff, I have lots of catching up to do this week.

I had a lot of butternut squash, so I made some soup. It actually turned out to be pretty good. I was taking some pictures of the squash and Athena decided to photobomb the pictures.

Monday Tom and I and another young member of the ward decided to do an “intervention” with a new convert who had stopped coming to church, fallen into bad company… said she didn’t like where she was, but wasn’t making a move to change. We’d wanted to do it nearly a week before, but couldn’t get all the participants together.

We drove to her work and met her as she came out of work (since catching her at home seemed impossible.) She is such a delight. I hugged her. We told her our concerns for her and invited her to our house for milk and cookies and to talk. It was a good meeting. She’d broken from the bad influences and with our reassurances she would be loved and welcomed, she agreed to come back to church. And she was there Sunday. I was so good to have her back. She’s a neat lady.

Tuesday, we packed up and left for Branson. We had three nights in a timeshare. We thought we’d lose out on the last night as we had to leave Friday evening. Umm as it turned out, we arrived a day early. I don’t know how I thought Tuesday was Nov. 2. Oops… but fantastic. They let us come in a day early so we didn’t lose that last day!

We had an enjoyable time shopping and wandering around. We thought we could go to Silver Dollar City… but they were closed all that week preparing for Christmas. Sigh. We did go to the Brett Show and enjoyed that. And when we were at Branson Landing, the fountain was putting on its lovely 7pm show.

We had agreed… in a fit of insanity… to a timeshare presentation. In an additional loss of mind we somehow came to believe that our family would have amazing fun and togetherness with the benefits of a timeshare. On the way home, Friday afternoon, we “came to ourselves” and realized we had a rich life and could continue to enjoy life without a timeshare and send off a letter of “right to cancel.” I do like the lifestyle dream… but not the commitment. The very nice salesman also indicated benefits the compliance lady said were not necessarily so.

Nathan seemed to hold down the fort pretty well while we were gone. He fed the chickens and the cats and mowed the lawn… or beat the leaves into submission. He’s working at both Papa Johns and TJ Max… but not a lot of hours at either place yet. He feels he’s moving forward with his goals.

We came home Friday night to attend a baptism of three very special people. One was very new to learning about the church. One had been attending church for about 8 months trying to get his life in order so he could be baptized. The older man had friends who had joined the church about 5 years ago and had gone from holding the church at arm’s length to finally embracing it.

The similarity was that they were all so joyful and so delighted with their new step. It was really special to see them radiate such feeling of happiness.

Then Saturday was stake temple day. 14 youth went to do youth baptisms. Tom drove up with a bunch of youth. One of our sisters also went to take out her own endowments and be sealed to her husband and child who had both passed on. So I drove up with three other people. In the endowment session 24 of the 26 people in attendance were from our ward.

Again, it was such a wonderful experience to share the joy of the sister going through for the first time and the warmth of being surrounded by friends and ward members through the whole temple experience.

It was a rich day for some of our ancestors: three baptisms, four initiatories, four endowments and four being sealed.

And today in testimony meeting we felt the love of the ward just enfold the new members. The one younger man had been considered incorrigible and a troublemaker through much of his youth and early adulthood. And now… he’s so happy and such a different person. Yes, he still has and will have problems, but now he has tools and gifts to help strengthen him. He has the Lord and the spirit to nourish him.

I love what the Gospel does for people. It makes me want to be a better missionary!