"Like kissing a cactus"

Seasons greetings from Apple Valley, CA!  The Thanksgiving week was fun and we were able to have a great dinner with some members in our ward and some other missionaries.  I'm grateful for how kind and caring the members of the Ranchos ward are.  They make sure that we're well taken care of as missionaries.

This week I had my first baptism!  While that sounds exciting, it's actually kind of cheating, haha.  There was a boy whose dad, who's a member, wanted him to hear all the discussions before baptism.  Well, they put the baptism off for a while so by the time we finished teaching him he had turned nine, making him a convert baptism and our responsibility, haha.  It was fun, though.  He had little to no knowledge about the gospel before we began teaching him.  By the end he had a good knowledge and understanding of a lot of gospel principles.  However, because he was technically a convert baptism he had to be interviewed by our zone leader, Elder M.  Now, the convert interview isn't designed for 9 year-old children.  Apparently, here are some highlights from his interview, according to Elder M:

Right at the beginning of the interview- 

Nick: "So, Minecraft."  He then talked about Minecraft for about twenty minutes.

Concerning the Spirit-

M: "So, when we talk about church how do you feel?"
Nate: "I feel weird."

M: "... Good weird?"
Nate: "No.  Like, weird weird.  Like kissing a cactus."

Concerning the Law of Chastity

Nick: "I don't think I'll ever get married.  Or if I do it'll be in about 400 or 1000 years.  But by then I'd be like 100 years old!"

That's one for the history books right there.  His baptism was Saturday which was very nice.  It may seem lame to take part in what was essentially a child of record baptism as a missionary, but I felt the Spirit at his baptismal interview.  The gospel isn't reinforced very strongly in the home so it was nice to provide some basic information.  Plus, before our teaching he wouldn't pray out loud and now he offers to say the prayer at every lesson.  Progress!  Also, the day after his baptism he gave his first talk in primary.  It felt good to help someone, even if he was nine, in his spiritual progression.

We had an excellent lesson with one of our investigators, S.  She's working really hard on gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon and is making some good progress.  The testimony was really strong in our lesson as we read Alma 32.  Alma talks about how you can know if something is true by if the seed is good and if it grows.  

As I think about my mission it seems weird that just about 4 months ago I didn't know any of these people who have become some of my best friends.   I didn't know any of my zone, I didn't know my ward, I didn't know my investigators, and yet now they're my whole life.  What's even weirder to think is that some of the elders in my zone and I studied on the same floor and slept in the same building at the MTC and we didn't know each other till we got to the field.  The mission can be hard at times and sometimes I'm confused about why I'm here in California and not in Brazil, but the people I've met are a huge testament that I'm doing the right thing in the right place.  The church is true, the book is blue, and I know that the work I'm doing is the greatest in the whole world.

Your friend,

Elder Carter David Morgan