5-9-11

Greetings from Stockton! Updates.

 

• Stockon is a little scary, but we live in a very nice gated community with a member. And we're only in the ghetto parts during the day.
• Sister Despain is my companion and she IS mostly deaf, but she wears heavy duty hearing aids and so she hears perfectly fine. She was called ASL (American sign language) on her mission, so...
• I'm in deaf work as well as English work right now. So that means I'm learning sign language! It's very different than I thought it was, but it's fun to learn. I can barely sign a thing and the deaf people we know like to tease so they make fun of me all the time. It's actually pretty funny.
• We had a very unexpected baptism on Saturday. Shelly and Loren are married and have been investigating the church for years. They finally decided to be baptized a few weeks ago, but only Loren was able to go through with the ordinance because Shelly is very ill with cancer and wasn't well enough. A member went to visit her a few days ago and told us that the baptism just wasn't going to happen. But we decided to visit anyway and see what was up. We chatted with them for awhile until finally Shelly told Sis. Despain that she sensed that Sis. Despain had something on her mind. She hesitated but then said, "Shelly, you look really strong today. We know how much you want to be baptized, and we can have everything ready within the hour if you want. We can make it as quick and painless as possible if you want to do it today." Shelly seemed unsure at first, but to our great surprise she said that was what she wanted to do, so we found two witnesses, called the zone leaders, and had her baptized 45 minutes later. Phew!

So that's life right now. I must fly! Time never goes by faster than on p-day. Hope everyone's well and safe and happy.