Week 6 & 7- My First Baptism!

Hi again everyone!

It's once again been another hectic and awesome two weeks. And it's also super crazy that my mission has already lasted a month and a half, I never really realized this until now. This mission has been a total breeze up until lately, and I know that there will be more times where it's slow. But I'm more and more prepared for those moments through the Holy Ghost as time continues to go on. So in the meantime, here's some of the sick things that have occured during these special and spiritual pair of weeks!

First and foremost, I absolutely need to talk about some of all the awesome viewpoints around me. Some of the majestic views in Selah are truly to die for. There's going to be some more pictures of those at the very bottom and that's just a very small portion of all the dope views that I've seen so far on my mission. There will also definitely be more of these beautiful pictures to come. Washington is truly a gorgeous state filled with many of God's beautiful creations.

Also, I had my first baptism a little over a week ago! It was honestly one of the coolest experiences I've had so far on my mission. And I still am so happy for Cass and her decision. Our newest member is Cass and she was so prepared to be baptized! She already knew everything, never had a single doubt or fear, and has super strong member relationships already. She was originally supposed to leave to begin training for the Marine Corp on the 11th, which is tomorrow. But miraculously her date to leave for boot camp got moved all the way back to the 29th of November! This gives me and Elder Shepherd plenty of time to get her to go through the temple for the first time and teach her the new-member lessons before she leaves. This is just another one of God's miracles in my life and I'm so thankful for them.

During the week before this last week we had the yearly annual ward cider press, and it was so awesome. We got to chop up apples, grind them up, and press the juice out of them with hand cranked machines. And after all of that hard work we took the almost-cider and filtered anything bad out to make delicious and clean apple cider. I got to take two jugs of apple cider and it was oh so good. It truly was awesome being around all of the ward members and having a ton of fun. They're all really awesome people that take such good care of us and it's such an amazing blessing to be treated so lovingly.

We also got to carve pumpkins with the Mesplie family! They're a part member family that the other two missionaries in the Selah 2nd Ward are teaching and they were so much fun. They had two insanely crazy kids named Kennedy and Lincoln, and both are currently set to be baptized on November 12th. Lincoln's 11years old however, causing him to count as a convert baptism for the other two Elders in our ward, Elder Haws and Elder Brown. Me along with my former MTC companion, Elder Haws attempted with the little time and talent that we had to carve out a face of President Russell M. Nelson and we think that we did a great job given our lack in artistic ability. It was so fun spending time with the members of our ward though, as I stated before every single one of them are awesome and loving in their own, individualized ways.

This most recent week hasn't been nearly quite as eventful, it honestly has contained some of the first truly hard and depressing days of my mission. And I knew that these days would come, I know for a fact that every missionary has their bad days. But it still was hard and almost a nasty chore at times to go out and keep working, walking and driving to find people when it seemed like nobody ever cared to even listen to our good news. I prayed a lot about finding the people that I know God has prepared for me to help, and our many attempts at finding people still continued to be dull and seemingly pointless up until I got to talk to my family today.

My friends and family have all been so blessed this last couple of weeks and as my parents talked about everything awesome that's been happening at home I could feel the Holy Ghost. It was powerfully assuring me that no matter how hard this work may seem at times it was still God's work. And that God would bless me for his great work now and forever. It completely changed my perspective on these "bad days'' and now I welcome them. Because I know that through enduring trials faithfully I will be blessed by my Heavenly Father, and through doing so any of you reading this can be abundantly blessed as well. Because this work isn't just for me or the people that might need some help or reassurance at certain times, it's for every single one of us. And I bear my personal testimony of that.

I love and miss all of you dearly. As I have said earlier, this mission will be hard. But my desire to help others will always be greater than the trials put before me. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support, it's been so awesome to feel loved even while I'm so far away. Thank you all, I can't wait to once again write to all of you next week!

With Lots of Love,

Elder Stephen Timothy

Pictures:

-Nice View of Big Space Rock

-Us Elders and Cass at Her Baptism!

-Me and Elders Shepherd and Haws Making Cider

-Our Pumpkin Mastapiece

-Golden Hour

-House Under Siege

-Me Holding my Companion's Bad Decisions

-Sick View of Almost the Entirety of Selah

-Selfie as we Spiritually Seek People in the Dark