Week 78

By George!

Patrick Thornton

Dec 16 at 10:21 AM

Good morning ladies and gents,

First off, I received a letter from mom last week I believe and...I think that was it...maybe...gees, I can't remember that long ago.  Yet...it feels like yesterday....a paradox we have here :)

Also, for dad.  Yes, we have a couple of baptisms planned for January.  Hopefully, they happen.  Satan's been working really hard on people...pretty much all our investigators are experiencing some sort of crazy opposition...There is 1 investigator we have who wants to baptized, loves the Book of Mormon, is awesome, and wants to get married to her fiance who's a member.  Sounds good so far, right??  Well, let's continue...they go to the courthouse to get a marriage license all on their own and when they get there...they learn that his passport is expired...aka...they can't get a marriage license.  They don't have a lot of money, so now they have to figure out a way to renew his passport.  Who knows when that will be able to happen because sending things to Micronesia takes a long time, and if they choose to use the embassy up in New York, it cost more money.  So frustrating.  I'm glad that y'all are seeing success there in your ward.  That's always good.  :)

Sounds also like y'all have been having real winter...lucky...it's pretty cold here in the mornings...for North Carolina I guess...so that's always fun when we run, but it's supposed to be in the 60s or something this week...that's disgusting. 

Let's see...oh, the temple on Saturday!  Can I just say, amazing??!?!?  It was so great to see them again.  I love them so much.  So we drove up to Holly Springs Saturday morning, just south of Apex where the temple is and we switched Elder Bagley for Elder Moses.  Then Elder Moses and I went to the temple.  We get there about 10 minutes before guests were supposed to arrive...and Elder Moses realizes that he doesn't have his temple recommend.  So we have to high tail it back to Holly Springs in order to only be a little bit late.  We get there again, and are running through the parking lot when we see one of the members of the Morehead City Ward.  He says we're not late ;)  So, we slow down.  Everything was a little behind, so that was good.  We got to see and talk to a few of the members from Morehead City and catch up with them.  It was great.  I'll have to get pictures for you, but Elder Moses has them on his camera...The Sealing was amazing though.  They look so great together.  First sealing ever...good stuff.  After the sealing, everyone went up to congratulate them and I gave Stephen the biggest bear hug in the history of biggest bear hugs...so big it made grizzly bears in Alaska jealous.  And then we got to Courtney and she said in a dismayed tone of voice "I can't hug you :("  So I gave her a mean hand shake :)  It was great to see them again.

Then that night we had the ward Christmas party.  That went pretty well. 

President and Sister Bernhisel came on exchange with us (ie. came to teach a couple lessons with us) last week too.  That went really well.  I love them :)

Okay, do I have a miracle story for y'all.  Please sit back and enjoy the popcorn.  Okay...So We didn't fill up with gas at all when we drove up to Raleigh and back. No big deal.  We made it. 

End of story...

Just kidding, if that was the end of the story that would have been a worthless popcorn opportunity...

Okay, so to continue...what day usually follows Saturday.  Sunday...Who's name is 2nd largest on our name badge...Jesus Christ.  What should we not do anyways, but especially as representatives of Jesus Christ on Sunday...buy Gas.  Well, good, because church isn't very far away...dunh dunh DUNH!!!!!  Guess what, we had forgotten that we have to drive to Lumberton 26 miles away to do an interview...our estimated range left on the car...20 miles...hmmm...uh oh...So, we ask a member if they have any gas that we could use so we don't have to buy gas on Sunday. They have a little.  We put it in...check the range...20 miles...oh boy.  She had asked another member down the street if they had some ...they had a little...we go there, and as he is putting the gas in, we dump it down the side of the car because of the new car safety guard in the gas intake place (I'm not a car person ok?! Give me a break :) I don't know car thing names)  So, we figure out a way to get the rest of what he has in the car.  Now, we are already going to be late to the interview and I don't want to have to go try and figure out what other members have gas for us to use...so, I turn on the car, its says 55 then 60.  I'm like, Elder Bagley, let's go.  We're going for it.  We leave for Lumberton...part way there, I ask Elder Bagley to say a prayer.  He does.  I feel calm and confident that everything we be alright.  I know we didn't plan ahead as well as we should, but we did what we could to try to rectify the situation without breaking the sabbath (not a good idea to do also right before you give an interview where you ask them about keeping the sabbath day holy).  I trust that Heavenly Father will reward the trial of our faith.  We drive about 10 miles or so, with no change in range...I'm slightly afraid it's not registering correctly.  Then, believe it or not...it goes up to 65...what!?!?!? How does that happen.  It starts at 60...then 10 miles later it bumps up to 65.  We drive the 20 miles to Lumberton and it ends at 55 when we get to Lumberton.  Wow...miracle continues.  We drive home and again, it ends on 40 after a 26 mile trip.  We traveled almost 50 miles on the range of 20 miles...how you might ask...God I will respond.  Then, the day's not over yet.  We get a text and we have to go help this lady move...we do...I can't tell you how conservative on acceleration and neutral-using I am at this point.  We help her move and then we have to drive another 20 miles round trip to a lesson that night.  Our thing says 25.  We should be good.  But then we get stuck in traffic...Yep, there goes some more gas...We get to our lesson...and ...

we get home...with less than 5 miles left on the car...and then this morning we made it to the gas station.  This was such an incredible miracle that when we got home, we knelt in prayer to thank our Heavenly Father for watching over us and keeping safe.  I love my Father and His Son, and They love us.

Love,

Elder Thornton