A Baptism without a Funeral!!

So many things happened this week!  Most of them wonderful things, but a couple of scary and sad things.  Shannon came to our Book of Mormon class early and had an interview with the Bishop.  She came into the class and said she wanted to get to the temple as soon as possible.  This was Wednesday night.  So I got right on the phone and we managed to get an appointment to do a baptism for Friday night.  She really wanted to take an ancestor's name.  We had no time we could meet to work on it together and frankly very little spare time to work on it alone before Friday evening, but she gave me her sign in information and I started working on getting a name ready.  I had tried everything I knew of and had just about given up late Thursday night (about an hour past when I'm supposed to be in bed) when the Spirit prompted me to try googling her great grandmother's last name.  When I did an alternative spelling came up, which I then tried in Family Search and found a match!  She'd had her married name as her husband's first name and her maiden name spelled wrong!  So Shannon was able to be baptized for her grandmother and it was awesome! Wednesday night Odell Jackson's nephew was able to talk to the Bishop and was found worthy to baptize his uncle!  Chris was less active when we arrived.  He was the caretaker of an investigator who died before we got her baptized.  That really put the fear of God in him and he started coming back to church.  His uncle moved in with him then and he came to church with him.  It turns out he's my 12th cousin through the Ezekiel Johnson line.  Anyways Odell is amazing!  He's 68.  He is so excited to serve!

The scary thing is that our new member has had trouble with alcohol.  The good news is that the Spirit told me he needed to finish the Addiction Recovery program.  There's a member in the ward who's recently finished rehab.  We invited the 2 of them to come with us to Kingwood on Thursday night for the group meeting for the Addiction Recovery Program at the Stake Center.  They came and ate dinner with us first and it was awesome!  We are going to do it every Thursday night as long as we're here.  The sad thing is that neither of them made it to church Sunday!  We just keep inviting and praying and texting and I worry, Elder Quincy doesn't worry, but I do enough for both of us!

These pictures are all backwards.  Friday we spent a few hours getting the lattice woodwork off of Tammy's porch so that we could paint her house Saturday.

Christina, an investigator who's engaged to a member got septic pneumonia and almost died!  They put her in a medical induced coma.  The doctor told Br. Soper that she may not live through the night.  Br. Johnston went to the hospital in the middle of the night and gave her a blessing.  When we got there the next day she was improving slighty, her kidneys weren't functioning, so they planned to start her on dialysis that day.  She gradually improved all day and they didn't have to start dialysis.  yesterday she got off of the ventilator!  They are supposed to get married on July 1st and she'll be baptized on July 8th, if all goes as planned! 

Saturday,we got the Elders at 7:00 and painted until 11. We came home and changed into clothes for the baptism and went to Odell's baptism.  Elder Quincy gave the baptism talk.  We took the Sisters back with us after we all changed and painted until 4:00. It was awesome because Sonya's husband Lloyd, and she and Tammy's parents; the Allens were there working and talking with us all day.  That's Jerry Allen on the ladder by Elder Quincy.

This is Barbara Allen talking to Sister Houseman.

Elder Quincy getting ready to cover the last of the barn red.

Sweet Shannon.  Her goal is to be able to get her endowment and be sealed to her husband by the anniversary of his death; July 30th. 

These pictures are all in the wrong order.  This is the porch without the lattice work.  It seems so much bigger!

One side finished.

Can you spot the squirrel in this picture?

A new flower I spotted on our walk.

Hard working Elders. Taking down the latticework. 

The Terrenos sales office I was talking about last week.

I thought this was hilarious.  We got our tires rotated this week and these moms were holding their daughters the whole time we waited!  One of them is bigger than her mom!

Update on the Morales; Antonio got everything done and should get his Social Security card in the mail this week!  AND Ruby has been cleaning and dejunking!  I killed hundreds of cockroaches and did a lot of sweeping up and organizing things, but Ruby has been going gangbusters on cleaning and getting rid of stuff!  My sisters would be amazed!  We even started on the back porch on Saturday night!