Monday, June 16, 2014

93rd Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Patchogue, New York

Taylor was Baptized!!    written June 16, 2014

There were two big events this week. The first one was on Wednesday. A member of the seventy, Elder Nielson, came to visit our mission this last week. So we had a big multi-zone conference on Wednesday with him and his wife. It was an all day event, we left at 8 and didn't get home until 7. Granted, that included stopping at Taco Bell for dinner on the way home. A nice end to a sweet meeting.

He talked about a lot of different things. He had stuff prepared, but apparently he just went off the cuff on a lot of things. He gave us a talk, his wife gave a talk, President and Sister Calderwood both talked, then we had lunch, then returned for like a group workshop by all four of them. It was all really good, I really enjoyed it. There were two musical numbers and I accompanied for both of them. Sister Franklin sang If You Could Hie to Kolob and Elder Hooper played a cool arrangement of Redeemer of Israel on the violin. Both turned out really well.

That night we taught English classes. After the classes were over, Sister Usma, from our branch, came and talked with us. We had a Father's Day party coming up on Friday and she wanted us involved in some of the activities. She wanted us to perform a Father's Day monologue. She showed us a video of these two people in a classroom and one of them is pretending to be a father and he is lip-syncing to a Spanish monologue. We thought it was going to be a comedy of some sort, but it was really depressing about how the father always has to play the bad guy and enforce all the punishments and how he's so sad about it. It was terrible. So we told her we'd do it, but we want a different monologue. We said we'd go look for one on our own.

We hit up the library the next day. There's nothing. At least that we could find. No Father's Day monologues, we couldn't even find a Father's Day skit. So I decided that I'd just write my own. How hard could it be? I started writing some ideas and jokes down and I thought I had a pretty could skit. That night, we visited a less active, Janet, and I read her my script to see what she thought. She was brutally honest and told me that it really wasn't very good. I was a little offended, but I took her ideas. That night, I looked over it again and I realized that she was right. It just wasn't put together very well. So I went back to the drawing board with her ideas in mind. And it actually turned out really well. It involved a brother and a sister debating what they should do for their dad for Father's Day. They can't think of anything and their mother tells them that their dad will be here soon, so they better keep thinking. Then the dad comes in and they admit that they can't think of anything to do for him. He helps them come up with some ideas, but they still can't settle on anything. In the end he tells them that the best Father's Day gift is having them as his kids and they all go off to play soccer in the park. I asked the sister missionaries to help us out and Elder Mendez and I played the other two parts. It turned out really well, people loved it. We got a recording of it, but it missed the first two minutes or so. I'll send it when I get a chance.

The last big event for the week was Taylor's baptism on Sunday. He was baptized after church and the whole branch was there for it. There are a bunch of college kids who have moved to New York for the summer to sell pest control. Taylor managed to get a job selling it with them, so he knows a bunch of them. Some 15 of these guys he works with showed up for his baptism. It was so cool to see all these people come out to support him. Most of the program was in English so that he could understand it. His Spanish is getting a lot better, but the English was nice because it was all meant for him. Afterwards, we had nachos and fruit salad for refreshments. That's my kind of refreshments. I've never had nachos after a baptism before, but that needs to be a more common thing.

And that's the tale for the week. It was a good week. The next step is getting Taylor confirmed with the gift of the Holy Ghost next week and then to get him to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. Here's to another good week of adventures!

Love,    Elder Erickson

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