Elder Jordi Kloosterboer: Week 97: Bitten

Baptismal picture (Elder Roundy, Clarence, Gary, me)

Monday, September 25, 2017

I got bitten by a dog yesterday! It was crazy and I couldn't think straight for a bit! Luckily, I had my suit coat on and that didn’t tear and only my first layer of my skin came off. So I am fine. It was a stressful day, though. We were driving in the morning helping people wake up. We had to fill up the font during church and make sure it was hot enough. We both gave talks. (Which went very well, actually.) We had to change some things on the program for the baptism because some of the people couldn’t make it to church or to the baptism. Then we had to print it all off. But it was all good.

We had the baptism and it was great haha. It took a few times for us both. Elder Roundy baptized Clarence and I baptized Gary. I ended up getting Gary to sit on the ground and baptize him that way. Next time I know to fill up the water much more when baptizing someone who may have difficulty. Thank goodness for the help of the temple elders, though. We had yummy cake afterward.

Earlier in the week, we were walking around a neighborhood of townhouses looking for a less active and some kids started talking to us. They were 7 and 9. We asked them if they could introduce us to their mom and then we taught them the next day. They want to be baptized. Also, we found out the mom, Wendy, is one of our member’s Sister in law. So that is cool! They were going to come to church, but the mom woke up to late and then decided it was too late to get ready. Shame, her daughter and her friend wanted to come.

Yeah, there were a bunch of families in that neighborhood and we started reading the Book of Mormon with some of the children’s friends. They wanted the book to read, too. Dominique, the daughter actually brought the Book of Mormon to school to read. That is awesome!

Elder Whipple and Elder Wilson, the Zone Leaders, both came to our area to do exchanges. It was pretty fun. Elder Whipple went with me. He was my companion in the MTC! We talked to this one guy named Jackson and he was totally opposed to organized religion (it seems a lot of people are) but towards the end of us talking and him opening up (he has a lot of faith promoting experiences), he said that he and his wife were actually talking about finding a church especially for the children. We had explained that the church is there to help families be taught. So we had set up an appointment for today, but they weren’t there, so we will have to go back.

The more I talk to people and their confusion is clear, the more I know the church is of God. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only church set up by God through men. All the others are set up just by men. That is why a lot of people are not liking organized religion, because they haven’t been apart of the actually
organization that belongs to God! Crazy!

Oh yeah, we had some crazy storms on Wednesday! It was really hot that day and The was a lot of lightning, but no thunder... or rain. So that was weird. Apparently it rained in the quad cities where it was though. Moline, Rock Island, Bettendorf, Davenport are the quad cities. 2 in Illinois and 2 in Iowa.The lightning got very bright!

This week we are going up to Naperville again to New Missionary Training. We also have General Conference which I am excited about.

Love,
Elder Kloosterboer