Mission Memories -- Port Charlotte -- Sister Wilson: Part Five

I spent two hours working on this blog post and was literally on the last sentence when Mom and Lisa got home from the doctor's office.  So I saved it and put Dragon (voice activated software) to sleep and went in the other room to talk to them.  When I came back, the microphone was on and my entire blog entry was erased, replaced by some gobbledygook that unfortunately was saved in replacement of all my work because blogger automatically saves every few seconds.  :-(

So now I have to start all over!  Needless to say I'm not too pleased right now.

Okay let's try this again.

This is a member family that fed us regularly. Sister O -- I'm deliberately using only one name on all of my mission memories to protect the innocent -- was a single mom with two boys.  A 16-year-old boy named Jeff and a younger boy whose name escapes me, who was about 11 or 12.

As missionaries, we always encouraged the members to invite their friends to hear the discussions.  Which unfortunately rarely happened.  You can imagine how pleasantly surprised we were when Jeff, the 16-year-old, told us he had a couple of friends who wanted to hear the gospel.

So, we started teaching his friend Nick.

Nick, Jeff, and ?

you've gotta love the guns and roses and Metallica T-shirts!

I can't remember the second friend's name :-(.  For some reason, it seems like we taught them separately.

Jeff was always present at the discussions.  Which was nice because you always want a member there if possible, to contribute to the discussion and fellowship the investigator.

Nick was very receptive to the Gospel and committed to baptism.  Jeff, being a priest, was able to perform the baptism.

I seem to be the only one happy about the occasion :-)

Sister Stone, Nick, Jeff, Sister Wilson

I don't remember what was wrong with Jeff's knee.

This picture looks like it's at the church so perhaps we taught a discussion that day?

Nick and Jeff waiting for the baptism

they look a little happier about the baptism here :-)

this was at Jeff's house.  Probably after a discussion.  Looks like we are just about to leave.

the lady in the chair is the mother of one of the two boys behind her.  I'm not sure if it's Nick's mom or the boy whose name fails me. I'm thinking it was the latter.  This was probably another discussion.  I can't remember if the mother sat in on the discussion or not.

It seems like this might have been after Nick's baptism.  I can't remember what happened with the boy in the Metallica shirt. I know that we taught him, but I don't know if we finished the discussions or if he was baptized.  I don't think he was baptized.

my 22nd birthday!  It looks like I got a wallet, a VHS tape from home, and of course the Stone & Wilson license plate from Sister Wilson.

Wasn't that sweet of Sister Wilson to decorate our apartment for my birthday?

notice the picture of Duke and Panda on the door?  :-)

As I mentioned before, the numbers on the wall were our baptism goals.

Notice the certificate sitting on the couch?  That was probably one of our awards for memorizing scriptures.  In the Florida Tampa Mission we were given groups of 40 scriptures to memorize.  And when we completed those, we were given a certificate.

There were four groups of 40 scriptures each.  The first is called lamplighter.  I think pretty much every missionary got that one.

The second group of 40 scriptures was called fisher of men.  The third was called harvester of souls.  And the fourth was called son/daughter of Helaman.

As you progressed from lamplighter to daughter of Helaman the Scriptures got progressively longer and harder to memorize. For instance, just one of the 40 Scriptures that we had to memorize for daughter of Helaman was all 13 articles of faith.

I don't think very many missionaries completed the son/daughter of Helaman.  Although, you will be pleased to know that I did become a daughter of Helaman!  :-) I think I received my certificate at the mission home the night before I flew back home at the end of my mission.

Often, when we went tracting -- when we weren't talking about the Elders :-) -- we were memorizing scriptures.  We would take a few pages from the packet with us to memorize in between doors.

this must have been after a DA at Sister O's house.  I don't know why we were helping them to put the Christmas tree up.  We should have been out working!  But it looks like we were having a good time.

I'm not sure if this was before or after my birthday -- but I'm guessing before.

we must have had a DA at Sister O's house on my birthday.  This is me with a cake that she got me.

Notice Nick in the background.  I think that button I'm wearing played happy birthday.  If I remember correctly.

Sister O. giving me my cake to blow out the candles.  Notice the APG on my lap :-) That thing was never far from me.

in full birthday attire complete with party hat and noisemaker thing -- I forget what those are called.

same picture as above?

looks like we're having fun :-)

okay, now that you've seen all the pictures, let me tell you the rest of the story.

I think it was for my birthday, I'm not exactly sure, but one day as we were leaving Sister O's house, Jeff presented me with a wrapped gift.  I was surprised and caught off guard and somewhat uneasy.  I didn't really want to accept the gift but also didn't want to offend him. So I just thanked him and we left.

Receiving a gift from a 16-year-old boy was awkward enough. After opening the gift, which was a gold necklace, it was obvious that Jeff had a crush on me.

I'm sure looking back, there were plenty of signs but, at the time, I was very naïve.  I had no idea that this 16-year-old boy had a crush on me. Although you can't really blame the poor kid :-) I was actually quite flattered.  But it did cause me a lot of undue stress.

Anyway -- I was in a conundrum, what should I do?  Thankfully I had Sister Wilson, to help me.

She was much older :-), and more experienced when it came to dealing with men/boys.

I hate being in predicaments -- so after discussing the situation with Sister Wilson we decided the best thing to do would be to tell him I can't accept it and give it back.

 Which is what I did.  Unfortunately, the poor boy didn't take it well, and ended up throwing the necklace back at me through my open driver's side window as I drove away.

Let me just say that by the end of my mission I became quite proficient at rejecting men :-)

I have a couple more stories on that subject that I will tell in subsequent posts. So stay tuned!

I was hoping to get two posts done today but since I had to do this one twice, it took me all day!  :-(