Spiritual Time Bombs

Family!

We had a great Fourth of July! All of the fireworks and explosions have left me thinking about "Spiritual Time Bombs", but I'll get there in a moment.

So the family we were with on the fourth was the Roberts family. They are here for Brother Roberts to attend Palmer University of Chiropractic. They have 4 little little kids and they both served missions, so we go over often for dinner. They are so great!

We had a mandate from the mission president to have the car parked by 6pm and from there we could go to appointments or be with members (not investigators) until 10pm, so the Roberts invited us and the other elders to come over and be with them! It was so much fun. We played ladder ball (a game where you throw two golf balls attached with a rope at a ladder apparatus to try and score points) and ate gluten free brownies etc etc. Sister Roberts lit off all of the fireworks from there since we aren't allowed to touch them...:) haha There are so many more legal fireworks here than there are in California! It was amazing! It's cause everything is so much more green and wet here, so fire danger is practically zero.

So now for the important part.

There was a missionary who gave a training in a recent district meeting who talked about how "planting seeds" just seems so cliche, but he quoted Elder Neal A. Maxwell and told us that instead, we should plant "Spiritual Time Bombs"! I like that a lot more.

Well, one exploded this week that has been ticking for nearly 3 years.

Do you remember Dave? He is the one that has just had to get married to get baptized. He was living with a member and they had all these problems with her divorce papers yada yada yada... they have pictures of the temple in their house and all that good stuff. Remember him? I have talked about him in an email before, but it was a long time ago.

Well anyway, Dave texted us Wednesday morning at around 7 20. We haven't talked to him in a week or so. His text message read, "I need to get baptized asap. I'm at work right now, so just call me later."

I pulled the phone off the charger and yelled out to Elder Weilenmann, who was in the kitchen making breakfast. "Elder! You are never going to believe this!" I walked into the other room and read aloud the text message to him. His back remained turned. He grunted at me. We had had a few experiences where we weren't sure how to help Dave, and we had had some back and forth with him, so I was pretty surprised that Elder Weilenmann didn't respond more enthusiastically.

I texted back to Dave and set down the phone and got into the shower. During companionship study, about an hour later, Elder Weilenmann said, "Sorry I didn't react more when you told me about Dave. I honestly didn't believe you and I thought you were trying to pull a prank on me. This is amazing!"

Like I would pull a prank like that. Ha! How rude would that be! :)

But we called Dave later that evening and he told us that ever since Kassi has moved out (about a month ago due to family stuff back in California), he has had to deal with a lot more issues. He has been struggling with sticking up for his beliefs and everything. This last week, there was a family party where there was alcohol involved, and Dave said that rather than being tempted, he just took his cousins out to the driving range. He mentioned that experiences like that have lead him to be ready for baptism at this time. "I've waited years for the perfect day. I just need to get this done." He said.

He's gonna explode this weekend! Saturday night he is getting baptized! We've seen more amazing and crazy miracles here than ever before on my mission! It has been such a joy to be serving in this area. I love it here:)

That's it for this week! Go light some spiritual time bombs!

Love,

Elder Brown