Where are the Alligators?

Nearly two whole weeks and I still haven't seen an alligator or a hurricane. Snap dizzle!

I contacted into a young man in an apartment complex parking lot. He has a cool story. His family is from a foreign country where his dad was a big community leader here and the missionaries found and baptized him, and then a bunch of other people from that country. Then he randomly died this summer. Anyway, the son never got baptized and hadn't really ever been to church. So I found him and asked him to be baptized and he said he would. We have been teaching him and he is SO ready for this. He calls us at least once a day to check up on us and make sure that we are being good and safe. Sometimes he will even ask us to come over and teach him more. He is a very cool kid. He asks SO many deep questions and knows that it is true. One day he told us that he wasn't sure if he wanted to be baptized because he wanted to be in the same church that his girlfriend was in so that they could get married in the church. This got us all concerned (read: chastity problems) but it turns out he doesn't even have a girlfriend, he was just thinking ahead! Ha-ha, funny kid. I assured him that if he did what was right the Lord would bless him. He is so cool; he will be great in the church. Good story, one afternoon we were teaching him out on his porch about the plan of salvation. In the apartment below us a mom was screaming at her kids, someone was mowing the lawn right out front, and the cops were breaking up a drug sale/arresting people across the parking lot. Satan just won't stop when you're trying to teach the word. It is hard to pay attention in those situations but as long as we are trying our hardest it works.

When we go tracting/contacting we do this thing called Gathering, that's what President calls it. The first thing we ask is Did you know that God and Jesus Christ came to a boy named Joseph Smith? Nearly everyone says: Yeah, I’m Christian, I know all about Jesus Christ. Seriously?! I find it quite humorous. It's only after we start talking about the Book of Mormon that they decide that maybe that they "aint having none of it". It's kind of lame. We tried talking to some Hispanic ladies once; they said that we could teach them if they could teach us how to pray the rosary... in Spanish. We didn't realize how long it takes until we were well into it. And by then it was too late. It was nice to have a little break to sit down though...

If you would like to mail Lauren a letter, please contact me (her mom) for her address!