Ammon Smith, 5-23-11

Hello family and friends,

 Thanks for such a big letter this week. I really enjoyed all the info about how everyone is doing. You didn’t say how dad was doing? I’m sure he is doing great and working a lot outside. I am so excited for Dan to go to the temple . My comp and I were just talking about the temple this morning. I read a talk that president Monson gave, the Tryons sent it to me. My companion and I miss the temple so much!! That’s good that Nathan found a woman. I didn’t really understand, is Nathan engaged to her?

 So like I said, last week was an awesome week, one of the best weeks that’s for sure. Well this week is a different story, probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest, week of my mission! Let’s just say the baptism that took place this weekend was not the easiest thing to make happen. I’ll tell you the story. It all began last week, Dékán Péter is his name. He was originally supposed to be baptized last weekend but the place where we usually have baptisms got a new manager and did not let us have the baptism there, he even said we probably won’t ever be able to. So, we had to delay his baptism for another week. That was the hardest phone call I think I have ever had to make: telling someone we couldn’t find a place for him to be baptized (I think he was just as confused as I was). This was only the beginning of all our problems. We were now put on the search to find a place for Péter to be baptized. We looked, we looked, and we looked some more and guess what…. we found, nothing! So we started looking in other cities and decided that we would have the baptism in a city about an hour away from Veszprém. We called Péter and told him that his baptism would be there and that it he would only be allowed to bring one friend because we only found 2 people to drive. He was happy we found a place for his baptism but sad it would be so far away and that he could only bring one person. It’s all we had so we had to work with it. SO that was the plan until we received a call from our mission leader and he told us he had GREAT news! he talked with some people up top and found a portable pool that we could use for the baptism so that it could be here; he said he made all the calls, that were necessary to use it, but there was just one problem… it was at a branch house on the other side of the country. Our mission leader, being as nice as he is, offered to drive and pick it up.(this part of the story is happening a day before the baptism) I called Péter right away and told him the good news. So our mission leader was getting ready to leave to pick it up when some other leaders in the church here in Hungary got involved and said that they didn’t want us using the portable pool because it was not safe. (We didn’t really understand this). So I called the mission President so he could help out, I told him the situation and he said he would make a few calls. He called me back and said that we could used the portable pool if we still had time to go and pick it up, which we didn’t. So he said if we didn’t have time for that then we should just have the baptism in the city that we planned on having it in before. (The one that was an hour away). So that’s what we planned on. So once again I called Péter and told him where it was going to be. So now on the day of the baptism we get a call for the branch house where we are going to be having the baptism with them saying that the water lines in the branch house broke and are not working! This is not a good thing because it takes about 5 hours to fill the baptismal pool. So we started to freak out a little bit. By this time many of the church leaders in Hungary got involved  trying to help out but made things more confusing. We got a call from our mission president and he told us that the leader over baptismal things in Germany is now involved and found us a place here in our own city to have the baptism. Long story a little shorter the baptism worked out at that place and it was a beautiful baptism. I sent a picture. We spoke with Péter after and told him that there was someone that really didn’t want him to be baptized. He agreed and this experience only strengthened his testimony of the importance of baptism.

So anyway my companion and I are almost bald from how stressful this week was but it’s nice to have it over and be looking forward to another baptism this weekend.

The work is going great here. My companion and I are doing wonderful and loving every second of the work.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week. I love you all so much.

Elder Smith