Happy Now and Forever-After

The week ended!! Through all the trouble and wrestling we got the baptism. The baptism was definately the highlight of the week. We did it 8 at night after a birthday party and an elders quoram activity which even though was a hassle, it turned out to help. We ended up having alot of support of less-actives and even a couple investigators. The mom showed up from work and it went great! The bishop baptized him and it went better then I expected. The only thing that didnt work out was a certain leader who is always supposed to help us and didnt and then when the baptism came he claimed to have done it all himself, but hey, he can say it was him all he wants, every other person knows who it was that visited them. Tuesday we found an innactive member that was pretty interesting. She doesnt go because she cant walk or do anything basically. Cool little fact about her, she raised a puma. She had pictures with it as well as many missionaries. She raised it and had it in her house for 14 years. It never bit anybody but scared the pee out of lots of people. To say the least she never got robbed. I thought that was freakin awesome. I think i might have to raise a large cat in my house one day. The rest of the week was pretty normal. Saturday morning we had a service project. An interesting one we were asked to help with. They wanted to move an old car that had been in this spot for 7 years. The tires were half way stuck in mud and very hard to get out. My comp still cant do a whole lot of lifting so it was one of us...I am definately not that strong but with a 4 by 4 i could lift a corner of the car at a time so he could put something beneath. In the end once we lifted it we still couldnt move it. That will be for another day when we have more help. This is the last week of the transfer and we will see what happens. We also heard that we missionaries will get to participate in the re-dedication of the temple here on September 9. I am pretty excited for that along with the month prior the temple is open to all public and we have many people excited to go. Hopefully this can be a big tool for us. Something that came up a couple times this week i have been thinking about. Last night in the street a man stopped us. All of his friends were drunk and he was on his way. We started to talk to him and he asked us a question that hit me. ¨What do you have besides a white shirt a tie that I dont have? I have a son, house, car, and motorcycle. The only thing i dnt have is a woman. Is the problem me? What is it that you have that i dont?¨ i thought about it alot and really weird but I had a dream last night. It was nothing special except 2 sides of what my life could be like. On one side its alright, i have everything in the world i could want, and on the other side, I dont have everything material wise but i have a healthy family that has everything they need and we are happy, happy ever-after. The world paints happily ever-after as a dream for little kids, but we as latter-day saints should know that it is real and any person can have it. It takes work, determination, and putting off certain desires or wishes, but it brings much more joy. For me i think I already have happily for now and ever-after. Love, Elder Martino