Music of the Night

So my comp and I decided pick some black berries across the street while our investigator was being interviewed for his baptism. Adventure time. That’s what we call it. While we were picking the fruity deliciousness I heard a little voice across the small road that said, “Elder Merrill, can we pick some berries with you?”
“Come on up Peyton!” I said with a smile but then realized there were thorns that would cut her bare feet. “Actually I’ll just pick you some good ones. Your feet will get hurt if you come up here…”
“Ok, well… pick a lot for me,”
“Ok but I might eat them all first…”
“Come on Elder Miral… that’s not fair” as she likes to pronounce it.

We were done picking the small handful of black berries and made our way down the little hill. I held out my hand and divvied out the fruitful wages to the six years old and under club. While we were walking back to the church, the sun was just setting and Peyton looked up at me with a cute smile and said, “ahh, it can’t get better than walking with a missionary and eating black berries.” And that right there…. was my awakening. It put some things back in perspective for me. It hit me pretty hard. Our investigator was baptized the next day.

This week was full of teaching too many lessons for our investigator ha. We combined a couple lessons into each appointment to make his desired deadline of his Saturday baptism. We brought members over to the Petersen’s home, who live in the Snohomish ward that he’s known for years. Everyone loves him. He’s a nice, tall, non social butterfly, kind of guy. The kind that smiles at everything and probably doesn’t like being hugged. Maybe he just needs to be hugged. I don’t know. His baptism was short and sweet. The spirit was strong and didn’t skip a beat. The Petersen boy, Marsall, was dressed in white and performed the deed. It was nice. My comp and I (I like saying comp now because I still can’t get natural at calling Mike Elder Draper… but still haven’t messed that up even when we’re just kicking it together. so… good for me for doing that.) So… yeah anyways: Comp. Me. Piano. While the font was being filled we just fiddled around on the keyboard and created some beautiful music. I think it’ll go places. We decided for every baptism we have together we’ll write a new song and play it at the end while everyone is leaving.

Serenity is deliverance,


Elder Trent Jay Merrill