June 16- Rum French Toast. Wait......not again!

Well I don't know what to write about this week. There has not been anything that has been new or very exciting happen. We talked to a lot of people this week and made a return appointment. But it is for the spanish sisters. It is tough, all of the investigators that we find are for different wards. All of the investigators that we are teaching, except Autumn, should be taught by other missionaries. However our ward members want us to teach them instead of the missionaries that are supposed to. They recognize that we are really good teachers,and we love that, but it puts us in an awkward position. We can continue to teach them but we can't ever help them progress and be baptized. Elder Metcalfe and I decided that we were going to fix the problem and make everything right. Now the only problem was we didn't want to offend any of the members by suddenly switching missionaries on their friends and family. We decided to bring it up to the bishop at ward council and seek his advice on how we can hand off our investigators smoothly and not get any one mad. He told us that he wants us to continue to teach them and not hand them off. So we are back a square one STILL trying to find people that WE can teach and baptize. 

Actually a funny thing happened a week or so ago. I really don't know what the deal is with my companions and rum. Somehow they just gravitate toward each other. Elder Metcalfe really wanted to make some french toast. So one day he decided to go through our kitchen to see if we had all the ingredients for his special recipe. He found bread, eggs, cinnamon and sugar, the essentials. As he finished his search, he said that they only thing he now needed was rum extract. "Rum Extract?" I responded. Then I went on and told him of my experience of Elder Wilkinson eating the rum cake. He said that it was funny, and he then told me about how his dad put real rum in their french toast. "Of course," he explained, "that when you cook it, the alcohol cooks out." Now fast forward to a few nights later when we are sitting at dinner with some members in our ward and the topic came up again. They members just so happened to have the rum extract that Elder Metcalfe was looking for. The next morning, Elder Metcalfe proudly made his fathers famous french toast. He didn't want any so he just made some for me. There is the first red flag. I took one bit, and all of the sudden I tasted alcohol. I said to my self that is funny, this doesn't have any alcohol in it. Then I asked how much of the rum extract Elder Metcalfe had used. He said that used a few drops, but he had finished the rest of the bottle that was at least 1/3 of  the way full. Not to mention the french toast was not cooked all the way. I ate four slices of french toast and could not eat any more. So Elder Metcalfe decided he would finish off the rest. He said "Wow, this tastes just as good as when my dad had made it with real rum. It is like you can taste the alcohol and everything." To make a long story short I decided I would look at the bottle and to our surprise rum extract is 35% alcohol. I was surprised. The good thing is that nothing happened to either one of us. No one got "drunk" or couldn't ride our bikes, but I just thought it was funny. I didn't think that another rum story would come up. Who knows what will happen next?

Elder Paget