Well this week has been fantastic!! Well first things first, BAPTISM!!!!!!!!! Elder Jennings and I got our first baptism in our area for 3 transfers!!! I am so excited!!!
We baptized Kevin a 13 year old Bolivian. For the past month we have been walking with him to English class every week and talking with him and giving him the lessons slowly. We originally started teaching his family but his mom had to go to Switzerland for a month to work. We were planning on waiting and teaching the entire family and baptizing them all but the time was right for Kevin. It was the second visit we had with the entire family after the mother returned from working, and she started the visit off with talking about how Kevin was getting bad grades in school and how she didn't know what to do with him. We listened to her talk and Elder Jennings asked if we could say a prayer together. We then proceeded to talk about the Gift of the Holy Ghost and how it can help us make decisions in our lives and give us the guidance we need in times of difficulty.
The Mom, Norah, then asked us how he could get that. We brought up Baptism, and invited Kevin to be baptized that weekend because he had already been to church 3 times and had met the branch presidency! She liked the idea and then turned to Kevin and asked him if he wanted to be baptized. He paused then nodded with a big smile on his face! It was amazing after that, we were all super happy!
(We kind of dug ourselves a hole here though by setting a baptismal date for 3 days later...but it all turned out well in the end!)
Anyway both of his parents are Catholic, but Norah is really interested in the church and baptism and his dad, Luis, is also interested but likes his Catholic traditions a bit more. They WILL be baptized in the near future!
I got to perform the baptismal ordinance and it was such a great feeling being able to bring a soul closer to God! I plan on continuing forward with more baptisms! What wasn't a great feeling was the lukewarm water and the gasp Kevin made when he came out of the water....pues....ya... anyway it was great!! And I didn't mess up the prayer or not put him all the way under or anything like that so that was good!
Missionary work is so great!!! So last preparation day all the other Elders in my piso bought Mallorca jerseys so we went and played basketball in them today and to be honest, we looked kind of fruity all wearing the same thing.
Our original baptismal date for last Saturday with Collings fell, but I think he will be baptized sometime around the end of the month or the beginning of the next.
Aside from baptisms, our relationship with the members here is improving drastically, we got 7 lessons last week with a member present! That's a tie for Elder Jennings best ever and my all time high! Also, our relationship with less active members is improving. We went and had lunch with Lorenzo and Liz who are less active because he works on Sunday and she has to manage their young son and a less than one year old daughter. He served a mission in the Canary Islands so he knows how missionary life is. Anyway he gave us a ride back to our piso after we ate, but we had to go pick up his kid from school first. We got to ride in his car, which is something I miss...moving on, he turned on some apostate music, and it was in English but the first two songs were really dumb. The last one though was one I knew, Kids by MGMT, and that was a little apostate to be listening to...ah well.
The work here in the islands is growing so much overall, last month we broke the record number of baptisms in a month in our zone by getting 11! Already this month our zone has 4!! It is so great to be a part of this great zone! Also this week, the missionaries from the two other islands are flying in for a conference with an Area 70 one day, staying the night and having another conference with a different 70 who is part of the first quorum, AND Presidente Pace is coming out to buy us lunch because we broke the record and be there for all of the conferences! It's going to be a crazy week!!!
Well love you all lots! I hope that you all are doing well! If you have strong faith, keep going forward. If not, get strong faith and keep going forward. I exhort all of you reading this to read the Book of Mormon with real intent whether for the first time or the 100th time and pray to know it is true. If you do this I promise you a response from our Heavenly Father. I love you all and have a great week!
Con Amor,
Elder Jonson
No comments:
Post a Comment