June 26, 2015

June 26, 2015

Well, this weekend was a huge success, we had a great week, lots of baptisms, lots of running around like crazy but everything paid off. Honestly during the week nothing really big happened... my companion and I with the APs got all the interviews done in our own area and then the rest of the week we ran around like crazy helping other people find people to baptize, doing interviews, and basically not working in our area. To throw on top of all that we had our interviews with President this past Friday and we had to plan everything really well for our huge baptismal service.

Saturday came and we were at the stake center for the stake conference sessions and to fill up the baptismal font (the stake president wanted us to fill the font up half way Saturday night, and the other half with hot water Sunday morning). My companion and I went to fill up the baptismal font but the electricity went out and so the bomba wasn’t working... which means that no water was coming out of the faucet... So with the help of our ward mission leader and the APs, we filled up the font with the reserve of water and a couple buckets. After about an hour of hard work filling the font up with buckets the electricity turned back on and the faucet started working again... which luckily for us meant that we had hot water for the next day.

Yesterday we had our stake conference and one of the best baptismal services ever! For those who haven’t been keeping up with the updates we planned a huge baptismal service called "The waters of Culturas" (in memory of the waters of Mormon) in the stake center (considering everyone would be there for stake conference). Everything went really well and we ended up have a baptismal with 15 people getting baptized! President Whitehead was there, and spoke in the service, as well as the stake President. It was such a beautiful service and President Whitehead actually baptized also (I’ll explain more about the further on in the letter). 

First off out of the those 15 baptisms 9 of them were from our ward and my companion and I help teach 8 of those 9, and I would like to write a quick description of those people we taught and baptized.

1. KEVIN: Kevin is a 10 year old kid, next door neighbor of some recent converts and strong active members. He is really good friends with the two young men from the family of recent converts and started coming to church with them. Unfortunately his Mom works ALL DAY EVERYDAY. It was almost impossible to find her to get permission to baptize Kevin, much less teach her or bring her to church. She works from 8 in the morning to 10 at night, everyday but Monday. Kevin is an only child and his dad left him when he was little, which means the Kevin does everything by himself. He gets himself to school by himself, he cooks his own food, EVERYTHING! He loves church so much and actually came and asked us when he could get baptized, and after getting permission from his mom he got baptized this Sunday and was very content and happy.

2. MERCEDES: Mercedes is great, she is a single mom with 2 kids who no longer live with her. She fell in love with the church since the first time she went. She has been attending a Christian church for the last 2 years, but really wasn’t in love. We found her in the street offering service to her (helping her carry a shelf up the stairs into her room) and after coming to church she feel in love and was so excited to be baptized. She is really awesome and it is funny how the missionaries had never found her before because she is our neighbor! haha.

3. HERNANDEZ REYES FAMILY: This family is INCREDEBLE!!! I love this family so much. This is the family of 6 that came to the visitors center last week. The whole family was baptized together the dad (Christian) the mom (Patricia) the 15 year old son (Christian) the 13 year old daughter (Ximena) the 12 year old son (Ricardo) and the 9 year old daughter (Camila). We taught this family together with the APs and the APs for a lesson invited President and Sister Whitehead to come along and get to know the family. The family fell in love with President, and President with the family. Each member of the family asked a different Elder to baptize them (Me, my companion, Elder Adams and Elder Medina) and the dad of the family asked President if he would baptize him. Right before the baptism President Whitehead asked our bishop what he thought about the 9 new members he was about to have in his ward, and he responded that he was ecstatic, and told President about how special this family is. President responded "I know bishop, I’m about to baptize the next bishop in your ward". This family is amazing! They have such strong testimonies and the 2 sons want to serve missions! I got the opportunity to baptize Christian (the 15 year old son) and it was such an amazing experience. After the baptism they invited us over to their house and we had some AMAZING tacos al pastor. 

Overall the baptismal service was a huge success, it was a beautiful service, President sent us a text saying "What a beautiful service and day. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of it." Overall yesterday was one of the best days of my mission. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Adams

Photos:

1. Kevin with my companion, President and I.

2. The family with the missionaries and Telma (someone from the ward who has helped them a lot)

3. The huge service (everyone who was in white)

4. Everyone who was baptized in our ward (minus Kevin... don’t know where he was...)