September Already

September 1, 2014

¡Hola !

What happened with the month of August?  I can´t believe it´s already September, but Happy Labor Day!! I have lots of stories to tell you guys. So transfers were this week and Hermana Rios left.  We were sad to see her go but excited to welcome a new hermana to Ñemby.  Hermana Flores is the new companion of Hna Walker.  She is from Bolivia, which is good because now we are all forced to talk in Spanish to each other.  She is the sweetest thing.  We call her Sister Flowers and she calls us her Gringas.  Ha ha, not sure if we should be offended at that or not, but she is just super loving and is always giving us hugs. 

My biggest story for the week was Juan or Paupi, is what the neighbored calls him...not exactly sure why.  Anyway,  I don´t know if you remember, but a little while back we found a less active family and the mom was just super drunk.  She still has a lot to work on, but her kids are just the sweetest little things, including Juan.  We passed by Monday and his sister told us it was his birthday on Tuesday and that he wanted to get baptized for his birthday.  So, we brought him brownies the next day and asked if that was something he wanted and he did, so we called our district leader and had him come do the interview.  We left for a second to go find the elders and we came back and Juan was gone.  He had run to a friend’s house, so we had his older sister go find him.  He came back and Elder Macias was ready to talk to him when he took off running again!  So this time Hna Thacker and I went to go find him, and he did not want to come back with us.  Turns out he was afraid of the elders.  We convinced him to come back again, but he went straight into the house and wouldn´t come out to talk to us and as we went in to find him again he was sneaking out the window and took off down the street and hopped over a fence and was gone! 

So we passed by the next day and he was a little reluctant to talk with us because he thought maybe we were going to trick him and bring the elders back again, but we finally convinced him that they were not with us.  He told us he really did want to get baptized.  Luckily the Zone leaders share a ward with us so we talked up Elder Lyon quite a bit so he wouldn´t be as scared.  We even showed him a picture.  So he agreed to let Elder Lyon do the interview and baptize him, so we scheduled the baptism for the next day.  We brought everyone to the church and the interview went smoothly, and he got changed, and we started the service. 

It was all going extremely well, but then the time came for him to get baptized and he flat out refused to get in the water and just started crying, but we knew he wanted to do it because his siblings told us he had been practicing putting his head in the water all day long.  Anyways, it was a good chunk of time trying to convince him to get in, he even got out at one point and was about to change, but turned to his mom shaking (because the water was cold) and crying and sweetly told her that he wanted to get baptized so back into the water they went.  So after about 1 hour in the water and 4 prayers later he was finally baptized!! The poor little guy, but he wanted to do it so bad.  Everyone in the room I´m sure was saying silent prayers to help him get over his fears.

Afterwards we had cake and he was all smiles!  Elder Lyon said afterwards that he was reminded of a talk by Elder Holland where he says, the only physical risk missionaries should have is pneumonia because they are in the water baptizing so much.  Ha ha, I´m positive Elder Holland didn´t mean it like that.  Anyways, after all that, he still isn´t confirmed, they left for the interior and weren´t there on Sunday, so next week.

Anyways, So I´m sending some pictures, of the baptism and of our investigators bird Tweetie!

That´s about all from me! Rohayhu!

Hermana Amy Lindsay