Dear family,
Once again I greet you from Garlicky Gilroy. All is well. This last week was especially fun. We sent Elder Cornaby home with a baptism.
On Easter we held the baptism of Jose Luis Resendiz. After just four short weeks of lessons, he was ready for baptism. He is was one of the most prepared investigators I have taught since teaching Dina Sanchez Pena in Redwood City. It was really fun. Elder Cornaby had never taught anyone like that before. At one point in the process, he asked me how you help investigators like this progress towards baptism. My response was, "we try not to screw it up." Luckily we didn't. It required some fasting and lots of prayer this last week, but everything went well. He had arranged his schedule so that he could be baptized Friday night. When he received his schedule on Tuesday, everything was different than he had arranged with his boss. We had to scramble to find away to solve it all. At first, it didn't look like there was a solution. Fortunately, we taught him about fasting and immediately began fasting to find a solution. His fellowshipper even joined us in the process. By the time we met with him the next day he had cleared his work schedule for Sunday. With the permission of President DeSalmones we held the baptism Easter Sunday immediately after church. It was amazing to feel the Spirit as he came up out of the water. I had never anticipated celebrating easier this way, but was happy with the outcome. Jose Luis even shared his testimony at the baptism. He told the branch how he had felt like he had known everything and everybody before. Everything was familiar. I guess that is the way the gospel is. Nothing is ever new, but only forgotten. Eventually we will all have the chance to have our memory jogged. Even Jose Luis's wife was very happy for his decision to be baptized and told us so through a phone call of gratitude.
So, this morning I received my new companion, Elder Smoot. Elder Smoot has been serving in the Morgan Hill half of the Gavilan Branch. Because of a small shortage of missionaries our areas will be combined and we will cover from San Jose to Gilroy, a distance of thirty miles. We will still be living in Gilroy, the center of the zone, but will be spreading our work throughout the entire branch boundary. Both of our areas are hopping. We are looking at a potential of six baptisms in the month of May. We are very excited for this.
We just set another baptismal date last night with the husband of a member. We had been working with the Quintero family for quite some time and were very happy that Miguel made the decision to be baptized. We will help him along the way, but he made the decision that this is the church that he wants to raise his family in. We had been working with his family since the first week I arrived in Gilroy. It was a long process of trust, dinners, spiritual thoughts, lessons, brownies, and lasagna rolls. All of these things led him to eventually trust us missionaries and accept the church. We even spent a P-day teaching the Quintero's how to make lasagna rolls. (They are kind of my specialty. When people ask what I can cook I always tell them Lasagna rolls. I have since taught quite a few members to make lasagna rolls. Yum)
I am excited for the work that awaits us. We are very pleased with the exceptional missionaries that the Lord has sent to the Morgan Hill zone. We expect to see more and more miracles. We just began a process of covenant planning that will really help us to progress our ability to baptize and see our brothers and sisters make covenants with God.
I am grateful for all of the mail that I just received at transfers. I even received a really surprising letter. I will tell you about it in December. I'm sorry, but you have to wait.
Love,
Elder Badger
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-->
<!--[endif]-->
No comments:
Post a Comment