Baptisms!

What an exciting week this has been. Lots of things going on and tons of blessings have happened. It’s been a definite season of rewards and looking forward to the future in the work in this area.

 Spiritual: Wow! Good heavens- it happened. Two baptisms this week! So cool! The first was Gavin who is 10 years old with a slight learning disability. He is the cutest kid you can imagine. As we have been teaching him we have been helping his older brother prepare for his mission. He is turning in his papers here soon. Such a great family! This is my home away from home family and I really love them so much. Gavin’s baptism was an amazingly powerful experience. His brother got the chance to baptize him and unfortunately had to do it three times due to the hand popping up. We really love Gavin and his family a ton. That baptism was not too stressful except for the fact that, out of the blue, the brother conducting the meeting called on me to give a talk and testimony. That’s why I took improv!! I loved it! The Spirit was super strong and absolutely powerful. The second baptism that day was much more of an adventure. Laura finally got baptized! But it was not without trial and tribulation. Two days before the baptism we got a call from one of the members saying that not only did Laura’s family not have a home, but Laura was out on the street with nowhere to live. It was a crazy couple of days with lots of prayers and anxiety. Finally things got sorted out temporarily and she found a place to stay. The members were so incredible jumping in at a moment’s notice and helping her out. There are still temporal things that we have to figure out for her to find a place permanently to stay but it was truly a miracle that she did get baptized. It was amazing. The devil tried so hard to stop her from making this promise with God, but she despite a place to stay, a supportive family, temptations from the word of wisdom, and many more struggles was able to get baptized. The Spirit that was there was incredible. There was an incredible peace that came into the room after she was baptized and she after was calm, happy and finally at peace. There will be opposition that comes our way, boulders in our path and many more metaphoric hindrances to our goal, but the important thing to realize is that God will provide a way for the righteous desires of our hearts to be fulfilled. 

 Funny: This week was also exchanges. I went with Elder Irvine and we went to visit this less active. Turns out he wasn’t home. So we took a small walk around the block just seeing what we could see. We saw this man putting a Bunch of tequila into this cooler. He had a ton of alcohol. So what did we do? We talked to him about it! Our first comment was "Wow! That’s quite a stash you have there!" After proceeding to talk about his horrendous alcohol consumption habits, we progressed to talking about the gospel. I don’t think anything will come of it, but we definitely planted a seed. So now whenever he is drinking alcohol from his stash he will think of the missionaries talking to him about his drinking patterns. The key is just opening your mouth. God will put things to say into your mouth, the key is for you to open it. 

Where I am at: This ward is amazing. We have quite the diverse economic population here. We have some of the wealthiest people in the world, but also some of the people that need extreme financial help. It’s such a blessing. The ward council is awesome at identifying those who need help then progressing to help them. I do NOT want to leave this area! It’s such a good place! The work is really taking off! We have investigators coming out of the woodwork and things are really looking up. We will probably have two more baptisms by the end of the month. Things are going great! We have a Car!!!!! Our prayers were answered and we have a car. It doesn’t have a ton of miles left before its retired, but it’s got four tires and moves. We are very blessed. The weather here is getting colder. It’s starting to turn into winter. It’s crazy! The other night it got down to 40 degrees! That’s Cold!! haha Okay, yeah, Elder Black has been acclimatized. I love you all and am really loving it here! Thanks for your prayers and love.