Thank you for all your individual words of encouragement, it has blessed my heart to hear from all of you. I'm glad you are all having such momentous events in your lives!
We had 2 baptisms Saturday! It was an amazing thing to witness and Sister Stumm and I are so overjoyed that we were there to help Jacob and Brian be baptized. I truly feel in awe of these baptisms. Its still sinking in that "did I actually bring joy into someone's life?"
I know its rare to be able to bring others to baptism so quickly. I know that it wasn't just the missionaries and the spirit that helped these baptisms along. I remind myself that its taken an entire ward about 8 years to help Brian be baptized. He was the investigator that agreed to baptism in the first lesson we taught my first week. He has been going to the ward on and off for the past 6-7 years. It was through the examples and the invitations of members along with many missionaries that helped him have a desire to learn and the spirit confirmed this is the fulness of Jesus Christ's Gospel. He was in tears almost all of the Baptism. He had a Mason buddy of his there, glad I was paying attention because he had his phone out about to take a picture of the actual baptism so I told him nicely to not take pictures
Jacob is a 17 year old that through 2 of his friends, one being a convert, invited him to church and he came to see the joy and love of the members for him as he kept coming. He and his brother are first generation Chinese American in his family. His home life is tough, his mom eventually warmed up the his baptism and the one Chinese speaking Elders came and are planning on seeing her. Anyway. He is so strong in the spirit, he has faced a lot of challenges he had to give up a relationship over joining the church. He is a huge inspiration to me in being built on a firm foundation. Though the baptism was not as firm as we were planning on.
It took 2 minutes to baptize him. It felt like an eternity. Alex, the member his same age that invited him to church, was baptizing him and it was his first time. So everything is going fine Alex said the blessing perfect then he dunks Jacob in the water, but because Jacob is a bit bigger then Alex, he doesn't go all the way in and he loses his balance and the both fall. the second time, when he dunks him Alex holds him there and looks up to one of the witnesses which is his dad and his dad shakes his head "didn't fully immerse" so alex pushes him down further and Jacob is flailing because he needs air. Then the 3rd time was the same as the first, got off balanced again and more holding Jacob underwater for long periods of time, which leads to flailing and possibly head a couple time. Finally they get Jacob on his kness and he was fully baptized.
Oh and during all of this, the new Mission President, President Taylor and his Wife were there. Yeah they just got off the plane about 4 hours before coming to the baptism. So of course that was nice.
Got to go I love all of you ALL OF YOU.
Keep moving Forward, Love Sister Baker
1st- Sister Stumm, Brian, Sister Baker
2nd- Sister Baker & Sister Stumm in front of Dallas Temple
3rd- Jacob's mom, Jacob, friend sho almost drowned Jacob, Sister Baker, Sister Stumm
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