Hola Vosotros,
So this week has been pretty good. After the last visitation of our President Camarillo, things have been going better. Yeah at first my companion didn't talk to me at all... for about three days to be exact. But now things are going really well. We are talking and having fun again... but now we are working harder which is pretty awesome.
So this week we had a pretty sweet experience that I would like to share with you all. Hermano Gerardo got baptized! Yeah, yeah! He is so awesome and has grown so much in the gospel and in his life! He said that he has seen and felt so many blessings in his life thanks to the message and the lecciones [lessons] we have been sharing with him these past weeks. It's amazing to see how much he has grown. I love him... I really just feel privileged to have been able to help him make this covenant with God. He was prepared and I know that he will continue to grow and be a strong member in the Church.
So this week has been pretty good. After the last visitation of our President Camarillo, things have been going better. Yeah at first my companion didn't talk to me at all... for about three days to be exact. But now things are going really well. We are talking and having fun again... but now we are working harder which is pretty awesome.
So this week we had a pretty sweet experience that I would like to share with you all. Hermano Gerardo got baptized! Yeah, yeah! He is so awesome and has grown so much in the gospel and in his life! He said that he has seen and felt so many blessings in his life thanks to the message and the lecciones [lessons] we have been sharing with him these past weeks. It's amazing to see how much he has grown. I love him... I really just feel privileged to have been able to help him make this covenant with God. He was prepared and I know that he will continue to grow and be a strong member in the Church.
Well, we had the baptism on Friday and planned to start the program at 6 o'clock. Here the timing for dinner and everything is a little different so we didn't think that 6 would be such a problem. We invited about every person in the ward to come to the baptism. Well we knew that we had to get there early to set everything up and to fill the font so we planned to be there about 2 hours early to get everything ready. Well the night before we got a call saying that it was our turn to have an interview with President Camarillo and to be there by 3:30. Well we scrambled to find someone to fill up the font for us and then had to get him the keys to the font and show him how fill it up for us. Well we got to the interviews right on time but we had to wait for the president to arrive at 4 to start the interviews. El Presidente me planchó muy duro y mi compañero tambien... pero ya ni modo. [The president grilled me and my companion hard... but it doesn't matter] We didn't get back to the church until 5. We got there and the Hermano that we asked to fill up the font just barely got there and there was only about 3 inches of water filled up in the font. Oh great! Plus, to have hot water in the church we had to go light the water boilers outside... the first one we lit with out much trouble but the 2nd one wouldn't lite. We were trying to lite this boiler for about 15 minutes and finally got it to lite up. After lighting the water boilers we ran to start filling the font. Well the water would run for about 3-5 minutes in hot water and then would turn cold again. We would wait for about 10-15 minutes for the water to heat up again and then run the hot water again for 3-5 minutes. It was terrible and took forever! By the time 6 o'clock came around we weren't even near to be being ready but the good thing was is that nobody showed up... kind of sad right? Yeah well we kept filling the font up and also noticed that it was super dooper dirty! Nobody had cleaned it from the last baptism... ¿Qué pues? So, I being in my suit and tie, rolled up my pants and jumped in the water and started cleaning all the walls with a mop and cleaner to make it almost presentable. Well once we cleaned up pretty nice we realized that the water looked terrible. The water looked like sewer water, super super green. We decided that we needed to get water dye to make the water look presentable for the Baptism. Hurrying... I didn't have time to put on my socks so I hurried and put on my shoes and Elder Reyes and I ran to tell our investigador and his mother (who showed up at 5:20 to the baptism) that we would return shortly we just had to go pick something up. We sprinted as fast as we could to the nearest store and asked them if they had this agua dye. The said no so we ran to the next nearest store... no again.... this store told us that a dulceria (candy shop) selled this kind of dye... running as fast as we could we bought the dye and some candy for our Investigador and his mom and ran as fast as we could back to the church. Let's just say we got some super strange looks while 2 missionaries in suits ran down the street at full speed.... one of which being a gringo without socks. Anyways we got back to the church right as people started showing up to the baptism. We gave the candy to our investigador and put the agua dye in the water to make it actually look blue. It worked and covered a lot of the dirt that was in the water. Well at 7 o'clock we only had about 1/4 of the font filled up with warm water... but decided we needed to start. So we put it on full blast and started the meeting. We asked our district leader (Elder Mera) to continue checking on the water to stop it when it was filled up. Well we started the meeting but we were getting close to the time to start the baptism ordanance but the font still wasn't filled up... so let's just say I decided to pull out a musical number and sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" to fill up more time... seemed to be a fitting hymn due to the fact that we needed the help of our Heavenly Father to fill up the font in that same hour. Well I sang it and in the middle of the last verse I heard the water shut off... affirming that the font was ready for the baptism. Whew. We then went in (Hermano Gerardo and I) into the baptismal font. He can't walk very well and uses a wheel chair so it took a little while to get him down into the font. Well we sat him down in a chair in the baptismal font so that I could baptize him without his legs hurting. Well I baptized him twice because the first time his foot came out of the water... the second time was really close but we achieved to keep all of his body under water. We then got out of the font and went to change. While we were in the bathroom I asked Heramno Gerardo this "Cómo se siente?" and he responded "Con mucho frio, esta agua estaba muy frio." This translates over like this... "How do you feel?" and he responded "I'm super cold, that water was freezing." Well that wasn't necesarilly the response that I was looking for but its okay. He then told me that he feels really good and he felt that God was happy for him... there's that answer I was looking for! He then said Elder Summers look at my foot. I saw his foot and he had a cut on part of his foot and his big toe... it wasn't bleeding but just was one of those cuts. He said it didn't hurt and didn't even notice it... we're pretty sure he cut it on the chair. Well we also forgot to bring towels so I gave Hermano Gerardo an extra pair of baptism pants that I brought to dry himself off with and I used good old paper towels. Well during the time we were changing the rest of the people were going to watch a movie that my companion picked out... well this movie turned out to only be 4 minutes long and we were in the bathroom for about 30-40 minutes. So they all sang hymns waiting for us to return. Well we finished up the program with some spiritual thoughts from a member from the Bishopric and ended on a spiritual note in the baptism. Hermano Gerardo came to church and Elder Reyes confermed him in the Sacrament Meeting. Yeah soo this baptism didn't turn out exactly how we planned or how we were hopeing for but it was a baptism and our Hermano Gerardo made a covenant with the Lord. Pretty sure this experience deserves a saying often used by my Dad... "Nailed it".
Love you all,
Elder Summers
Love you all,
Elder Summers