Elder Andrew Stockton: Baptism to finish up the month!

Hello, family!

Well... lots of things happened this week! But I´ll start with the best:
We had a baptism on Saturday! It was a fantastic event. He was so ready to be baptized and to make this lifelong commitment to follow Christ. Did I already tell you that he read through the Book of Mormon in 3 weeks? (We asked him where he was reading in an appointment one day, and he said he was ´almost finished´. Turned out he had finished the whole Book of Mormon and was almost finished reading the Guía de Estudio para las Escrituras, which is like the Bible Dictionary in the Spanish Book of Mormon.)

The service was very nice. We planned it all pretty well. The only problem was, we got back late from an appointment and were only there 15 minutes before the baptism started! Ack! That´s not quite enough time. Well, it is, but... it´s more stressful. Better to be tranquilo during the baptism and be able to focus more on the significance of it.

We started with a song, then heard some talks. Then Elder Hougaard and I sung Divina Luz (Lead, Kindly Light) as a special musical number. (Surprise! More on that later.)

His son baptized him, which was great. As a result, his family, plus Arnaldo´s wife, came to church the next day for the confirmation. I hope that they will all keep coming! We all felt the Spirit!

After the service, we had refreshments and talked. Then, Elder Hougaard and I took him to the chapel and played/sung the real musical number we had prepared for him. (At the last minute before the baptism started, we realized that we had set up the baptism in the room that didn´t have the piano in it, so... we had to just sing it. But the version we had prepared involved Elder Hougaard singing and me playing the piano, and was quite nice.) He liked it.

He was confirmed yesterday in church, and today we´re going to his house to start teaching him the missionary lessons again! It´s nice to have been able to be a factor in his conversion. I´m realizing that the Lord really could do his work without us. It´s a blessing and a privilege to be able to help in the work of rescuing our brothers and sisters who don´t have the Gospel.

Other fun things that happened this week:

The other day we were talking to the Spinelli family in their business on the way home. They found out that Elder Hougaard´s birthday was a few weeks ago, and that we hadn´t done much celebrating because he didn´t know any members yet. They chastised me for not having brought him over to their house for lunch. Then we left and went home to the pench to plan. About 10 minutes later, we got a phone call from Brother Spinelli - he told us he was outside the pench and asked if we could bring him a few Books of Mormon to give away to friends. So we walked out there and that they had gone to buy us pizzas and caramels to celebrate his birthday. They also gave us some cool ´Argentina´ bandannas. I don´t know when or where I could ever wear them, but they´re nice to have anyway.

We went out to work in a fantastic Argentine storm. We got to the point where we were slogging through mud and water up to our knees. (See pictures!) It´s raining again now, actually. Pretty cool!

A few weeks ago, our kitchen sink broke. We started washing all our dishes in the laundry sink. Well, this week, our laundry sink broke. So we´re washing all our dishes in the bathtub. Time to call a plumber, methinks.