Wonderful Baptisms!

January 28, 2013

Hello, family! It was nice to read your emails today! It seems like you´re all doing marvelously! I also took a few minutes to review old photos that you all sent to me, which was fun! I think I´ll print a couple out.

Elder Wing and I got to enjoy some of ´the fruit´ of missionary work last Saturday when [a young man we've been teaching] got baptized. He´s a youth of 13 years whose Grandma is a member. The grandma recently re-activated herself in church, and he took interest in the church as well. He´s been slowly gaining a testimony and has decided to commit to continuing in God´s way. 

It was a wonderful baptism! Everything went smoothly, without any of the infamous last-minute difficulties which so often arise. (Although I did get quite a scare when I thought I had left the white baptism pants at home in the pench! It turned out my companion had them with him.)

[Another woman], one of the other elders´ investigators, was also baptized on Saturday. And they both came and were confirmed on Sunday. Marvelous! I´ll send pictures if I can... but all of the good pictures are on Elder Wing´s camera, but he can´t load those pictures onto the computer. So, later on the pictures will arrive in their fullness.

On Sunday, we talked to this young man and his grandmother. It made me happy to see how happy they both were - the Grandma was happy because everything seemed to be going well in life, and because her grandson had decided to join her in the church. 

He told us that while he was under the water, he felt like time was stopped, and he didn´t want to come back up. 

I love watching baptisms.

Sunday meeting was good, with me playing a couple parts in the program: The bishopric asked me to give a talk when the assigned speaker fell through, I played the piano as the accompanist, and we 4 missionaries had a special musical number. The musical number was Lead Kindly Light (well, Divina Luz), which we actually prepared for the baptism but sang again in sacrament meeting. It was a good meeting. Elder Sampson and Elder Decker had some good investigators there.

So - Elder Wing and I are doing well. This week we´re almost starting over looking for new investigators, because most of the ones we were working with stopped progressing due to a lack of contact. (They went out of town, or weren´t at home, etc.) The process begins anew!

[One of our investigators] is having trouble quitting smoking - prayers for him would be appreciated!

That´s all I´ve got for today. I love you so much, and I love reading your emails! Take care, and I hope you have a great week.
Elder Stockton