Monday April 16, 2012

Dear family and friends,

I am already 1/2 of the way through the transfer that ended really well with Elder Fry and I baptizing an 8 year old girl. It was a little bit of a dispute whether or not we should wait for the rest of the family (particularly the mom and dad) to baptize them as a family. The parents said that Viviana (the girl) could be baptized before them. We are just waiting on the marriage of the parents. There are 4 in the family and the 17 year old boy doesn't want anything but the mom and the dad were really shaky investigators but after the baptism of the daughter they strengthened their desire to be baptized. The mom basically was crying and said that she will try and get married. It is hard because they were married in the past legally by the gypsie law and not the civil law, so it was super hard teaching marriage. Finally it ended in me saying that they just need to pray about it. I am aware that yºall are waiting on pictures of the baptism of Sandro, Rosa, and Viviana.

We had a lesson this morning with a lady named Angelina that is a prophetess. It is quite interesting. She has said that she has seen the father twice, Jesus once, and the Virgin Mary 3 times, and the only thing wrong with our church is that we didn't make the sign of the Cross after the sacrament above the table. I told her that Jesus didn't do that, and she said she knew that, but he broke bread in half, and then in half again, making a cross shape in the tears of the bread, So we started reading 3 Nephi 18 with her and we will see what happens. She said that she prayed and god authorized her baptism, which is good, and she is waiting to recieve an answer from him about a date from God. We just have a couple things to iron out before the baptism. It is interesting how the spirit works though. Right before Rosa was baptized, I didn't know how she was going to be baptized, since we hadn't even taught any of the lessons, we went there, we marked her, and then we found out that she had gotten ahold of 4 pamphlets from a member. the 1, 2, 3, and word of wisdom. She had read them all and done the mini studies in the back of them, and asked us the questions she wanted to know. She was already married so the law of Chastity was easy, stopped smoking because of the word of wisdom pamphlet, and the law of tithing was already known to her, so she was ready to go. With this lady, I can see a similar thing happening, we are going to meet with her a lot, so we will see what happens. She is dating a member, and wants him to live the commandments so he can get the preisthood, He is a recent convert that was baptized by the other dupla here the 1st week I got here. The only problem is that the recent convert is married, but seperated. . . . yeah, it is sort of fun.

Anyways, I can't think of anything else exciting that was happening with us.

Talk to y'all next week

Elder Hope