Monday June 11, 2012

Well this week is just going great. Elder Rose poorly chose to trust me and had me cut his hair, needless to say Elder Way in the Coimbra 1st ward came to the rescue. I blame it on him moving his head, and me not knowing what I was doing. . . . good thing it grows back!

 

Elder Neilson and Elder Fry called me and let me know that José and Olga finally got baptized in Setúbal. They called and asked me to baptize them, I couldn't because I am really far from Setúbal, and it would take more than 5 hours by public transport to get there if I wanted to, but there are 2 more baptisms!!!

 

Elder Rose and I also baptized 2 people. One was named Virgílio and the other is Luis. Virgílio was an eternal investigator that was about 65 years old, that we found in the area book. The elders before us taught him and invited him for baptism 4 or 5 times and he never would accept . . . don't know why. So elder Rose and I decided to go in and give him the sunday as a date and see what he says. He told us to wait until July and he would be baptized in July, and then we said that it would be better for this weekend, he said, What time? we told him right after church, and then he said, If I can get done by 2:30 I'll do it, because I have an appointment at 3:00. So we baptized him. Frankly put, I don't know what his problem was, we never had any problems marking him for baptism, and all the elders in the past have been teaching him and said he won't get into the water. I don't know, he was more active than our bishop even though he hadn't come to church until we told him he was getting baptized. You should have seen the look on the members face when his name was announced, they couldn't believe it. The bishop bit his tounge to keep from laughing at the expression of the members, and the bishop asked us if we were serious.

 

The other guy is named Luis. I don't know why he was never baptized either. He just hadn't been to church in a couple of weeks and is the brother of a Recent convert from last transfer. He wanted to get baptized, so we helped him out. We have a guy named Moroni in our ward that is 18 years old and is a lazy bum all day. So we just do divisions with him all day, about 2 or 3 times a week. He taught and we let him baptize Luis. He came to church on nothing but adreneline. You could tell, because right after the baptism, he couldn't stay awake. It was his first person to baptize, and he didn't sleep last night because he was so excited. His mom told us how proud she was of him to baptize someone. He deserved it. We have so many youth in our ward that we have a goal that each one that can, will baptize or confirm at least one person since coimbra is a college town.

 

your friend,

Elder Hope