Date: Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 10:06 AM
Subject: Hay 3 bautismos!
To: mjjklewis@mstarmetro.net, Janette Lewis
Hey familia!
I can’t believe it’s another Monday. We had a really good week this week! We had 3 baptisms this last weekend on Saturday! Two were ours (Christian and Maurice) and the other was an Investigator of the Elders (Maria) so it ended on a pretty sweet note. Sunday Jennifer and the other 3 all got confirmed. Ya it was awesome. and then Jennifer and the other 3 were confirmed on Sunday to resulted in 4 confirmations. The baptism was a really sweet experience. Maurice and Christian are 11 year old boys of part member families that have been inactive for a few years. WE have some really cool things that just fell into place with both of them. I’ll start off telling some cool stories about Maurice. Maurice’s family is from el Salvador. They were introduced to the gospel through a family member that introduced them to the missionaries. They fell away for a while due to some circumstances and missionaries have been visiting off and on for years. We are the first sisters Franny, Maurices mom has let teach in the house in a long time and she has always told maurice before this that he couldn’t get baptized. My first week here we started teaching him and Sister Nelson and I talked to her shortly after that and for some miracle or another she gave her consent. So they’ve been coming back to church and its been really cool to see the small little differences over the last couple of months. On Saturday we had the General Relief Society broadcast after the baptism so the relief society made refreshments. There was a fruit dessert that just happened to be the Recipe Maurice’s mom taught to the Relief Society back in the day. I guess it had been a dessert recipe she had taught when she was really active. She got all tender hearted over it and said I guess I do still have a place in this ward. It was really cool. What are the odds after all the years that fruit dessert would be made by the lady that needed it most? I don’t believe in conincedences. It was awesome!
Christian has a cool story too. So he just moved in with the Benditez family about 2 months ago with his mom and other sister who are both less active members. We started noticing him around the house when we would come and teach Maurice. Finally we invited him to listen in on one of the lessons and he was more than eager. We found out that the missionaries had been teaching him back in the day when he lived in Pennsylvania. He was very excited to get baptized but then the family moved and he lost contact with the missionaries. He had always wanted to get baptized and asked us if he could get baptized here. We said, Claro que si! J He is a sharp little kid and he knew so much from the elders. He would say the best answers. I was teaching him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the importance of Faith, repentance, baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost , and Enduring to the end. I asked him what the steps are to live back with heavenly father. Not only did he do it but he said don’t worry sister lewis, I’m going to live them for the rest of my life so I can live with god. Then he has this huge interest in temples and living with his family forever. One of my awesome friends sent me a package of silly bands in the mail last week and I’ve been using them to teach these kids the lessons. Christian wears his silly band of the temple every day to remind him where he wants to end up. He is so awesome! Then we had his date planned and everything we showed up last week and he was gone. He and his mom had moved over night last minute back to New Jersey and they were going to put him into school over there. All of us sisters were pretty sad. We didn’t have other information for him or anything to send the missionaries over there. So you know what sister Nelson did? She went home that night and she prayed him back to New York. She prayed herself to sleep that night but you know what happened? The Next day we got a text from his cousin Saira telling us that they decided to move back to new york despite all odds. How cool is that? Yep, God works in mysterious ways.
At Christians baptism his mom came up and sat by me and told me a cool moment that she had with Christian the night before. They had been talking about his baptism and the wonderful moment it was going to be. Christian pointed out to her that when she had been taught and baptized it had been 3 sister missionaries just like us. After her baptism they had never seen sisters again, just elders but now he was getting baptized and once again it was 3 sisters. She teared up and just thought it was so special as did I J
Maria was the other baptism that took place on Saturday. It was also very legit! Her daughter will probably soon follow after her. Her daughter is going to seminary at 5 a.m. every morning even though the she isn’t even a member! Maria is so sweet. Elder Lauke baptized her and it was his very first baptism of the mission. He is in his second transfer so pretty new to everything and it was really rewarding for him to be the elder that started teaching her and saw the fruits of his labors. After she came out of the font I was on the steps to hand her towel over. It was really a special moment. I asked her how she felt and she just stood there for a second trying to take it all in and said, “Estoy muy feliz” It was a very emotional moment for both of us. We both cried and she grabbed me in a big embrace while she cried and enjoyed her special moment of Salvation. It was really awesome. The Elders were across the stairs watching their new convert and how happy she was it was cool to be the observer of it all.
So ya definitely the highlight of my week but don’t worry. There’s more. So this last week I have been watching these grand DVD of Preach my gospel with sister Jewkes during comp study. I don’t know how many of you know but the church has given DVD players to missions world wide to train us on how to be more effective missionaries through the preach my gospel DVD’s. I think they have some really good principles behind them. Anyway, so we were watching a segment on teaching powerful lessons and the elders were teaching about the word of wisdom and planning to commit her to baptism. It surprised them when their investigator interrupted the lesson to ask, “How soon can I get baptized?” I just kind of laughed and said, Wow, I wish my investigators would do that. How nice would that be? Anyway, no joke so we went to this appointment later in the day with this new lady. We found her while doing service with the ward a couple of weeks before. The Hurricane did a lot of tree damage out here on the island so we’ve been doing some helping hands. She juked us and the other 2 were a little frazzled but I said don’t worry we’ll come back so I called her and left a message. She called like 10 minutes later to say she had gotten home late but that she would really like us to come over if we had time. So we went and taught her the restauration. We were in the beginning maybe 5 minutes into the lesson on how to begin teaching when she stops us and asks. “How long will it take me to baptized into your church?” Then she explained how she just was really impressed with the whole service and the church that she came to on the Sunday before. She just feels the difference and knows that it’s good. Anyway, I just thought that was so awesome. She told us a lot of other really cool stuff but if anything comes from her I’ll let you all know. She seems pretty legit but she just left for cali for the next 2 weeks. I’ll keep you posted.
Sister Jewkes got her flight plans today and she started bawling in the middle of the library. She is so funny I love her to death. Mom when sister Jewkes gets home in December you have to have her come visit at the house! She said she’s going to knock on your door someday J She lives like 5 minutes away over there in lovely taylorsville. Anyway this email was long! I g2g to zone activity but hopefully I’ll fill iyou in on more details later. Transfers are flying by! Tomorrow I will have exactly 6 months left as a missionary. That is so sad! I guess I just got to enjoy it while I can. Love you all. Have a great week. “Make the world a better place”.
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