Email 2/4/13

Well wow another week has come and gone in a flash. I got 15 minutes to try and squeeze in all the details from the week. Sometimes I feel bad because I am not really taking any pictures to send home to you guys, but then I realize that I don´t take pictures because I don´t have time. We are working too much and finding too many people that I don´t have time to take pictures. In a sense it’s a good thing, and a bad thing. So don´t get mad at me mom for not sending any pictures. It’s just because I am working so gosh dang hard hahaha.

So this last week we had another baptism. Wow, it was probably one of the hardest baptisms I have ever seen, heard of, or imagined. So we have been teaching this older Lady Named Alva. She is the mom of a recent convert in our ward. She is super super nice. She used to be a helper for the fathers of the Catholic Church and so she really has a good knowledge about the bible. At first she really didn´t want to listen and said we could go and read to her from the bible because she is blind.

So we started going and reading little sections out of the bible with her and soon we started teaching her the restoration of the gospel. She really liked it a lot. We had to teach it a little slow because she was just super hardcore in the bible. But in the end we asked her to pray to God to see if our message was true. She did and she got her answer that yes, it is all true. Wow, that was easy. So we continued to teach her. It was great because we could have some recent converts help us in teaching her because they lived in the same house. So there really weren´t any problems with teaching her. She did have a problem with modern day prophets and how she thought that there weren´t any more prophets. We asked her to pray about it, she did, and she got her answer. Wow, that was easy.

So her baptismal day finally came. So you have to know that about 5 years ago Alva had a brain tumor. She had to have surgery to get it out or she would die. So after they took it out, she came out of the surgery practically blind and was a little crazy. So Try and picture this, Trying to put a blind half crazy lady in the water. She was scared to death of the water because she didn´t want to drown. Technically I don´t blame her. If I was blind I would be scared to death of drowning.

So we wanted to have a member baptized her but really we didn´t think that a member would be able to handle this one so I was elected. I helped lower her into the water and she was practically grasping onto me and plugging her nose. She would just hunch over and was waiting for me to say the prayer. So she thought that I was going to put her into the water in the front. So the first time I completely surprised her when I threw her over backwards that her legs came popping out. Wow she was mad when I got her back out.

She didn´t want to do it anymore. She said that she didn´t want to and that she couldn´t do it. So I tried again but we were going to do it her way. So I said the prayer and tried to help her kneel down in the water, oh by the way we had filled up the font to where there was only 3 inches before it was overflowing. So when I tried to push her under front way she wouldn’t even budge.

Ok… so this time I just closed my eyes and said a prayer that this would be the time that I would get her. So I told her we would do it one more time, and that we would go in front way. So I said the prayer and I threw her backwards. While she was under I had to check her feet to make sure that they went under as well. She was good. I brought her up. Boy was she mad at me. I helped her get out of the water and then I saw her back in the Sacrament room. She had calmed down a little bit and when I told her that there was a cake waiting for her after she was happy.

Wow....... That was probably the craziest baptism that I have seen. She really didn´t want to do it anymore. But we got her in whoooohooooo. Really I was able to see the power of prayer. The whole week I had been praying that there wouldn´t be any problems with her baptism. And ya it really didn´t end super super super spiritual, but hey we got the ordinance done. I know that sometimes that’s how we can see things in the world. The Lord wants us to do something and we try our best and sometimes it doesn´t go as best as we think it will, but in the end the Lord will help us complete His commandment. I love you all and hope you have an amazing week.


Rohayhu Paraguay ha che familia avei
Elder Beatty
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