Hey Family!
I'm excited to report that Barbara has become the newest member of the Pittsburgh 4th Ward! Her baptism went beautifully. We had a good turn out, and a lot of people came that Barbara hadn't met before. Yay for new friends! Her son also came which we were very excited about. He hasn't been quite as supportive as Barbara hoped, but I think he was really impressed by the people he met at the baptism. Everyone was very friendly towards him, and he seemed happy to be there. Even if he's not interested in joining the church (yet), at least he recognizes that Barbara is in good hands with the ward. We hope that as he sees the change in Barbara, he will one day be open to learning more about the gospel. Barbara was very nervous for her baptism, but it is wonderful to see that happiness that exudes from her. When I first met Barbara she hardly ever smiled, but on the day of her baptism she was beaming. The Spirit was very strong in that meeting. The elders and I sang "I Believe in Christ" which went well. I couldn't look at Barbara while I was up there because I knew I'd just get teary-eyed! I felt like a proud momma. Haha
Dad, that's funny that you warn me about the water temperature, because we could not get the hot water to work! Sister Strate and I were the only ones in the building to fill the font, and we started to panic because no matter how much we fiddled with the hot/cold water nobs, we could not get the water any warmer. We thought about boiling water in the kitchen and dumping it in but realized it would take a LOT of water to make any difference. So, poor Barbara was probably freezing. On top of that, Barbara had to be baptized not once, not twice, but three times!! She was so nervous that it was a real struggle for Elder Escobar to get her all the way under. Haha, after the second time she came up and immediately yelled, "I went under right??" The third time he baptized her, he got down so low we thought he was going down with her! Oh man, I felt so bad....luckily she was a good sport about it. In the dressing room she asked us, "Should I be embarrassed?" We told her not to worry, that happens all the time....which I'm not really sure how often someone needs to be baptized three times, but of course we just wanted to put her at ease. Hahaha just knowing Barbara, of course something like that would happen to her. Oh, I forgot to mention! President Topham and his wife came to Barbara's baptism! The last time we saw Sister Topham, we talked to her a little bit about Barb, and she said that she would love to come to her baptism. So, we invited them and they actually came! It was pretty cool for me to have them there at my first baptism.
So you know the guy Ed who we had a great lesson with on the Restoration? Yeah, he dropped us. He wasn't returning our calls, so we decided to just stop by his house. He answered and said, "Sorry girls, I'm gonna have to bow out gracefully..." He said that he has been busy helping out some of his friends and needed to focus on them right now. That's a lame reason if you ask me, so we're pretty sure something else happened. Maybe his wife didn't like him meeting with us, or he heard some anti stuff....hard to say. Before we left he gave us this little box with a poem on it and some random trinkets inside. Hahaha, it really felt like he was breaking up with us! Anyway, it's too bad. He really is such a nice, genuine guy, and we know he felt the Spirit. Now that Barbara is baptized and people keep dropping us, we are really lacking investigators. I get frustrated because our area is like 1/15th of the size of the elders' area. They have a baptism like every week in the month of August, and all their investigators are coming from member referrals. Since we have so few members in our area, we've had one member referral in my time being here. Well, I guess we're just gonna keep tracting and keep the faith! It's hard sometimes, but I know as we do our best the Lord will provide. I think that's all for this week! Love you guys!
Love,
Sister Denney
No comments:
Post a Comment