First Baptism

I got MY first baptism and our second and third on Saturday. Onny chose me to baptize her, which honestly surprised me ha.  But it was cool. And her cousin Dariela was baptized too. They're only 13 and 8 but an addition to the church is an addition to the church and they are excited about the church which is awesome. The baptism was scheduled for 3:00 but we didn't actually get started until 3:30 and Elders Tellez and Villatoro had a baptism at 4 so we were scrambling. Then it turned out that Onny's mom (A member) didn't want to give a short talk and Elder Lopez really wanted two speakers so he started getting nervous. And we didn't get all the keys we needed right when we needed them. So I played the prelude music on a keyboard and the first two hymns. We had Selibeth, the President of young womens in our branch give a short talk. Elder Lopez wanted to help out during the baptisms and asked Dariela if I could baptize her and she said "NO!" ha. So he baptized her and then I baptized Onny. I was SO nervous. First baptism ever and it was in Spanish. It's all a blur, I felt like I messed up but they didn't make me redo it so lets all pray right? It took an hour for us to do it all so we went a little over, but the members of the other branch just got to sing a few extra songs. Nothing wrong with that.

Before the baptism we were invited to Hermana Melva's grandson's 1st birthday party. He had about 30 guests or so. That baby is popular. And Hermana Melva insisted that we eat, which included 3 strips of STEAK. Nobody here every gets to eat steak so I was really fortunate. After the baptism we went back to see everything and it was mostly just family so we were going to leave but they insisted we stay, so we did. That baby had like 20 presents mostly cars and stuffed animals, but I'm thinking that they do more for a 1 yr old party than for a baby shower, but I don't really know. And we got to eat cake. Plus Hermana Melva's son asked us when we were going to visit him. He lives in Ojo and we didn't even know it! So another perspective family!

Christmas is going to be a lot different this year. No hot chocolate, I don't think. No snow. Different families that aren't really mine. No movies. Not as many Christmas lights, still some but not as many. Smaller trees. This could just be for my area but that is what it seems like it will be. BUT we have like 4 or 5 different dinner appointments, and I'm pretty sure they eat well for Christmas.

I think I told you about Javier. He was a reference from Hermano Argeñal. Well he has been off to work in Tegucigalpa this week, but we met with his daughter Keli. She has a ton of questions, and she seems really interested.. The only problem is she doesn't get along with her cousin at

all and her cousin is a member. So we're trying to get past that point. But she came to church yesterday and she went to the baptisms of Onny and Dariela.

Because of the baptisms we had exchanges and I went with Elder Villatoro. He is cool, but in my opinion he needs to learn English. He has been out for 18 months, and he knows only one word English. The word is "girlfriend". Everyone asks if you have or had a girlfriend EVERYONE ha. I think he talks about as much as I did before my mission which as most of you know is not very much. But it was a good experience to see other methods of teaching and contacting.

We've been teaching the Valladares family. Jose, Wendi, and they're two Daughters, ages 4 and 2. It's pretty tough with Wendi because she is Evangelico and they have a lot of different views from us. 1. they believe the gift of tongues is when people start blabbering and they say they are speaking for God, and 2. the people that translate the gift of tongues into Spanish are the prophets. It's tough at times but they still like us so they keeping allowing us to visit them. But they're really nice. The only real problem Jose has is he doesn't want to give up the coffee and I don't think he wants to pray about it because he doesn't it want it to be

bad. But his mom is a member and so I think that could help.

We contacted a reference from a sister in our ward. It's her cousin and his name is Marvin. He is really open to listening to all religions and he says that he lives like there will be no tomorrow in the good way. So he reads for us, he usually prays and he keeps listening to our messages. Everything seems to be going well and we committed him to prepare to be baptized the 31st of December. More priesthood is needed which is the foundation to a ward. So we are getting it all set up. Plus we visit less actives a ton. It's kind of annoying at times because they all say they'll go to church but they never do.

We also met Elvia and her daughter, Joselin, in Zamorano and they are from Ojo. So we talked to them and they've already received all the lessons and they believe. Joselin has already been baptised, but she didn't go to the confirmation, which we kind of feel like is a bad sign, but we are going to

see how it all goes with the lessons. And Elvia couldn't get baptized at that time because she was living with her boyfriend.

That is it for this week!

Elder Stone