March 3, 2014

Surprise!

A couple fun stories for today, but I'll try to put things in a sort of order.

First off, and just to put things in context, I should explain that our biggest struggle for the past couple weeks has always been being able to have enough time in our area to work with our members and investigators, rather than just running around for administrative things. So, a couple stories about that.

One is that we had a meeting at the church just about every night this week-Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And the thought ran through my mind that service in the church is a big time commitment, especially for people who aren't missionaries and might have other things that they could be doing. I appreciate the example of those who choose to spend their time in the service of the Lord.

Also, during our meeting on Thursday, our branch president turned to me and told me that a recent convert, named Alline Pedre, was planning on presenting her baby for a name and a blessing on Sunday, and that she had asked me to do the blessing. So, that's cool. Turns out it didn't end up happening yesterday, because the baby was sick and didn't end up coming to church. So we'll see what happens with that in the future!

Other cool story from this week is about Karine. Wait, one quick note before that.

So I decided that when I grow up, I want to be like Dominique Afoy. I've already spoken about her before, she's our recent convert who is a missionary work machine. She just lives and breathes her (still growing) faith, and shares what she has with everyone. And people respond in an incredible way.

Okay, back to Karine. She's a good friend of Dominique's, and in fact is a referral that she gave to Elder Sosa and I before she was baptized. We only ever got to see her once before I left though. Apparently, afterwards, the missionaries continued to teach her for a while, but she decided to stop taking the missionary lessons for a while. This past week, Elder Tolman thought of her, and we decided to pass by to say "hi". When we yelled at her house, she was on the phone with Dominique, who was, again, telling her that she should get baptized. She told us later on that that same morning, she had been crying and prayed to God to send her someone that could help her change her life. Nous voici! Then, this morning, we got a call from Dominique, who wanted to tell us that Karine has asked to be baptized on March 22nd. Miracles!!!

Also, for those of you who aren't aware, tonight marks the first official night of carnaval celebrations. So be safe and stay out of downtown!

Avec amour,

-Elder Santos