Welcome to the family Jessie! Congratulations to Jaren and Kathy and the kids. I'll be waiting for pictures just so you know... I'm excited to have another niece!
Well, we had a baptism this week. But it didn't count as an investigator because the boy was eight years old. (His mom is a member, but his dad isn't.) He didn't want to get baptized at first because he was afraid of the water. We took care of that one in a hurry. It only took about 5 minutes for him to be super excited to be baptized. I don't remember if I told you about him, but this is the same boy that we left the children's Book of Mormon and he read 14 chapters instead of the assigned 1. He has since finished it. What an incredible example! Anyway, he had to be baptized three times because his feet kept floating to the top of the water. Finally, the person baptizing him had to step on his feet while he put him under the water. He definitely won't forget that day! We are hoping to set some more baptismal dates this week. Our mission has a goal of reaching 400 baptisms by the end of the year. I think right now we are at about 360. It's crunch time!
We are teaching someone right now named Henry. He was born Catholic, converted to Apostles and Prophets, and then converted again to Baptist. His friend/we think girlfriend is in our branch and he has started investigating the church. He wouldn't even touch the Book of Mormon. You can imagine how funny it was in the first lesson we had with him and my companion handed her scriptures to him to have him read them. She purposefully didn't tell him that it wasn't the bible:) You should have seen his face when he realized what it was. He read the scripture and then shoved it into the hands of his friend just to get it out of his as soon as possible. The real miracle is that we left a copy with him that night with a few assigned chapters and he is now reading the Book of Mormon! AMAZING! He actually really likes it. No surprise there.
I have such a testimony of the Book of Mormon. It changes lives, because it invites us to grow closer to the Savior. There is no other way we can find happiness than by coming to Him. Don't take my word for it, though. Try it out for yourselves! I love you all.
Hermana Larsen