Can’t believe another week has already flown by. Time seems to be flying out here with my boy Elder Randall. Only two more weeks until next transfer! We are crossing our fingers that we get at least one more six week transfer together. We’ll see what happens. During these first 4 weeks together, we have seen a ton of progress and success here in Ignacio Merino. It has been really cool to see considering this has been one of the tougher areas to be in as of late. This week we had another baptism! and another crazy story to go with it . . . So I’ll just jump into things. :)
On Tuesday and Wednesday we had a work visit with the zone leaders. Elder Burnett came here to our area with Elder Randall and I went over to theirs with Elder Zea. Elder Zea is from Arequipa, Peru and finishes his mission in 2 weeks. He is a super good missionary and it was really fun to work with him and talk about all the experiences he has had in the mission. We basically spent the entire day knocking doors, as all of our appointments fell through. I would say about 99% of the doors that we knocked we got the classic response, “We’re Catholic!”. Usually when we get that response, I usually say that they must have lots of faith in Christ, and then I ask them when the last time they attended their church meetings. Almost every time, they can’t even remember the last time they went to church. I have been thinking a lot about this lately, and how different our church is. Yeah, we do have lots of inactive or less active members of the church too, but I absolutely love how the gospel invites us to do and BE so much more than just part of a church or religion. I feel like being a member of this church is much more than just a title. We need to be actively living this gospel and trying to be better each day. It has been such a testimony builder to me to have seen and to have been around so many different churches her in my mission and to see how our church is the only church that I have seen that invites true change in the lives of people. Now I’m not saying that all other churches are totally bad or can’t help people change, but rather that our church truly invites us to live and BE what we say we believe. So, I invite all of you to be actively living this gospel and to be what you say you believe. Don’t be someone who is “all talk”.
On Saturday we had Nicole’s baptism! Now, when I said last week that I’ve never had a baptism without some kind of crazy obstacle to take, I think I jinxed us, because this week’s obstacle tops them all. So, Friday night we showed up to the church to start filling the baptismal font. We swept up and cleaned the font and then turned the valve to start the water to fill the font, but no water are out. We then tried all the sinks in the bathrooms, and nothing. We called the bishop and he had some of the construction guys come to figure out the problem as to why there wasn’t water. When they showed up a few minutes later, they helped us turn on a pump that takes the water from outside and pumps it to the top of the church roof to a big water tank that supplies the whole building with water. So once they got the pump going , it started to fill the tank above and then we could start filling the baptismal font. Our baptismal font fills super slow, so we put the water flow on about half, and told the construction guys that we would come in the morning to turn off the water to the font and get ready for the baptism at 11. Sounds like a solid plan, right? That’s what we thought. The whole rest of the night we were a little worried that we had put the water flow too low, and wouldn’t have enough water in the font in the morning for the baptism, or we had put it too high and and would waste a lot of water emptying out of the overflow drain hole when it filled too high. However, we just figured we would find out in the morning. When we arrived the next morning, we started to casually unlock the outside gate of the church, until we looked up and saw what made our hearts drop — there was a river running from underneath the door of the church, ha ha ha. We started freaking out trying to unlock the door to get in and turn off the water to the font (thinking the font had overflowed), however, when we got in we saw we had a bigger problem on our hands. The entire church was flooded, which water half an inch deep everywhere, but it wasn’t coming from the baptismal font. We found that the water was coming from the upstairs of the church. We ran up the stairs sloshing through all the water to see what had happened. When we got up there we found all the water was coming from the big tank above. So apparently, when they turned on the pump to fill the tank the night before, the pump was supposed to turn off when the supply tank was full. Obviously that didn’t happen, and the pump had been putting water into the tank the entire night, overflowing it. The results were pretty ugly. Like I said, the entire church was flooded with water, and all the ceiling panels of the roof had soaked up the water like sponges, then crumbled to the floor in a big mess. Not to mention there are bats that live in the ceiling of the building, so all their bat poop had fallen down with the ceiling panels. It was all pretty bad. However, as bad as it was, I looked at Elder Randall and said, “Ain’t nothin that’s gonna stop us from having this baptism.” so, we once again rolled up our sleeves and went to work. We called the bishop to let him know what happened and he called some members over to come help us. It’s a good thing our church floor is all tile, because for the most part we were able just sweep a lot of the water out. We turned on all the ceiling fans and opened all the windows to air that place out. After about an hour and a half of work, we were able to get the downstairs somewhat dry, and looking good for the baptism. the baptism went great, and the spirit was so strong. It was so cool to see Nicole be baptized by her dad, Carlos, who is a recent convert of just a few months. I really feel like the adversary of just plain bad luck has been trying to keep us from doing this great work, but as we’ve seen this week, not even a flooded church will stop us from baptizing someone into the Church of Christ ;) I’m grateful to the Lord and to all the members that helped us out to have that baptism.
So on Saturday night I had a really cool experience with a baptismal interview. One of the cool responsibilities that you have as a district leader in the mission is to interview the candidates for baptism, to make sure they are ready and worthy. O Saturday, I had the opportunity to interview an older man, probably in his mid 70’s. This guy had expressed to me as we were talking that he had made a lot of serious mistakes in his life. I could tell that these serious sins that he had committed in his youth had haunted him his whole life. As he expressed to me some of these things, he began to cry and said something that really touched me. He said, “I know that I am very late in my life, but all that I want to do right now is come unto the Lord and be baptized.” For this man, all that mattered to him in his life was coming unto the Lord and following his ways. It was clear to me that this humble man was experiencing true conversion to the Lord. He had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but now at this moment he was fully converted and committed. to the Lord. It was a very humbling thing to for me to see. After the interview, I told him that I would need to speak with someone who has a little more experience to receive permission for him to be baptized. He patiently waited outside as I was able to talk over the phone with President Rasmussen about his situation. President gave the thumbs up, as he felt like it was OK to go ahead and baptize him. When I cam out and delivery the news, I immediately received a big hug from this man and he started to cry again. He then said a prayer out loud thanking the Lord for letting him be baptized and for helping him change his life. It made me tear up a little thinking of where this man had been in his life before, and to see this direction he was now takin. This experience has made me think how repentance truly is a gift from the Lord. Through his infinite atonement we can be forgiven of anything no matter what our past has been. He has promised us, “Behold, he who has repented of this sins, the same if forgiven, and I the Lord, remember them no more.” I know that when this man comes out of the water on Wednesday, he will be 100% clean, completely forgiven of this sins, and the Lord will not remember them any more. I challenge you all to remember the gift of repentance that the Lord has given us and to utilize it each day. It truly is a miracle.
Well, that is about it for this week! I hope you’re all doing well back home. If you ever have a question or anything, feel free to send me an e-mail. I’ll try to get back to you as quick as possible.
Love you all! The Gospel is true.
Auanza Su Verdad!
Elder Bailey
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