Monday, May 13, 2013 - "Mother I Love You, Mother I Do..."

Hola Mi Familia! It was super duper fantastic to be able to talk to you all this past Friday, and not only talk, but to SEE you all as well! Why wasn't Skype approved sooner in my mission? Glad to hear that everything went well with Mother's day. How spoiled mom was! I am so very thankful to my Father in Heaven for the wonderful mother that he has given me. I will never to able to repay her for the countless sacrifices she has made and makes for me. I am so blessed to have learned from her all that I have learned. Thanks for everything mom! I got my package Saturday! Thanks so much mom! I absolutely LOVE my tie!!!! It is seriously the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and have made quite a few people jeally! Well, I'm not too sure how long this will be since I just talked to you all like 3 days ago, but we will see if I've got anything to say... So this week we have been working on preparing a lady for her baptism for this past Saturday. We really haven't had to do much but just plan and carry out a baptismal service. Her kids were baptized back in like September and she has been going to church with them almost every Sunday since then, so she was more than ready and basically knew everything. We just reviewed with her what baptism was and why it was important. We were kind of worried because we have been attending the baptisms of the other Elders in our district and there aren’t any members that go to support. So we made an extra effort to invite everyone to this baptism to make sure that there would be attendance to support her. Saturday came and everything seemed to be going well. When we arrived at the church to clean the font we open everything up and there are cockroaches all over the font! Oh, that was disgusting! So we had to do some cleaning up...haha! We got everything cleaned and began filling the font. The baptism was supposed to start at 6 PM so we told her to arrive at 5:30 PM to make sure everything was set. Well, 5:30 passed...as well as 5:45, 6, 6:15....the lady had not arrived yet. We were starting to get really worried and freaking out. Most of the members had already arrived and we had a good crowd. Well, she finally arrived at 6:20 and we were able to get the baptismal service underway. It was really a nice service. Elder Carver, Elder Gutierrez, and myself did our "Nearer My God To Thee rendition that we did a few weeks ago in the zone conference and the spirit was so strong! The ordinance (sp? I don't know English anymore...) was performed by a brother in the branch and we ended. It was really lovely and I was very blessed to be able to participate in this baptism. This was really a blessing from the Lord how this sister just came into our hands and we were able to help her participate in this saving ordinance of baptism. Now the other investigators.... The boyfriend of a member is on hold right now. We are just chillin with him...I'm not sure when we will be able to put another date but we will just have to see. He seems to still like our lessons I think. I don't know...he kind of confuses me sometimes. I can't really understand what he wants or what he needs. We will just have to keep on keepin on with him I guess... The other boy is also kind of on hold too. We are just waiting for him to turn 18 so that he doesn’t have to have family permission to be baptized. We watched with him the Joseph Smith movie this week and it was quite special. The spirit is always strong when we teach and testify of Joseph Smith. He is a nice young chap, but we just need a baptismal date so that he can progress a little more. Our funny lady is quite a hoot! She just keeps us going every lesson! We find ourselves holding in the laughter. She is absolutely obsessed with "The Mormons" and everything about us. She tells everyone she meets that "The Mormons" are visiting her and that she is going with "The Mormons" and she plans to be baptized. We can't get in a single word talking with her. She just keeps talking and talking and talking. She has received a few answers to her prayers. She works Sundays so she has been praying that she will get a chance to go to church to be able to be baptized. Her prayer was answered. She was talking to her boss one day the things she is learning with us and she commented that she has to go to church 4 Sundays to be baptized. He told her to just tell him when and he will cover her those Sundays. So that was special. We had a really nice lesson with her this week about the Plan of Salvation and we were able to tell her that she could be sealed Time and All Eternity with her husband who died a few years ago. She really liked that and is really striving to reach her goal of baptism. She was able to attend the baptism this past Saturday and she just seemed like she was having herself such a good little time. She was telling all the members she couldn't wait for her own baptism and to be baptized in the true church! She is so presh! She also went to church this past Sunday, but left before we could ask her how it went. We will visit her this week to see how she felt. This week my testimony has also been strengthened in the power of personal revelation. I can testify that God hears all of our needs and helps us understand and know the things that we need. I firmly believe in the saying: "When we want to talk to God, we pray. When we want God to talk to us, we read the scriptures" Really those two go hand in hand. I love the scriptures and the wonderful messages that they contain for each and every one of us! Well, that is about all I've got for this week! Here is to a week of spiritually preparing to receive instruction from an Apostle of the Lord! How fantastic this opportunity will be! I hope you all have a good last week of school! I love and miss you all tons and hope you are well! ¡Yo sé que vive mi Señor! Con Mucho Amor, Elder Joyner