Wow, That Felt Good!

​Zariah, Bertina, Noah, and Donell​

Hello everybody! So here are the highlights from this week, it's a pretty good one so stay tuned.

So, BERTINA AND HER FAMILY ALL GOT BAPTIZED! That's super amazing, I don't think it's quite set in yet that it actually happened! I'm so glad that I got the privilege to be the ones to find them (knocking!), teach them all the lessons, and see them baptized! It was a super great experience. Knocked on their door April 1st, baptized April 30th! I feel like that if I had to go home tomorrow I would be completely satisfied just because of them. The baptism itself went pretty smoothly, and the ward really took care of pretty much everything which is super nice. It's the first baptism this ward has had in a couple months, and between us and the other Elders we had 5 CONVERT BAPTISMS (Bertina+Donnell+Noah+Zariah+other elders' investigator). I even got to confirm 2 of them, Zariah and Bertina. It was a very spiritual experience being able to feel what the Spirit directed me to say in their blessings, and a very spiritual experience overall.

​A picture of us together with Brother Davis,
the member that baptized them.​

There were even a couple laughs. Donell was being super talkative for some reason, usually he's super reserved. After he came out of the water he went into the room to change and said "WOW, THAT FELT GOOD!" really loud. It was pretty funny. After his confirmation too he went around shaking hands saying "Good job, good job, thank you." It was weirdly out of character for him, but at least it made it memorable. Another funny thing was that the Primary and Relief Society were all prepared with lots of books and things to give out, and then the Young Mens [Leader] guy wasn't there so another man from the Presidency gets up and has no clue what to say. He ended up shaking their hands a bunch and saying how much they'll like the Young Mens [Program]. Sounds like Young Mens I guess.

Another big announcement came this week from our Zone Conference. About a year and a half ago, the General Authorities for our region said that we could no longer go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead because some missionaries in another state had been camping out at the temple all day. President Richardson went to a conference with some of them and told them about the temple program he used to do, and they counciled and decided to reinstate it! Which means that we can go to the temple for baptisms! It used to be that you could only go in on the last day of your mission and if someone you baptized was getting their endowment, but now we can go with them to do baptisms for the dead! The only caveats are that it's only for people you baptized in the ward you're serving in, for their first time only, and a member has to be with you. A really great rule change, because the mission saw a huge drop in retention rates when the missionaries couldn't go with them to the temple. Which also means that we can go with Bertina!!

​Elder Foster gave me a haircut last night.

Nice and short.​

Yet another announcement from Zone Conference is that we can spend up to 2 hours a week working on our personal family history, to find family names we can bring to the temple for baptisms! I'm going to try to utilize this time, so that I can learn how to do family history and have family names to take with me to the temple when I go with my converts.

That's pretty much it for the week. We have a couple people that we've met that might progress, but we've only seen them once so it's not solid yet. I'll let you know if they stay cool. Hopefully we can find more people to teach, because now that Bertina got baptized our teaching pool is pretty much empty. We're still going to meet with them for the "new member lessons", which is just going over the lessons again slowly and in depth, without the time crunch which is nice. But the work moves on, and it's time to find more people to be baptized! I love you all, thank you so much for your support! Keep up the "Good Work"!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson

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