Saintana Day

So this week was a pretty good week. Transfers happened, so now Elder Belnap is here. He's a cool guy, should be a fun transfer! There was really only one event that dominated the whole week...

Serious

Laughing

Saintana got baptized! Woooooooo! It was an amazing experience and I'm so glad that I got to stay here to see it. There was the usual last minute scramble to make sure that everything happened, but in the end it worked out. Elder Charles and I stayed up till midnight the night before making cupcakes and brownies to bring to the church haha. We had the baptism during the 2nd hour of church since we have sacrament meeting last. Elder Charles did the baptism and I did the confirmation. It was an awesome experience overall. We also had the baby, Astahna, blessed during sacrament. Saintana's husband Astrel came, along with the baby's "godmother" and "godfather". We didn't have much of a chance to follow up with them afterwards but everyone seemed to enjoy it. The branch was super supportive of her, church was pretty much all about Saintana yesterday. They even had all the missionaries give their testimonies during sacrament meeting for her, which was kinda weird but whatever. (Bonus fact for those of you that have been following along, Saintana got baptized on the 1 year anniversary of when Bertina got baptized in Hollywood!)

Afterwards they threw a party at their house and had a bunch of their friends over, so we went. We ended up just sitting outside in the back, chatting and eating all the barbecue haha. There was one guy who tried bashing with us because our church teaches that God is not 3 people in 1 person, but another guy came that was pretty chill so we're gonna try to stay in contact with him. There was just a little too much alcohol to really get anything done, which was a shame.

BBQ

One of the people we talked to was cutting this guy's hair
and asked Elder Charles to take over for him haha

We're still working on "fixing" the branch haha. Rumor has it that we're gonna be able to get a van, but I feel that's just a surface solution and doesn't get to the root of the problems. It's just a remedy for the symptoms without curing the disease. It'll be helpful, but is not going to be sustainable in the long term. But we'll see what happens.

That's pretty much it from this week. Not much happened, but a lot happened. The end of this month means that I only have 4 months left. Pretty crazy, I just want to make this time count. Hope you all have a great week!

Lanmou,

Eldè Stevenson