My teacher in the MTC, Brother Page, compared General Conference
(while on your mission) to watching the superbowl (sp?) back
home. Obviously, the real impact of this analogy was completely lost on
me, but I think the point he was making is that General Conference is
super cool. And he was right! General Conference was absolutely
incredible, We are so blessed to have Prophets and Apostles on the earth
today, who speak to us! I can't believe how often I've taken for
granted the concept of an APOSTLE or a PROPHET speaking to us. it's
awesome. I would write my whole email about that but I won't, because
of what happened after the last session of General Conference!
So, Sunday Morning session, Gerard (dad) and Cade Michel
came to church to watch it with us, and they loved it (Gerard was so
excited about hearing a prophet speak. Investigators and recent converts I think do so much better than life long members at not taking
the blessings of the Gospel for granted) Cade is only 12, but he
enjoyed it, and recognized that listening to conference made him feel
good, even if he didn't understand all the messages. After the
session we showed them the baptismal font, since Gerard wanted Cade to
see it beforehand, so he wouldn't be as nervous. We were all there just
talking, and then I point out Gerards's necklace to Elder W. I don't
remember if I told you about it before, but its this old anointment
container, made out of copper, with hieroglyphs on the side, and I'm
pretty sure he said like platinum borders and stuff, and it just looks
way tight, and I always thought it was so cool, and so I'm telling Elder W about it, and Gerard is like "oh yeah, I brought this for a
reason today" and I was thinking cause he was excited about being baptized
or seeing the prophet. (this necklace also has some cool stories,
after the car accident they were in, they were all soaked in blood, Gerard especially, and the leather thing it was on was soaked in blood
too, and just blood blood blood everywhere, but the container was
spotless, George thinks its because it was blessed by a priest a few
weeks before the accident) But anyways, he takes it off, and gives it
to me, cause he knew how much I liked it. I didn't want to
accept it, but he insisted, and in reality I really did want to accept
it, so i did! It is so cool, I'm trying to decide if I should keep it
with me or just send it home for safekeeping.
Anyways, after some scheduling conflicts and general
stress, at 4 o clock we began the Baptism! I was a little worried about
the member talks beforehand (no offense, members just say weird things
all the time and scare investigators) and then I went first and got in
the water to baptize Gerard ( I don't remember if i already shared this
story, but at our last lesson we were discussing the baptism, and Gerard
said he wanted me to baptize him and Cade, so i said I'd love to, and
he said he was honored to be my first baptism haha :) Anyways, and then Elder D was explaining that he'd probably be in the water to help me
pull Gerard up, because he's a big man, but then Gerard was like "no, you
don't need to help, Lonas can do it. He's strong, I can tell he works
out by the way he shakes my hand". Haha. So I've been praying for the
past few days that I would have the strength to pull him up ) I baptized him, and pulled him back up!
Then Cade came in and I baptized him right after, it was so cool!!
Afterwards when we were all changing, We asked Cade how he felt, and he
noticed he felt different, and kinda weird in a good way. we explained
that that was the spirit again :) Gerard was happy too, it was just
such a cool thing. Gerard wants to start a church motorcycle club
too... haha :)
After George and Cole, Elder W baptized Rebecca and Elder D baptized Amy. 7 people in white :)
We
found them tracting not too long ago, now they are all baptized, Cade
is planning on getting into Boy Scouts, Gerard is planning on starting a
motorcycle club with church members, Amy and Rebecca are actively
involved in mutual and are probably gonna go to seminary soon. How cool
is that?
Before my next email, Naomi will probably have been
baptized (this Friday!!) and Emily should be baptized this Sunday. So
another baptism email next week probably!
My camera has been dead, so but Elder W has a couple pictures from the baptism, hopefully I'll get those to you today.
I love the Gospel, I love the Church, I love the
Michel family, I love General Conference, I love my mission, I love
you and hope you have a marvelous week!
p.s.
Elder W and I did a special musical number at the baptism right after the baptism itself. He played uke and I played guitar, and we did A Child's Prayer. It didn't go perfectly, Elder W had a little lyrical confusion towards the end and just started singing my part with me, but for the most part it went well, and i love singing and playing guitar, and it was so cool doing it at the baptism. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment