mmmmm p-day what a glorious day for a missionary, nossa, its been a
tiring week. My thought have been back at home alot this week, its been a week
of challenges and stresses, but in the end as usual everything turned out ok. We
have been trying to work alot with members and less actives so we have been
trying to go after our list of members but almost all of the houses we go to
there is no one there or they moved or the address doesn't exist, as I have said
before our area is super difficult because it is the center and its is where the
richest people in the city live, so most of the houses are mansions and its
rather depressing, but we did what we could even though we didn't have much
success, but so Wednesday we went back to Gabrieles and we talked to her dad
which is the one that wanted her to wait to get baptized, but he was like no if
she wants she can baptized so we were like yay! haha so this week I went on
splits again and stayed in my area and we went after some more names of peoples
and also we taught Gabriele a little more and we did her interview on Saturday
that went fine. Gabriel told me that she wanted me to baptize her i told her
that I thought it would be better for her uncle to baptize her since he was the
less active member that was returning to church but she insisted on having me
baptize her, but on Thursday there was a baptism of a man that had been going to
church for a while with his wife who was already a member, they just weren't
married and so they scheduled the marriage date over a month ago and on Thursday
they finally got married, and that night he got baptized, his name was Josiel, I
did his baptismal interview last week during general conference and was
impressed to see how prepared he was and how ready he was to take upon him the
name of The Savior and follow Him. He was baptized on Thursday night, and then
Saturday we had another baptism in our ward accept this one was alot more
hectic, the other missionaries had asked for us to get to the church early to
turn on the water cause the others weren't going to be able to get their on time
and its just us that have the keys to the church but we turned on the water and
we saw that instead of the water going into the font the water was spilling
shooting out of a pipe in the bathroom, so we turned off the water and found
that the pipe was missing a huge joint piece and so water would just spew back
out into the bathroom, we didn't have any idea why the pipe piece had been pulled
out, so we had a mad rush of filling up the baptismal font by hand with buckets,
that was a pain, it took about an hour and a half but we got the font filled up,
that was the first time i had to do that on the mission and I hoped it would be
the last. So the very next day we were going to have our baptism for Gabriel,
so we got to church and what do you know someone had pulled the plug on the
font! And it was empty again, so during sacrament meeting me and Elder Piñon
starting filling the font up by hand again, but the problem was that the font
must have a leak or something because it was slowly losing water so at the end
of church there was very barely enough water in the font to do a baptism,
luckily Gabriel is fairly short, but it seems like Satan did everything to try
and prevent these baptisms from happening but they happened! Our mission ward
leader was traveling which complicated alot of things as well and so we had to
put everything together on the agenda and notify everyone, but it worked out.
When we got in the water it was really cold haha, because yesterday was a super
cold day the coldest i had ever had since new york on the mission, but it was
interesting because during the baptismal prayer the water all of the sudden went
from cold to lukewarm, it happened in a split second, I don't think the water
itself became warm but I know that it actually became o water of healing,
capable of washing away sins because the Lord had authorized that baptism
because it was done by someone having His authority. The water was so low that
it was just a little above my knees but even after her baptism I could feel that
warm sensation in my body where the water had been touching, and I knew that
Gabriel had that exact same feeling in all of her body and being, she felt the
spirit strongly and was crying after her baptism. That made all of the
difficulties and challenges worth it. Also Israel was confirmed on Sunday and he
is doing well and going to seminary and church. Also this week we will be having
zone conference here in Ponta Porã, where our zone and the Dourados zone which is
a neighboring city and zone will be coming here and we will have a training from
President Reber, and then after we will have our own zone conference of just our
zone, that was kinda dropped on us this week because before we were going to
have the conference in Dourados but now they randomly switched it to our zone,
so now we have to get someone to prepare a lunch for all the missionaries and
also we have to prepare the chapel and get everything ready for them. This week
will probably be pretty wild as well, pray for us so that it will all work out.
So mom wanted to know more about my companion, he does not have a blogspot
unfortunately, but he lives in Virginia, but is from Miami, he is almost 22 I
think and wants to do a career in music after his mission, he also like
skateboarding alot before the mission and he will be finishing his mission in
august. His dad is from Cuba and his mom is from Illinois I think. We get along
really well and I am glad to have him as my companion. Well yeah I have to get
going but thanks for your letters and I hope you all have a wonderful Easter.
Tell the brothers thanks for their letters and I was glad to have gotten them
and read them they made me really happy. oh yeah so Saturday I hit 16 months and
I don't feel in different then I did when I had 15 months and 30 days, the
mission is going by quick and I need your prayers so that we can continue having
success in our area. its cooling down here, last night I was super cold and we
wore sweaters these last two days. Its getting chilly it reminds me of home!!
Thanks so much for the prayers and thoughts, I know they help. Have a great week
everyone!
-Elder Kennington
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