Bautismos Actuales y futuros

14 Sep 2009

Dear Family,

This past week hasn´t been as spectacular as the past few weeks, but it was a fairly good week anyways. The highlight of the week was the two baptisms of Valentina Rodriguez and Lourdes Chaparro. It went really well without too many problems. I´m sending the pictures, so I hope you like them.

As I told you last week, Valentina came out of nowhere, we interviewed her, and she was ready within those three hours. We passed by once during the week and everything went well. She is a very special girl who really wants to follow the commandments of God. Her step-father (who also happens to have the last name Rodriguez), our ward mission leader, baptized her.

We didn´t feel like we had to do too much for Lourdes either. She read the pamphlet about the restoration and 3 Ne 11 the first night we talked with her. Since that day she couldn´t wait to be baptized. She was a huge help and support for Ramona. The only difficulty was that she worked in the capital all week long and only came home for the weekends. But, she is smart enough to handle a lot of information at once to get through all of the lessons to prepare her. We called her two to three times a week to answer questions, but couldn´t do too much more. She asked me to baptize her and it was a pleasure.

Now, we are preparing for the baptism of Hernán this Saturday. We were doing our contacts one day and interrupted the conversation of two women. Patricia came and asked if someone had given us her address to pass by. We told her no and asked if she is a member, which she is. She had moved there 5 months ago, but never decided to go to church, even though it was fairly close and recognizable. We also found her 9 yr-old son and decided to prepare him for baptism. At first they kept saying, “Not too soon.” But, with the help of her brother, the bishop of the Jardines ward (who has a voice that really reminds me of Dr. Ray), she realized that this would be the best for Hernán. I think she wanted him to be a perfect child before being baptized, which is impossible, especially because I think he has a kind of ADHD. He´s come the last four sundays and will be baptized on Saturday by his uncle.

We´re also planning the baptism of Gastón, Rocío, and Romina. We found Rocío and her mom one day doing our contacts and they told us where they lived and we set an appointment. They live really, really far away in our area and we were lucky to find their house without good directions. Gastón (14) and Romina (12) came to church last week. Rocío (16) came with them this week. We passed by twice this past week and they are very accepting and Gastón, Rocío, and Romina accepted a baptismal date for the 3rd of October. We have general conference that day, so I don´t know when we´ll really do it. Their mom and stepfather, who are not married, were going to come to church on Sunday, but backed out for fear of leaving the house alone and being robbed while they were away. We´ll see what we can do for them next week. This family is really humble (their house is an old Evangelical church that the pastor gave to them) and has passed through a ton of trials, but are extremely innocent. Their eyes look pure. So we have hope for them.

This past week was a really good week for this district. For the first time in my mission, the entire zone (both districts) completed their 140 contacts for the week. I´ve never heard of a zone doing that. With a little bit of encouraging and energy, we were all able to do it together. I know that such diligence will bring greater miracles to our zone. It also makes my job as district leader a bit easier.

I hope that your surgeory goes well Dad. I´ll be praying.

With love,
Elder Drake Ranquist