Week 33

This week… she was a wild one. The good news is we had 2 baptisms!! One on Friday (an 11-year-old boy named Malkiel whose whole family are members but went inactive) and another one on Sunday (a 40-something miracle man). It's funny- you´d think the baptism of the niño would be the low hanging fruit and the one of the middle-aged man would take more effort but NO, quite the opposite. The baptism of Malkiel has been in the works literally since I got to this area in June and we met Enrique literally ten days ago and now he's baptized. And it was the smoothest most painless baptism I´ve ever witnessed.

Don´t get me wrong though, Malkiel is a good boy. He told the Primary president when he was 8 that he was gonna get baptized si o si and he`s kept that determination up to this day even though his parents are VERY inactive. Other side note on Malkiel, one time after a lesson it came out that German isn’t the main language we speak in the United States and he and his mom were SHOCKED.

Malkiel's baptism

Malkiel and his Family

Malkiel with Primary Presidency and the Bishop

Now for Enrique. Always whenever we drop people we say "well, maybe the missionaries will pass by a few years down the road and he´ll be ready to receive the Gospel" but you don't really know if you believe it. But Enrique is living proof that it can happen! 

When we arrived at Enrique's house (after a lot of rejection and disappointment) he was like ¨bahh who sent you here¨ and we said ¨wot¨ and he told us that he´d met with the missionaries 3 or 4 years ago and went to church but then he got too busy and they stopped coming. So we set a baptismal date with him for October 5th and when we came back to teach lesson 1, before we even said the opening prayer he was like ¨hey do you have another Book of Mormon? I lost mine but I want to read¨ and he had written his baptism date on this card and also ¨My church as of September 19th 2019¨ and we said ¨wow¨. 

 And then the next day when we came back he'd read and marked multiple chapters in the Book of Mormon and we said ¨wow¨ and then last Tuesday when we were saying the closing prayer I felt the impression to invite him to be baptized on Sunday the 29th instead of Saturday the 5th (cause technically the first day he would be eligible would be the 29th) and he was like ¨yeah duh, I wanna get baptized asap¨ and there you have it, friends. He got baptized yesterday. A little 16-year-old in the ward baptized him and everyone had doubts that he´d be able to do it but alas, it was perfect. 

It was ALSO crazy cause the mission had set a goal for 125 baptisms in the month of September and Enrique was the 125th baptism! We reached the goal exactly! Talk about inspired goal setting.

Enrique's baptism

I`ve always had doubts that people could be ready to be baptized that fast but I think God let me have this experience to remind me that we don´t get to counsel him. In the Book of Mormon there are stories of people who were converted and baptized within the span of a day.

Other misc good news is Zoila's gettin IN to Family History and we started teaching Josit (who got baptized in July)´s dad.

I love you all! Keep the commandments!

Hermana Tolman

Also we went to a BEAUTIFUL land called Isla Perico (it's an island but they built a road over the ocean that goes to it. Kind of like the Florida keys but a lot smaller of a bridge) for Hermana P day this morning.