A Surprise Baptism

SURPRISE!!! Many more miracles have happened here in Cristalina! This week we were able to have a baptism and it was such a special moment! I felt like I could really see the Lords hand in our work this week! It’s truly amazing! So here’s a little bit about my week. :)

So this week we ended with the baptism of Thayná! She is the granddaughter of Irma Carmen, who was baptized about a month ago and she is 14. So she’s been staying with her grandma for about a month now, and every weekend she told us she was going to return home to go back to school, but she never returned. So she sat with us in most of the lessons with Irma Carmen so she basically already knew everything. So this weekend we got talking to her and just asked her if she wanted to be baptized and she said yes! So we made plans to have her baptized here! So Saturday afternoon was her baptism and it was so special! It was so cute! She was sooo happy! She had her best friends with her and Irma Carmen was so proud! It was such a special moment! As of today we aren’t sure if she’s going to go back to her house or if she is going to stay here with us. We have been praying for weeks for her to stay, and she stayed long enough to get baptized. So we will see what the outcome is this week.

We had another cool experience yesterday! One of our recent converts, Gilton, received the priesthood yesterday and he got called as the secretary of our group! It was so cool and such a special experience to see it all happen :) Just seeing how the Lord worked in his conversion. The Lord had it all planned out. We met him in the exact moment that we needed to and the rest is history! I’m super excited to see what else the Lord has in store for him! Every week he tells of new people he is inviting to church or moments he has had of sharing the gospel. He is already such a great missionary!

We also had some more progress with some of our investigators this week. Regis and Edivaldo. They are a couple that we met the other week and we have been trying really hard to help them out. They have a lot of problems, but their desire to change is huge! So we taught them the word of wisdom this week and talked about marriage with them. They weren’t too happy with the idea of marriage but they are getting more comfortable with it. Regis has really improved with the Word of Wisdom but Edivaldo is still having problems. But they are progressing! We went and visited them yesterday and Regis was telling us how she was telling a friend about the church and her friend brought her a book. Basically the book was full of churches that are sects or do things against god. And our church just so happened to be there. So we looked at it and the information it contained was correct. It was very interesting. So we taught the first vision and that seemed to calm them down a little bit ha. But the book is just one more sign that this church is true. There isn’t another church here on the earth that is attacked more than The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. From the beginning, from the days of the bible, this church was attacked and continues to be. Just goes to show that this church really is the true church.

Just another quick story. Last night we were doing visits with Gilton, and it started to pour so a lady invited us to take cover in her little garage until the rain stopped. We got talking to her and she told us that she sees us almost every day passing by and she noticed that we were someone different when we would say good morning to her. So she told herself that one day she would talk to us. So we took advantage of this opportunity and taught her and her sister. It turned out to be such a good lesson, more of her family showed up as the lesson went on. In the beginning she and her sister were telling us how her mother recently died. So we asked them what they believed with life after death and so we ended up teaching them the plan of salvation because they didn’t believe in much. It was perfect! It was such a spiritual lesson! So we are going to visit them again later this week :)

I’m so grateful for this wonderful plan that our heavenly father has made for us. He truly loves us. I’m so grateful for this opportunity i have to be here, helping these people find this hope and joy! I love this gospel!

Well I hope you all have a wonderful week! Keep reading the scriptures!

Love,
Sister Steadman