A Baptism

February 4, 2009

Dear family,

Every transfer we have a zone conference and interviews. Two different days. They're always on Tuesdays so our P-day gets moved to Wednesday. That's why I write a day late sometimes.

We had a really awesome baptism this last week. They were two girls that I helped teach with Elder Anderson and Elder Dudoich. Their names are Abby and Bianca. They're young girls, teenagers. One of the coolest things about the baptism though was that we had three investigators there. One of them is the guy I was telling you is going to be baptized. He loved the baptism. We went over to his house the next day and talked to him a lot more about him being able to be baptized. He was excited to be able to start a new life. It turns out that the 15th is his birthday. So that's when we set his baptismal date for. A new year a new life. Just two days after your birthday Amy!

We had a really neat experience with Tomasa just the other day. We've been teaching her for quite a while now. Even since Elder Johnstun was here. She's never been to church before this last week. It was a miracle story. She was having a really bad morning. Just mad at the whole world. She tried calling us to tell us not to come by but she couldn't get a hold of us because our phone doesn't accept calls outside of our area code (her phone has a California area code). Then she recognized that it was Satan trying to prevent her from doing what is right. When she related the story to us she told us over and over that she told Satan to get out of there. It was really cool to hear in Spanish. It was a lot more powerful. Then she decided if we came by to show her how to get to the church that she would go. And of course Heavenly Father made sure we went by her house and she followed us to church! The story doesn't end there though. She couldn't stay longer than just one hour because she had a court hearing right after sacrament meeting finished. She was really worried about the court because she hadn't done whatever it was that she was supposed to. She didn't have the money or resources to finish. But she had been praying for help. Because of that and probably her willingness to follow the Lord for no apparent reason her court hearing was changed to a week later. Which gave her sufficient time to get everything finished. It was a powerful testimony to her of the hand of God in her life. She also has a grandson named Santiago who has received many miraculous blessings as a result from prayer as well. We're excited to go see them in the next couple of days. We're going to extend a baptismal invitation to them!

By the way my favorite scripture is D&C 6:36-37. I think I told dad that on Christmas. But there's no rush. We've still got a year and a half to get that done. haha.

Well time is almost up. I love you all so much. Sorry I didn't answer too many of your questions. But I hope you enjoyed my stories from this week.

Love
Elder Ben Arnold