Baptisms

January 5, 2010

Hola familia,

First, we had a baptism on Saturday. Yisel and Ana, the daughters of the Vargas family, were baptized. It went really well. Ana was a little nervous but got over it and she did a good job. They are 11 and 8 respectively. The water was pretty cold. We couldn't start filling up the font until late because there was a primary meet the teacher in another ward that morning.

We've been so busy lately. There's so much to do with not very much time to do it all. We've had two Elders living in our apartment with us for the past few weeks. They just moved out yesterday. It feels empty in there now. There will be less distractions in the evenings though, so that will be good in that way.

The Pasco Stake has been seeing a lot of success in missionary work lately. For this month of January we're looking at just under 30 baptisms, which is just less than half of the total number baptized in all of 2009! It's been mind blowing.

We're teaching a young man, 26, named Francisco. He's a really smart kid. Maybe I can't call him a kid because he's older than me. He's been coming to church for a little while but haven't started teaching him until more recently. We were teaching him about the apostasy and the falling away of the church after Christ. Then he made a comment about that's why the church needed to be restored. Elder Hortin and I just kind of sat back stunned. I've never heard anybody say that before. Or understand that that quick. He's committed to be baptized on the 16th of this month!

There was another baptism in the branch this last Sunday. In fact there were six people that were baptized all together. One family, and two others that are really good friends. Investigators of the other Elders and the Sisters. Each one of them had somebody different baptizing them as well. So there was a lot of people dressed in white.

There's been a change in Pasco in the last few months. All of the missionaries are catching it and you can see the vision in their eyes. It's so much fun to be around so many missionaries that have that mindset and desire to work.

I love you all
Elder Ben Arnold