Baptism and Bon Appetit!

Dear family,

We had a baptism this week!!! A nine year old girl, daughter of a family we found a few weeks back! Very exciting. We spent a long time preparing the chapel, the font. I fixed the mirror above the font so that the people could actually see unlike our first baptism, and people started filing in. Elder Orihuela and I gave talks, him on baptism, me on the Holy Ghost, various testimonies, very cool. The water was coooold but still worked out. Her cousin baptized her, a return missionary.

Hopefully I can send a picture back Internet is being weird, they aren't very good, Elder Orihuela has better but won't let me copy them from his camera.

So yea, that investigator is doing well. Her family likes us a lot, and expressed sadness at the idea that one of us will probably transfer this 2nd of January. Probably Elder Orihuela.

Others are Jose Roger and Beatrice, these three are brothers and sisters, their mom set us up with them, she still needs to receive the lessons herself, but yea they are good. Unfortunately we went a little time without visiting them, and they haven't been to church the past two Sundays, disqualifying them from being baptized good and soon.

Laura, an investigator who we used to teach a while back, we encountered again. It was a bit of a miracle. Standing about a mile away from her house, we asked ourselves which of three investigators needed us most. We felt like her, and when we arrived, she told us how she had been wondering when we would come back earlier that day. (after about a month of not seeing her). We teach her in this big room with sometimes a family member or two, that has a dark blue ceiling and only one light bulb.

Augustin. Argh. He has lost his animos [excitement] to be baptized.. hasn't been to church in 2 weeks. We talked with him and he said he wanted to talk with the bishop, which is good, but he should really just talk with us.  I don’t think it was about a sin, just whether he should be baptized. This is the one that went to church twice before we actually went to our citas [appointments] to teach him.,.. thinking this has something to do with that.

Mario. Hermana Marisol introduced us to Mario. He is about 25 and really, really humble and respectful. He basically lives all the commandments right now, and could easily be baptized. He accepted a date to be baptized our first (and only so far) meeting ( a sign of someone escogido [chosen]-- see Doctrine and Covenants 29:7)

Yenny (Jenny) has a goal to be baptized next week, but something is keeping her back. She knows for herself that the church is true ( like all those who are baptized ) but has some fear which she hasn't shared with us. Hopefully, hopefully. Her children yes can be baptized very soon.

We had the oddest lesson so far the other day, we were helping prepare chickens for the market in this family's house (in the mansion area-- poor) and they started asking us this: Which church is the true church of them all?. Very cool. Not cool though is skinning chicken feet with your fingernails.

I accidentally carved a hunk of my finger off yesterday-- about .25 grams or more maybe. didn't hurt tho thanks to the sharpness of the knife Juli gave me! Thanks!!

We contacted a man the other day who spoke like he was from Spain...had that accent. He also is named Percy, and had obviously taken great care to re-color his naturally bright red hair. I didn't ask if he still works for the Ministry of Magic now that Cornelius Fudge is out.

Love,

Elder Mark Johnson