Baptism in Santa Rita & New Use For Hymn Book - January 17, 2011



Rosa, Elder Snow, Gunter & Elder Woodruff




Members & Investigators at Gunter's Baptism in Santa Rita
January 15, 2011

 
Dear Familia!

Wow, thanks so much for the awesome letter that you sent. I feel like such a slacker because you are writing me these great emails and I´m not leaving enough time to write you very much back. But at least I´m sending some pictures this week! Woohoo!.

Sounds like you all had an awesome week. Congrats to Dad on getting an Eagle. I´m impressed, still a feat that I am yet to accomplish.

Thanks for the updates on all the stake meetings. It sounds like they were all very uplifting and I am impressed that you were able to take so many positives out of it, thanks for sharing!

Sounds like you had a couple nice temple experiences. What a great place!  It´s always great to feel the spirit of the temple.

This week we had an awesome baptism for Gunter! I was blessed to be able to baptize him. Everything went well and we had a great turnout! There were some 30 people I think, and a bunch of investigators. The people here are so amazing and the members so dedicated. I felt so much love towards Gunter and his mom, Rosa. Rosa was baptized by Elder Durrant about a week before I came to Santa Rita, so she is a new convert as well. She is setting an amazing example for her family and Gunter is a great kid as well. We were blessed to hear Rosa´s testimony, which was very powerful.

There were a couple funny moments from this week as well. One was at the baptism of Gunter. There is a recent convert family that was there, but it was just the mom and the kids. One of the kids was kinda getting out of hand and knocked over a chair. Then his mom went up and hit him right in the head with a hymn book. It made a super loud noise right during Rosa´s testimony and everyone looked awkwardly over, then just laughed a little bit.

Also at church, we asked Rosa to give a talk about her experience thus far in reading the Book of Mormon. We are trying to help all the members read the Book of Mormon and she is doing a great job so we asked her to share. She read this super random scripture for a couple minutes about Nephi and his brothers returning to get wives in Jerusalem, then asked Elder Woodruff to interpret it. I made a joke after that it could have been a lot more awkward if she had read a quote about circumcision or something then asked him to interpret it. But all in all, Rosa did a great job

We have been very blessed this week to find some awesome new people. I love that there are so many families here in Santa Rita and that families are very important to the people. I´ll write some more about investigators next time.

Dad had asked about the language. With Spanish, I´m doing fine now. I can understand about 100 % and respond easily so that´s not too much of a problem. Now I´ve got to worry about Portuguese though, hah. The majority of people here speak Portuguese and that´s harder for me to understand. Sometimes I feel like I´m back in week one, just smiling and nodding, but usually I´m alright.

Thanks for all of your support. I love you all very much!

Elder Snow

P.S. Last week I got a package from Sister Baldwin for Christmas. I just about died when I opened it. I saw home made chocolates and let out a big "Yes!!" So delicious, thank you Heidi!
Also, today I got the Christmas card you sent, mom. Very funny! You never cease to amaze with your Christmas letters. Elder Woodruff got a kick out if it as well. Thanks for that.