Baptism and Hawa

This week has been super crazy! Life is super crazy. Anyway, Mary got baptized! She is so wonderful and such a good lady. I have learned a lot from her baptism:

1)      The Spirit is the one that does all of the work. Mary is from Ghana and she speaks Twi and very little English. Our lessons have to be less than thirty minutes and super, super simple (as if talking to a child). We have to explain any words that are religious or more than three syllables. There is no way that she was baptized because of what we say. She was definitely baptized because of what she feels when we talk to her and what the Spirit communicates to her.

2)      A referral is the best way to find investigators. All of our investigators who are on date were all referrals from members. Mary was a referral from her husband who has been a member for 30 years. He came to us one –and-a-half months ago and told us that she might listen to Sisters. She did and is now baptized! She had been investigating the church for over 10 years but stopped because she said that they Elders were too pushy. She met with us and we invited her on the first day but she said no and one-and-a-half weeks ago called the Bishop and said that she was ready.

3)      Do not give up! It took her almost 13 years but she is baptized. It took many, many, many missionaries but she finally took the plunge and got baptized. We asked her on the first day and she said no, we could have moved on and tried to find other people to teach but we felt that we needed to continue to meet with her. Even though, her English is limited and she rarely said anything when we talked we still felt that we needed to come over every other day and just one month later she called the Bishop and said, “Bishop, I am ready to be baptized. Please tell the missionaries.”

4)      I can do hard things. Brother Cukor (the ward mission leader) said that he would not be home on Saturday for the Baptism. Brother Cukor, she said, is her favorite person and she wanted him to be there. So we asked her if she wanted to wait two more weeks, do it any way, or move her date up to Thursday (the day before Brother Cukor left). She said that her husband is only home from work on Tuesdays so we could do it then. That gave us: Sunday- Teach Plan of Salvation and Monday- teach the commandments and do the mock interview and then the real interview. I did not believe that we could do it. That is so hard. How can we teach all of that in two days? I did not believe that we could do it. But we did and it worked out just fine.

I am so happy that she is baptized. We made an eternal family. It was wonderful. I am so happy. Hopefully in one year I will see them sealed for all eternity. That is going to be a wonderful day.

We just had a lesson with Hawa. We asked her why she wants to baptized and she said that she wants to be Christian. She wants to know more about God and Jesus Christ. She wants to be a part of this church because it helps her to know that He is real, that He loves her, that He forgives her (she has a child out of wedlock), and that she is cared for. She is just great. We are taking her to the Vistitor's Center on Friday (tentatively). Hopefully she will get baptized on August 18^th.