August 23, 2010

Great story about having to fill the font with rain water because the water was cut. It must have been some rain storm to collect that much rain. God always provides a way. Sam also mentions Elder and Sister Leavitt, the senior couple in Benin, who are having to return to the states early to get Elder Leavitt's knee repaired. He was robbed and pushed to the ground in March and his knee has never been the same since.

Hey everyone!

Things are still going splendidly here. Zone conference was pretty good. Elder Sitati talked a lot about planning. After that we had to hurry back to the ward for our baptism (us and elder starita and his comp). Me and my comp had a baptism and elder starita and elder myinguila baptized a couple that finally got married after being investigators for a year. When we got to the baptism though, there was no water in the font. We asked why nobody had filled it up and they said that the water was cut. So we had no idea how we were going to do the baptism that was in an hour. Just then, it started pouring rain. So, naturally, my district and i started collecting all of the rain water in buckets and then throwing the water into the font. We did that for about thirty minutes until the rain stopped. Now we were soaking wet but there was at least some water in the font (a little less than knee level). So we decided to go ahead and do the baptism. Basically the canidates had to lay down on the bottom of the font to be completely immersed but after multiple tries for each person, everyone got baptized haha. It was quite the experience but showed that when God wants someone to be baptized, he will even provide the water.

We still working really hard here. We have at least five people that will get baptized next month so things are really moving. I still really love it. We had another good lesson with the Diomandés this week. We got the first counselor in the ward to write his testimony and put a picture of his family in the book and then we presented it to the Diomandés. They were very happy to recieve it. We talked to them about marriage too and they said that they are planning their wedding for December. That is so awesome (even if i probably will not be there).

I got your packages this week! Thank you so much! The white shirts are perfect, i wore one to church yesterday! Now i can throw away a lot of my old shirts.

That is way sad about the Leavitts! They were so awesome, i got here and really started missing them. That will be a big loss for the mission.

O well that is all i got this week! I love you all! Have a good week!

Elder Bertoch