Man, I love baptisms! Nov 30, 2011

Lorena got baptized!!!!!! Everything went perfect! We spent a good amount of time friday night cleaning the church with several other members due to a bunch of remodelling that's been going on in the church, and then saturday morning we got to the church at 8am to try and heat up the water a little bit lol.... Get this: So since the hot water in the church runs out every 2min, we have to boil pots of water, and then pour it in the font to try and counteract the cold water. After about 30 large pots of boiling water, however, I'm not so sure anything changed. Lol nor did the water heat up at Tina's baptism. Hahaha so I don't know that we'll be trying that again. It was fun though. And it was Anziano Palmer performing the ordinance anyways, so no worries =) I made chocolate chip cookies for afterwards, and also Lorena and Bianka brought some cookies from a bakery and a little tostada (looks like pie, but it's not) and Sorella Feri brought some AMAZING pastries from some local bakery, that were probably on the more expensive end, and they were definitely worth it! We had 12 people all together at the baptism, which, when I first got here we only had 12 total people in church, so that was a huge success! Maxwell, an investigator of ours, was also there! Lorena was so happy!!! Man, I love baptisms. Then we got to spend a good amount of time cleaning the church again, and getting it ready for Sunday.

Man, and Sunday was super awesome as well!! We had two investigators come back to church! John and Hakim, who Anz Lehnardt and I taught for a while, but who then decided that they preferred their church, came back! They were very happy to see me lol or maybe they just love saying "Bushman", but nonetheless, I got a warm welcome from them, and then even more so yesterday when we went over to their house to teach them. Anyways, back to sunday, so we had a gospel principles class with Lorena, Bianka, Tina, Cucci, John, and Hakim along with Presidente Fergnani, and one of Pres Wolfgramm's counselor's that was visiting Siena. So we taught them all about the Gift of The Holy Ghost in preparation for them witnessing Lorena's receiving of the holy ghost in the next hour. It was super awesome!!! Anz Palmer also confirmed her a member. 

So, yeah, they're awesome. 

Just a couple more things before I have to get going, Hakim told us yesterday when we met with him that he wants to get baptized! He said that he did like Joseph Smith did, and has been reading the Book of Mormon for 2-3 months, and now he wants to "become a full member"! So we're super excited for him! Also, we started teaching a partial member family, of which 2 of the 4 members were baptized just about 6 months ago. The two that we're working with are Malvina and Romina. And they both are showing sincere desire to learn! So we are being greatly blessed down here in Siena to be able to see the work progress like it never has here! The members are also responding very positively! After turning us down all the time when we've asked them to come to appointments with us and whatnot, they are now asking us when we have appointments that they can come to! It's sweet!!!!

Oh, and also I got an email from Luca (we baptized him in Ravenna) so that was way exciting as well!

vi voglio tutti un sacco di bene!

Anziano Bushman