Well we did it! Jessica was baptized last Saturday! Elder Stout baptized her and I confirmed her the following day. It was amazing and we were able to have Omar there as well. He is very excited to be baptized and he's counting down the days now. Jessica feels great! She had a smile all day at church and we were really happy to see that many of her family and friends came to see her get baptized. We hope that her example will help lead them to investigate the church.
Elder Stout, Jessica, and me
We're still meeting with Omar everyday and he's so solid that it's unsettling!!! I keep thinking "there's no way anyone is this solid. There has to be something wrong!" But the truth is he just wants to have a relationship with God and the most important thing in his life right now is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He reads on his own, prays, comes to church and always seems to know all the right answers to the questions that we pose. He is being edified by the spirit every day and I do believe that he will be one of the strongest members of the church. I'm excited to see him be baptized and mostly to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
We met someone else this week who I want to talk about. His name is Daniel. He is about 18 and lives a very humble life. His family is very poor and he's had a very hard past. He says that he's always been the black sheep of the family and has always neglected God. He wants to finally get to know who he is and wants to be baptized. When we talked about the Book of Mormon with him he completely took to the idea that God is still revealing scripture. What he does is he prays for guidance and then he opens the book and starts to read. When he did this for the first time he read 3 Nephi 37:20 which told him to be baptized. He was going to come to Jessica's baptism and to church the following day but about 30 minutes before the baptism he texted us and said "hey guys I think I'm going to give the Catholic Church another chance."
When you're a missionary you learn how to "see others as they may become" (talk by Thomas S. Monson). You develop a desire to teach them not because it's what missionaries do but because you realized that they're your brothers and sisters here on this earth and you want to see them obtain the celestial kingdom with you when this is all over. Daniel is one of many who has dropped us and it is always what hurts the most on a mission. But we just can't give up on him. We have to keep bugging him because it's his eternal salvation that is at stake here and if we're not bugging him then who will? No one.
If anyone has not read the talk "See Others As They May Become" I encourage you to read it. Especially future missionaries!!!!
Also my companion ate a grilled Jalapeño yesterday and just so you know, when you gill a chili it becomes about 50x more spicy than usual. I at 5 and this is what happened to my companion after eating one:
Also because me and my companion both have a mutual friend on the mission we sent this to him for his birthday:
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