Cinco Bautismos y Misioneros Nuevos

We received the following email on September 9:

Hola amigos,

I had a really crazy discovery this week. In Spanish there are some people that are named Maria Juana, which I thought was a super funny and kinda unfortunate name. But the translation of that name to English is Mary Jane, so now that slang makes sense to me. You´re welcome for anyone who didn´t know that and for those of you who did know that, yeah I´m kinda slow sometimes.

This week was pretty awesome. We baptized a family of 4 and another 9 year old and it was super cool. The family is great. We found them the first week I got here cause someone invited the entire family to church after Eduardo went to FSY, a church camp that they have here. They had a few challenges and some of them were really hard. They took notes during all of our lessons and every sunday in church. And they read the scriptures and studied them. That´s how they overcame their problems. A week before the baptism, the mom told us that she didn´t care about their problems and they were´t gonna stop her. She wanted to be baptized with her kids. Now they´re some of the strongest members in our ward.

Planning baptisms is kinda stressful though. Especially when the important paperwork is in a different language and everyone has 99 names and there´s 5 people. If you notice in the picture I forgot my white tie but its all good. But yeah it was super cool and a super spiritual experience. The gospel really can completely change your life.

Also we got two new elders in our apartment and in our area this week. So now we have 4 elders in our apartment. That can be fun sometimes but also a little distracting too which makes things a little harder. Elder Hawkins is from Utah and will finish his mission in 5 weeks. Elder Moyano is from Brazil, Ecuador, Western Africa, Mexico City, and Arizona, and is trilingual in spanish, portuguese, and english. He just got here in the mission and came from Arizona. He´s actually waiting on his visa to go to the Washington D.C. North mission, which is confusing but also pretty cool. Apparently that mission includes a lot of Maryland now as well as Virginia so some of you guys might be able to meet him.

I hope you all are doing great!
Elder Olivier

Photos: One of all the baptisms this week, one of the family we baptized, and one of some of the missionaries eating tacos.