Gloria is going to be baptized this Friday!! I have been teaching Gloria ever since I got here! Well, we did stop teaching her for about a transfer. But that transfer made a huge difference. And like I said, it came down to our faith that she could make it.
Whenever we have talked to Gloria about getting baptized she has always said, "I want more time to study the book." well in Spanish she said that at least haha. But we were having the hardest time to find out what she meant by that, because practically everyone says that, but they all have a different doubt. Basically I can tell you that we never could find the doubt. She wouldn't open up to us! But I definitely know now that I have soooo much more that I can learn to be able to follow the spirit to be able to find peoples doubts. Yet, since we had been struggling in that aspect, we decided to move forward with something else. The faith that she was ready to enter into the waters of baptism.
About three weeks ago when we were doing weekly planning we were looking forward to when Gloria could get baptized. We both felt that the 18th of January was the day. We had plenty of time for that. So we set forth trying to meet with her as often as possible with the members. Well we had one of the most amazing lessons with her with Brother Martinez, her primary friendshipper. We went into the lesson, and by himself started to teach her from the scriptures! We read in 2 Nephi 32 where Gloria was in her reading, and tried to move back to chapter 31 to talk about baptism, and Brother Martinez jumped up to the plate and went right ahead and read verse 13!
"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism—yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel."
Ah it was so great! That was the Thursday before the 18th. And we invited her to be baptized the 18th still. She said she'd pray about it! The next day we had a dinner with her and the Regulez family, and the other elders as well.
We basically talked to her for three hours about being baptized the next day. Those three hours were super uncomfortable haha. I personally knew that my words weren't meant for most of that night, so I spent the time eating, and praying in the bathroom for the others haha. After three hours we ended with a song, and Gloria had decided we'd call saturday morning at 8:00 to confirm the baptism. Ah she was killing us! :D But the spirit in that home was so strong at the end of the night.
We were super happy to hear that due to the many testimonies of baptism given on Friday, Gloria felt the chills really strongly from the spirit. We talked to her and she firmly stated, "I am doing it Friday!" We were soooo happy!! She truly is ready!
We had soo many miraculous experiences this week with investigators getting married without telling us (Lorenzo and Ivonne) and good quality lessons with our investigators.
Thank you so much for your prayers! We were blessed this week because of them!
Have an amazing week, and make this week come to pass!
Les quiero muchísimo!
Élder Johnson
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