im pretty stoked right now cuz I had my first baptism yesterday!!! booyah boys!!! it went well but was a pretty stressful experience to get it all put together.
first off Eder Castellanos wanted to wait until saturday (the day before) to print the programs, buy the treats, practice the song we were gonna sing and talk to the bishop about having the service after church. I told him it was probly a bad idea to wait until the last minute to get everything put together. especially with a baptism cuz satan really doesnt like those and tries hard to keep them from happening sometimes.
for instace what happened with Tene. we found out the other day why she stopped talking to us. and thats because she didnt have a cell phone. i dont know if you remember her story but everything was ready to go for her but the day before we couldnt get ahold of her. well turns out what happened was that she was all ready to go and her mom came from vera cruz and everything but when they were in El Centro they got straight up mugged. purses and all and the cops were involved and everything. so no doubt satan had something to do with the decision that fine gentleman made to mug these women. so we got back in contact with her this week so that was good.
anyways, so saturday we bought our cookies and went to the zls area so adrian could have his interview. well that turned out to be complicated. we went on divisions so the zls could still make it to their appointments. well turns out Ixcotel (an area in our district) needed castellanos to come do an interview for them for baptism cuz he is the dl and they had the baptism scheduled for that evening so it was really important he come so i was left in the zls area all day until about 9:30 which is time to go home and therefore we could accomplish nothing to get ready for the baptism. just like I told him something unexpected came up and we were left unprepared. so sunday durring church we somehow threw everything together. it was a riot but it all worked out.
we had the service after church and had a great turn out wich was good cuz his parents werent there or anything. some people spoke, bore some testimonies, and me and castellanos and the sister missionaries from the other ward sang nearer my god to thee in spanish and I played the guitar. then we went to the font and I baptized adrian!
it was pretty sketchy, but I only had to dunk him once! I might have had to say the prayer 5 times, but thats not important :) i also didnt have my legs stance wide enough at first so i had a little trouble lifting him out of the water, but it went well. It was such a good feeling to know that I had just performed a priesthood ordinance for a son of God that would allow him entrance to the path to eternal life and make his first covenants with God. quite a profound thing if you think about it. afterward we were both just on a spiritual high and it was awesome.
so thats the big story this week. my first baptism! it was definitely a motivator. so ya thats about all I have time for this week. thank you so much for the emails. its so awesome to be up to date on whats going on with everyone. I love you guys and I´ll talk to you next week!!!
love
Elder Spencer Henze
Me, Castellanos, Adrian, and the family who´s house we always taught him at
me and adrian and castellanos
*As usual, click on the picture to see it bigger!!
