Bautismo de Jose

Diego got interviewed for baptism on Thursday and passed pretty easily. He is the 9 year old we are teaching and he is just such a funny kid. Everytime we go over, he is already waiting outside and wants to give us chips, cookies, and something to drink. We taught the Plan of Salvation one last time and we brought a white board over to draw out all the different parts. It helped him out a lot to visualize it and he honestly just has a strong desire to do what is right. He doesn't want to fight kids anymore, say bad words and he always tells us that "Satan sucks" haha. He just really wants to be on God's side and he should be getting baptized on Sunday night!
The weekend was pretty awesome with Jose getting baptized and confirmed. Jose has been on fire from the time he met us and has a really bright future! He invited a lot of family and friends to his baptism and the majority of the people at the baptism weren't members. The service was well-attended and we had a little lunch afterwards with everyone that came! Jose felt really great about the covenant he made and was so pumped that he even ripped his jumpsuit whenever we were changing back into our dry clothes! He will be getting the priesthood really soon and hopefully we will be able to plan a temple trip for later this month.  Reynaldo, our 80 year old-soon to be 81 year old friend, is doing great as well! He even came to the baptismal service to see what it is like because he has a baptismal date for the 21st.

We had exchanges with our zone leaders this week and I went to their area again. We went to this neighborhood full of part member families and we met this really cool guy named Brother Taylor. He is in the Army and is launching a new eSports program in the Army, so he will be moving soon. It was really cool to talk about his hobbies and interests and then help him see how much his family needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives right now.

We had service this week at this "mini horse sanctuary" and these older ladies made us feel like body builders because we were just lifting stuff out of this barn and putting it in a different shed. I guess they are doing some remodeling on the shed and they just needed us to clear it out. It wasn't honestly that heavy, but just funny that they were hyping up our pretty average strength like it was something else haha.

We have some appointments set up for this week with some people with a lot of potential to be baptized soon as well. One of them is named Ana and she is great friends with a member and she even has a sister who is a member. It has been challenging to meet with her because she was trying to pass some sort of test at work, but she finally gave us an actual time to come by so we are stoked.

One last miracle was seeing our friend Christian get a job. His wife, Brenda, was recently baptized, but he still needed help with work. When we were talking with a member the other week, he mentioned that there was an opening at a construction company, so we helped Christian to start working with them, which should help them start a family soon! This guy almost died a few weeks ago, but now he is married, his wife got baptized, and he has stable work! The Lord has been blessing them so much recently.

I read a talk this week that explained how the gift of the Holy Ghost will help calm fears. It says,
"In these perilous times, we need this unspeakable gift in our lives. President Boyd K. Packer reminds us: “We need not live in fear of the future. We have every reason to rejoice and little reason to fear. If we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we will be safe, whatever the future holds. We will be shown what to do.”"
I think we sometimes take for granted this special gift and we let ourselves get overwhelmed with fear, but if we learn how to listen to the promptings of the Holy Ghost in the present, then future events won't be so scary.

Elder Moon