Do you think he could baptize me? [From 11 SEP 2012]

Sister Thomas got transferred. My new companion is Sister Liston. I will miss Sister Thomas so much! But Sister Liston and I are having a good time already. She loved seeing all the windmills on our way home. It reminded me I need to get a picture.

I’m not an exchange sister anymore. It was the best being one with Sister Thomas! We had so much fun working together to help our sisters. We had some neat experiences with new investigators accepting baptismal dates. We have two new ones. The first being Max. We talked with him about a living prophet and the Book of Mormon. We left him Alma 32 to read. We stopped by the next day and he had read the whole chapter. The day before he had said it would take him days to read it. As we talked about the restoration and the priesthood he nodded. We invited him to be baptized and asked when we were having a baptismal service. He told us he would read the Book of Mormon every day until he finished. Amazing!

The other, Javier, understood pretty quickly the importance of the priesthood and being baptized by it. Out of no where, I mentioned his neighbor down the road and that he held the priesthood. He responded, "He does?! Do you think he could baptize me?" We said of course and invited him for the 14th of October. He said, " Well, the 12th is my birthday." "We could do it then if you wanted." "Yes, I would like that." Incredible!

Another lady we invited to be baptized for Nov. 11th said she would pray about it. We read the beginning of 3 Nephi 11 and she loved it! And I mean loved it! She couldn't stop saying how beautiful it is and that it makes more sense than the other bibles. She is so excited to read it.

And all three of them are Spanish. Yay! It felt so good to teach in Spanish. Poor Sister Thomas was lost and falling asleep sometimes, but I tried to keep her a part of the lesson and involved. And now with Sister Liston I’ll try even harder to help her be a part of it.

The Branch is growing! We have more at Sacrament meeting than we did 6 weeks ago. Also this past Sunday was my first Sunday translating. Ahh! I was so nervous! I was shaking! My studies that morning were not focused or very productive. Sad to say but true. I didn’t have anything to read from. I didn’t have copies of the talks. So I was doing it on the fly. I’m afraid I missed about half, but at least I got that much! The Sanchez family was grateful. I’m hoping we'll have more Spanish next week! I have a vision of a Spanish branch out here in Rio Vista. We met so many people this past week! It was amazing!

Time is almost up.

I LOVE YOU FOREVER!

Hermana Stephenson