Elder Justin Thiel

October 14, 2014 at 1:16:21 PM MDT

This week was pretty good!  We had one of our investigators get baptized, named Robert Jones. I had been teaching him since I got to Warner Robins, so it was great to see him get baptized after almost 6 months of lessons.  I was able to confirm him and that was a very special experience for me.  His baptism was a catastrophe.. it started out like this... his baptism was at 10 am so we went over to our ward mission leaders house at 8:45 to leave for the church.  We got there just fine and left on time but half way to the church, we found out that our ward mission leader had left his keys to the font at his house, so we turned around and got them.  When we got there, we worked on printing out the programs for the baptism and our ward mission leader started filling up the font. Well by some miss communication.. we ended up with 20 copies of each side of the program instead of 20 double sided copies so we had spend time fixing that.. when I went to check on the font, our ward mission leader had only turned on the hot water so the water was at 100 degrees. So after fixing all of that, it was10 am.  So we all waited for Robert to arrive.  At 10:15 he still hadn't arrived,  so we went over to his house and he had been running late so we headed back to the church with him following behind us.  When we got to the church, we had him and the man baptizing him get dressed and we headed back into the Relief Society room to wait.  Twenty minutes had got by and they still hadn't come back in yet, so now it is at 10:45 am... we go to see what wrong and it turns out that because of another miscommunication, they had been waiting in the font for everyone to come witness the baptism..  So we had an opening prayer with them in the font and then they performed the baptism.  Our ward mission leader was a little flustered, but we went along with the program as if nothing had happened.   When they were dried off and in the relief society room, I gave a talk on Baptism and the Holy Ghost and we ended with a closing prayer..that will be a baptism that no one will forget.. 

In church this Sunday, I had the opportunity to sing a special musical number as a solo.  I sang, "If The Savior Stood Beside Me."  I hadn't had very much time to work on it because of our busy schedule, but the ward members came up to me afterwards and said I did great!!! and many said they were shocked I could sing and asked me why I had been hiding my talent?  I'm sure the Lord helped me and that is why is sounded good.

We were able to meet with Jeffery and Nicole, our investigators, this week and we had an awesome lesson!  We taught them the Plan of Salvation and the whole time Nicole was commenting that it made a lot of sense.  At the end of the lesson, Nicole said, "Man, I want to be a Mormon!" which I'm not going to lie, that was what I was hoping for her to say..:)  We put she and Jeffery on date for the 7th of November.. The only problem is that they are only engaged and living together and they both use the vapor things instead of smoking, so we have some commandments to work on, but they are great!

Our investigator that was set up to be baptized on the 1st of November fell off date because he didn't come to church this week.  We haven't been able to meet with him since our first meeting, but he has been reading the Book of Mormon every day and says that he gets a great feeling every time that he does, so we just need to meet with him again and we are good! 

I'm sorry to hear about everyone getting sick.. that is great to hear about Jacob's accomplishments!  Man I can't believe that he has already been through "Set Your Course!"  He is getting so old!  He is probably a lot taller than he was when I last saw him.

I'll be excited to receive that package and I am glad that you are working on reading the scriptures as a family and praying together.  I have learned the lesson that obedience brings blessings and that the Lord blesses us for our righteous efforts!

I love all of you and hope that you all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thiel