The Baptism Pool

Life here in MA is aMAzing. (hahaha it took me like 3 minutes to come up with that and it's totally lame.) But really it is quite good. Sister Roy is doing amazing, she does a great job of being patient with me when I have zero idea what's going on. Which is a good chunk of the time, so she must be REALLY patient. Luckily we get to work with some pretty incredible members that make our lives easy. Every time we go to help our members share the gospel and bring their friends closer to Christ, I feel like those two monsters from Monster's Inc. that are like janitors? And every time the Scarers walk by, they bang random tools on metal stuff and say "They're. Soo. AWESOME."

Me = janitor monster

Members = Scarers

So as a missionary we have 3 "pools" - the Finding Pool, the Teaching Pool, and the Baptism Pool. The Finding Pool is our list of potential investigators - mainly people that our members know and are working with. The Teaching Pool is anyone that we are currently teaching, and the Baptism Pool is anyone we are currently teaching that has a baptismal date. This week our baptism pool got a little ... literal.

So the Elders have been teaching this man named Jose Smith (that's right people, JOSEPH SMITH. His Dad's name is even Joseph. Which makes him JOSEPH. SMITH. JR.). And this Saturday he got baptized! We had the baptismal service at the church at 9:00 am and the Elders got there at 5:30 to fill up the font. It takes approximately 3 hours to fill. When Sister Roy and I arrived at a quarter to 9:00, we passed by the font room. THE FONT WAS EMPTY. Okay, not empty-empty, but like it had about an inch of water in the bottem. How do you baptize someone with an inch of water? Exactly, sprinkling. (Just kidding. We did not apostasize and sprinkle Jose.)  Apparently the plug got sucked DOWN THE DRAIN and the Elders hadn't noticed until about 2 minutes before we arrived! Everyone was in their seats ready for the program to start when we walked in to announce the font had drained.

Luckily our amazing Bishop saved us. He kind of reminds me of Harvey Dent from Batman but before he goes evil. ... Which is good because nobody wants an evil Bishop. He also happens to be quite wealthy and just happened to have completed construction on his brand new swimming pool this last week. That's right everyone, JOSE GOT BAPTIZED IN THE SWIMMING POOL. (Get it? Baptism pool. hahahahahahaha). It was quite the memorable experience and Jose was surprised when we told him that this usually doesn't happen. The service actually turned out pretty beautifully, after I ventured into the neighbor's yard to ask him to stop using his chain-saw.

Just another day in the life of a missionary. It's craziness. But I LOVE IT!

Also, to anyone who has written me a letter and not gotten one back, it's not because I don't totally love you and appreciate all you've said to me. I WILL write you back. The question is just when....

Anyways, I love you all! Thank you for being so supportive, it's a huge blessing.

Love,
Sister Gledhill