Remember the "Kit-KAT"

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN SO AWESOME!!!

We have had the craziest week this week! We had three baptisms on Saturday, which went super awesome. Sister Kozak was the speaker and she gave the baptism talk for the Vazquezes (those being baptized, aka Rhonda, Eric, and Carlos). She said that the Kit-Kat candy bar perfectly represents baptism. She said it is a Baptism Kit that tells you what you are about to promise to do. First, Keep the commandments. When we are baptized, we promise to keep all of God's commandments. Second, Always remember Jesus Christ. Like it says in the sacrament prayers, we need to always remember our Savior so that we can do our best to resist temptations. Last, Take His name upon you. It is important that when we are member's of Christ's church, that we are doing our best to represent Him. Our example is what people will see when they see The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we need to being doing all that we can to be a good example and exemplify Christ as best as we can so that others may be uplifted and brought to the gospel. Therefore, its a baptism Kit-KAT. Get it? I thought it was an awesome analogy. I wrote that down in my journal too so I can remember it forever.

We also had three of our investigators at the baptism, none of whom who had ever come to church before! Which is saying something since we have had at one point 7 of our investigators at church at one time. It has been super awesome in the week leading up to those baptisms. Every day, so that we could keep in contact with them and make sure they knew they had our support, we texted them, or they texted us so that we could get to know each other better. One of the first questions was "if you were left on a deserted island all by yourself, what three things would you bring?" My answer? My Kindle, my pillow, and an axe. <- Basically so I could build myself a shelter and relax all day long reading. My companions answer? Ice cream, her phone, and a helicopter. Her goal? To get off the island. Haha I thought that was really funny, and definitely shows the differences between our personalities.

We not only had three baptisms on Saturday, but three of the families in the morning ended up moving as well. One moved to a different ward, but the other two just moved into different homes in the same ward boundaries. There were apparently so many people to help, that they finished all three moves about 30 mins before they were even supposed to show up to the last one. They finished right before 11, which is when My companion and I showed up to help the Groves move their daughter in with them. We were able to help organize stuff though, which was super useful for them. The Groves just so you know are an awesome family where everyone but the grandmother was baptized a year ago. Sister Grove (the grandmother) was baptized later because of some Word of Wisdom issues she had to fix before she could be baptized. Brother Grove is a biblical scholar and he basically knows the entire Bible front to back. So everything we tell him he already seems to know. He is however enjoying having the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Covenants to decipher.. 

We worked really hard this week to achieve all of our goals, and we did! that was super awesome:) We even had 14 lessons where members came with us! That was super awesome too. The members here really are nice and have really good testimonies that they are willing to share.

The investigator was going to be baptized on Sunday? That's pretty unusual considering they'd have to wait a week before being confirmed, since that usually happens in the following Sacrament Meeting. I assume it had to do with the fact that she was near delivery though? That's too bad though, then the baby could say that he was baptized twice.. Haha, not really, but it would be funny.

I love that you shared that experience with me with the Sacrament Mom:) Its been hard sometimes to focus on the talks that are being given because we are so worried about the investigators that we have with us. For example, last week we had a less active who came to church for the first time in years, who has a issue with the Law of Chastity (She doesn't really understand that you can't just say sometimes is ok to not follow it and other times its not) and every single talk was on the Law of Chastity.. And then there was another investigator who was an shy 19 year-old who we hadn't taught the Law of Chastity to yet, and she probably thought that it was the weirdest church ever considering her first Sunday at church was Stake Conference, and then the next time she comes its about chastity.. haha oh well. Anyway, my point is though, that this actually happens a lot, and while I'm sure it is important for these people to hear this, and it will probably be the thing they need to hear, we get the fall back, and some people aren't very happy with us. We are still teaching both of them though, and the boy friend of the less active we are also teaching, and he is super open about the whole thing.

Oh! That reminds me, we were teaching the boyfriend the other day, with a member, and we were teaching the Plan of Salvation. He was raised Baptist, and he said that he didn't like being forced to go to church when he was younger so he quit going, but as we were teaching the Plan, we were discussing how it was different from what any other church believes, and he said that what we had shown him was what he had always thought he believed, but he never had it all concretely laid out before. So basically, he said he remembered this plan from the Pre-exsistance. That was super awesome:) It also made my day, because I always wanted someone to tell that to me.

This was my Zone last transfer:)

Oh! Other crazy thing I almost forgot to tell you. We have this investigator named Ashley who we have been teaching for the past few weeks. She actually attended church for a while with her member boyfriend's family, and then I met her at church (not knowing she wasn't a member, because I didn't know anyone) and we ended starting the discussions that week. Her boyfriend goes to school at BYU-I, and since she wants him to baptize her, we have all been counting down the days until he comes home from school, which is this Saturday. (side note, this means Ben and Josh are finishing their semester this week, so good luck on your Finals!) We asked her to be baptized that first week we had met her, and set her date to be the 25th of July. A few weeks later, we pushed the date because we weren't sure when her boyfriend would be getting home that Saturday so we just decided to be safe we would move it, but then they will be out of town the weekend of the 1st of August, so we scheduled it for the 8th. Yesterday, we finished lesson four with her, and because of the rules now, we have to teach all 5 lessons before they are interviewed for baptism, so our plan was to finish the 5 lesson this week, go over the questions with her to make sure that our mission president wouldn't have to interview her, and then interview her next Sunday (which would be 2 weeks in advance) for her baptism. Yesterday, she found out that her boyfriend's grandfather would be leaving to go home on the 1st, and because she doesn't have a whole lot of support at home, and she really likes this family, she asked if it were possible for her to be baptized on the 25th. THIS SATURDAY.. They are supposed to be interviewed a week in advance, and we still hadn't finished the lessons, so we made about 6 phone calls last night to all of our leaders to ask if it were first of all feasible for it to happen, and number two, if we should do it. We were told to pray about it for ourselves, so we did, and after talking to Ashley on the phone (because she had texted us this) we had decided to go ahead with the baptism this Saturday. She is definitely ready, and has been for a while, but it was a stressful hour since we found this out at about 9 last night, and our curfew was 9, and we had to be off the phone by 10:30. We called the Bishop, the ward mission leader, and his assistant, our district leader, Ashley, and all these other people to get this going. We have to cram a lot of stuff into one lesson tonight so that she can be interviewed right after. We have paperwork we need to work out, we have to schedule the building (and pick out a time fro the baptism), figure out who is giving each talk, praying, playing the piano, etc. So its going to be pretty awesome I think. This does mean though that for three weeks in a row we will be having a baptism every Saturday, because Nina, another of our investigators is being baptized on the 1st of August next week:)

We are so super excited!!

Love you all!

Sister Monica Walker

PS I'm still Mom's favorite

PPS Dad's too:)

PPPS Thanks for the camera!! The pictures will be sent in another email:)