Alana's Baptism

It has been a while since I have made a post on my blog! And the best part is that this is another baptism story! New post and baptism story; double bonus! :)

Back in February my teaching companion and I talked with a woman named Alana on Mormon.org chat. The chat went really well and she seemed very interested and intent on developing a relationship with God and coming to know if Jesus Christ was true. Right from the beginning she was willing to do whatever it took to improve her life and find greater peace and joy in her day-to-day life. The first chat was great, we became friends with her on Facebook, and she said she would send us a message to work out a time to talk again. I waited to hear from her for a few days and still hadn't heard a thing. After about a week of not hearing from her I figured she must have changed her mind and decided she didn't want to meet with us again. A few days later I got a message from her! She said that some things had come up (which you will read a little more about in her testimony) so she wasn't able to send me a message any sooner. We set up a time to talk and started teaching her.

Lessons From Popcorn

Anyone who knows me knows that popcorn is one of my all-time favorite snacks; that and M&M's! Whenever my family and I would sit down for a movie or to play a game I would often pop a bag of popcorn and eat the whole thing by myself without any thought. They always told me how unhealthy it was but I didn't really care. It tasted good! What else mattered? :)

Since I have been on my mission I have been working hard on eating healthy foods instead of the junk that I used to eat. I have been doing a pretty good job! I have Raisin Bran for breakfast every morning, I have salads for lunch and dinner almost every day, soda only at one meal a week, and have been eating a lot less candy and other junk foods. I never would have willingly touched a salad or even a vegetable before my mission and suddenly here I am eating them every day! I would say that is quite a big change from how things used to be!

Lloyd's Baptism

Back in December I was introduced to an awesome man named Lloyd. He is someone that my companion at the time, Elder Hathaway, had been in contact with for a little while. So Elder Hathaway and I started teaching him more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and out beliefs. From the very beginning Lloyd told us about some of the amazing experiences he had had from simply seeing his local missionaries. I will let him share those experiences though! From before he even started talking with us, Lloyd had had some amazing experiences. I remember the first time we talked about them and we asked how he felt about it. He said he would need some time to think about it. Later that night (probably around 2 am his time) he sent a message sharing his thoughts on those experiences. This became a fun pattern of us teaching him a little bit, then him taking it and pondering and praying about what we shared, and sending us a message in the middle of the night with his findings!

After a few months of teaching him we talked a lot about baptism. He knew the Church and knew that baptism was something important but was still having some problems with it. For the longest time it seemed like his thought on baptism was something like "It will happens when it happens." (You will have to correct me on that if I am wrong, Lloyd!) And for the longest time it seemed like things kind of hit a standstill with us but Lloyd continued to do the right things--go to church, pray, read the Book of Mormon, meet with the local missionaries, etc. Then one day in early March, we got a message from Lloyd saying, " Look forward to meeting Saturday. Oh by the way, I have a new profile pic on skype....." Of course we immediately checked out his new picture to find that he had decided on a date to get baptized!!