July 29, 2013
Missionary Slim uses the interwebs to help a missionary in Utah 'attend' a baptism. Sweet! (Week 77 in Pennsylvania, Week 1 in Dover, PA)
It's always amazing when weeks like this happen,
when everything seems to be so mundane, so ordinary. We taught lessons,
we found some interesting people, that sort of thing. But the weekend
was something spectacular.
First off, this week we're splitting our area. Sister
missionaries are coming in to take over the York half of our area. My
companion and I are now officially serving in the Dover area. That means
that nearly all of our investigators are being turned over to those
sisters, and that means that the coming weeks will be very interesting
indeed.
We got a call several weeks ago about a referral -
someone had stumbled upon Mormon.org and started chatting with the
missionaries there. Those missionaries in turn sent the request to us to
stop by and visit this person. After getting in contact with him, we
found out that he was going out of town for a long time, and wouldn't be
back until this past week. So, I gave him a call, set up a visit, and
we went over.
We sat down and started visiting with Kyle, and asked
him the usual question: "What possessed you to go and visit Mormon.org?"
His is probably the best response I've ever gotten. I'll paraphrase:
"Well, my family is Catholic, but I've never really
attended or gone to church at all. I've never read the bible, I've never
really prayed or anything. One day, my family was taking a 'What Faith
are You?' quiz. All of them ended up being Catholic. When I took it,
though, I ended up being Mormon.
"I was curious, so I went to the website and started
looking around. Then a chat box popped up, and I started talking with
the missionaries. They answered a lot of my questions, and I learned a
lot. And ever since then I've just had an incredible desire to learn."
Pretty awesome. He's in the sister's area, so that
might make it hard for us to keep tabs on his progress. I'm pretty sure
that he'll make great progress though.
This
weekend, we had two baptisms. Yes, two. I'm amazed myself. The first was
for a sister named Sarah. I've probably talked about her before - she
was taught all of the lessons online by a sister missionary in Utah.
She's been eluding us the whole time, but when we finally got word that
she has a baptism date, we finally got in touch and arranged the whole
affair.
The baptism itself was probably the first of it's kind -
I'm sure no other missionary would ever try to pull the stunt that I
did. Sarah didn't really know a whole lot of people from the ward, so
when it came time for her to choose who to give her talks on Baptism and
the Holy Ghost for her baptismal service, she was at a loss. She knew
of one person to give a talk, but she couldn't think of anyone else. We
missionaries wanted to stay out of it.
Someone made the suggestion "Why not have Sis. Russel
do it?" Yes, a brilliant idea! Have the missionary that taught her give
the talk. After a little bit of brainstorming, and talking with Sis.
Russel, we decided that it would be possible to do a Skype-in talk on
baptism. This was pretty incredible for Sis. Russel too, because she had
always been told that as a computer missionary, she would help the
people to baptism, but would never actually see the service herself.
Well, we did just that. We carted a laptop computer over to the font so
she could see the ordinance, and she was 'present' for the entire
service. It was pretty unique.
The
second baptism was for Juan, a 12 year old who we've been teaching for
just a few weeks. His entire family has already been baptized (except
the dad) and they are very friendly towards the church. He's your
regular, average kid - playing video games and pranks, but usually
wanting to do the right thing. Well, he did.
So,
the work is certainly moving forward. I'm glad I was able to play a
part in the baptism of these individuals. It's been an incredible
experience.
Here's to the future!
Love,
Elder Alex Anderson, AKA Missionary Slim
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