October 14th

Plaza de los Tores near our apartment!

Samara's baptism!!

Good afternoon, morning, evening, whatever... to all of you! I think its probably going to be morning when you read this so.. GOOD MORNING DEAR FAMILY! How was your week?? This week was great! Really busy, really amazing!

First and foremost, with transfers being this week, we found out about our futures for the next 6 weeks on Saturday. And... drum roll please.... I´M STAYING IN MALAGA!! Although you probably already knew that from the subject but thats beside the point... but really, I´m stoked! I´m staying and with Hermana Nielsen still! We are baptize everyone and their dog this transfer! Hahaha really though I´m so excited, we work really well together and we are such good friends. This transfer has FLOWN by and I´m certain that the next one will too!

Also great news, SAMARA GOT BAPTIZED!! She did it!! We had a private, just family, missionaries and bishop baptism on Thursday evening for her. She got there and she saw the program cause we´d originally planned to sing the opening hymn, pray, then get her in the water before she freaked out even more. BUT she said she wanted to do the whole program first. So we changed it and had the testimonies and musical number first. We asked her mom, her aunt and her grandma to give testimonies and oh my goodness they were incredible!  Then Patricia, Samara´s mom, bore her testimony and shared her feelings from her own baptism 2 weeks ago. Then all of us missionaries sang I Know When I am Baptized. THEN what about made me cry. Estrella, the grandma, bore her testimony. She said that for years when the missionaries would pass by to visit her, she would tell her family not to open the door. She was so not interested in coming back, but then, one day, the day Hermana Johnson and I passed by, she said she felt like the Lord Himself was knocking on her door and she told them to open it. And now she is coming back to church, her family is reactivating and being converted and to hear her talk about the change in her home is incredible! She says that they are completely different and attributes it to the day that her Father in Heaven knocked on her door. Que fuerte! She got ALL of us in tears!

THEN the grand event, the baptism itself! We went into the bathroom to walk Samara to the font and she started freaking out again. She really never has put her head all the way under water, even when she goes swimming or in the bathtub and the poor girl was terrified! We´d had her home teacher come over the night before to give her a blessing and it helped but she was still scared. We told her to count to 10 after the prayer was over and that by the time she got to 10 it would be over. She gave us a little sassy look, said she would be doing the baptism backwards so they couldn´t see her face and that he BETTER only do it once, then flounced into the water. Haha but it was beautiful!! THEN she fainted in the water. As Elder Buckway lifted her back up, she went slack and her eyes stayed shut for a solid, terrifying 30 seconds. In my mind I was like, Shoot. We killed her. But then she shot awake and goes THAT SCARED ME! But then she was all happy and fine. She describes the experience of being like in heaven, cradled in her Father´s arms. So I guess if she feels that way... Our district leader keeps relating it to King Lamoni. But it really was a tender mercy that she was able to be baptized al final. And it was beautiful and she is LOVING it!

 

So this week was good and eventful and I expect many more like this one to follow!

Our teaching pool is actually getting really big. Its crazy we are having the problem now that we have too many people and not enough time, but we are working hard to balance things and prioritize. Our baptisms HAVE been increasing so much since we split the ward and our new bishop is so focused on missionary work. The area I´m in right now hadn´t had a baptism since March but now we´ve had 2 and 3 or 4 in the works! Really, when the ward comes together in this work, you see miracles! I LOVED that so many talks in conference focused on this because its so true! 

 

 Last pday we had a party in the chapel with our district and we were planning on just doing email in a locutorio nearby but then thanks to the LOVELY spanish custom of mediodia (really i love it 6 days of the week but pday it kinda stinks cause everything closes between 2 and 6, basically all of pday) they were all closed and we had to go back to our area which is about 30 minutes from the chapel, so we only had 45 minutes to email. It was rough, but the party was fun! We played board games. And today we are going shopping and then having a bday party for Hermana Nielsen and Elder Lopez in our district. Twill be delightful! 

! Funny story! We were singing (okay I was singing) happy birthday to Hermana Nielsen during mediodia on Saturday in our piso and our kitchen leads out to a little patio that ALL of our neighbor´s kitchens look down into. And I was singing loudly, opera style and I forgot the windows and door to the patio were open and pretty soon after I finished singing, we hear some kids from upstairs singing to her too... OOPS! Hahah it was funny though. they were singing in englsih and their accents were GOLDEN.

Love you all and hope you have great weeks!!

Hermana Folsom