Randy's Mission to the Philippines: Elder Booth's First Baptisms!!

What an amazing time! Elder Booth's First Baptisms! As you can see from the letter, he's pretty excited about the whole thing. Congratulations! How exciting! Go Elder Booth!!

Date: February 1, 2009 7:07:38 PM PST

Hey everybody. Well, I would have to say this has been a really good week. I guess I will start out with the good stuff, which are the five baptisms my companion and I performed on Sunday. I went on splits on Friday so the district leader could interview them. We found out that one of the boys that was supposed to be baptized was actually only seven. It's kind weird here. They always say they are a year older when they are relatively close to their birthday. All of the interviews went great though. We also found out that they could not do it on Saturday, which was the original day. Since we had one planned for Sunday morning, we just put them all at the same time. It still was not to easy though. Don't get me wrong, it could have been a lot harder. It was a long process getting them in the water.

First on Saturday the father cut off his finger. Well not all the way, just mostly. He just sewed it up himself. He said it hurt pretty badly. My companion does not do well with that sort of stuff. You should have seen his face when he was describing it to us. It was pretty funny. It was alright though - he just said he would deal with it. He is an amazing guy. I could learn a thing or two from him. Then Sunday was pretty hectic. We were supposed to be at the church at six thirty but we both forgot to set our alarms for earlier. So the morning was really crazy when we were running around trying not to be late for our own baptism. Then on the way there, it was raining. So when we were waiting on the corner for jeepney, we got splattered with dirty water so all of my baptismal clothes got black spots all over them. By then I was a bit flustered, to say the least. We finally got there though, and were actually still the fist ones there. Filipino time is nuts. It was amazing though because they all showed up. Even if it was late. We actually even had an investigator come that we invited. It was an amazing experience. Nothing could make me wipe the grin off of my face.

There were five in all getting baptized. The family had four and we had one other. My companion baptized the parents of and the other sister and I got to baptize the two little girls. It was so cool and they were all so happy. I got some good pictures so I will send those back as soon as I get the other memory card. (Oh, and don't worry Michele, you can put whatever you think is cool on the blog - I don't really care). Oh and the family's name is the Taladros. I didn't think I would get to baptize an entire family my first transfer. Oh, and I was looking at it and they were actually my first appointment in the field. The kids are great. They have three girls and one boy. The girls are 13, 11, and 5. The little boy is 7, so we will be getting him ready for next year. The other investigator was our golden one. Her name is Mary Jean Endrada. She is a house help to one of the really strong members in the ward and she was just brought to us to teach. She is really smart and learned everything so fast. To top off our Sunday, we actually had a really less active member come back to church. We were really impressed. She is a return missionary but she stopped coming because she got offended by somebody. That is a pretty big problem here. She came back though so my trainer can now die happy. That has also been nuts. My trainer is leaving tomorrow, so things are a bit crazy around here with them trying to get ready to go. It is just going to be me and the other elder from my batch in our apartment for three days. I really don't know how that is going to go. I am pretty nervous so I hope the lord helps us out.

Nothing really happened too crazy with the culture. Everything is normal to me now. I am sorry. If you really want to know something though, don't be afraid to ask. I love you all and I am sorry if I missed something . Just let me know and I will be sure to include it next week. Oh, and just so everybody knows I can receive pictures and stuff through email. That seemed to be a popular question. Well, I love you all and thanks again for all of your support.

Elder Booth

Here are some of the pictures of the wonderful day:

Elder Booth and Elder Erickson with the Taladros family

Brother Taladros with all of his kids

Brother Taladros with the girls getting baptized

As Elder Booth mentioned, they had to move the Taladros baptism to Sunday. They already had a baptism scheduled for that day, also moved up from the 7th so Elder Erickson could perform it. Her name is Sister Jean and here she is, getting ready for the big event also: