Baptism in the Mekong River

Hey Everyone!

What a way sweet week! I'll first talk about all the fun places we visited this week. My companion’s sister and brother ended up coming here yesterday to come to church and just hang out with their brother for the last time before they both leave for their missions this month. His sister leaves next Sunday to head to the MTC; she is going to California. His brother leaves like the 30th of March. We went to the Thai Laos Bridge again with them, which was cool. We also went to this mountain place it is kind of like a cave that you go down in some water for a bit water and then crawl on the ground through narrow crevices and all sorts of fun stuff, then you just pop out at this other spot and climb out on a ladder, it was pretty cool. We also went to this sort of mini Oasis thing in the middle of nowhere which was kind of cool. It had a big tree with roots and reminds you of Harry Potter a little bit if you could walk down in and under the tree to the shack or whatever, but you can't go there. They also had this old ancient game thing my companion was saying. There is a picture of us standing on and jumping off, kind of cool. That’s it for all that.

  

Now for the highlight of my week! Guess who got baptized!!! Our investigator Naan, of course! You probably already know though, if you read the subject line of my email. But yeah, we just focused on her and worked way hard to get her baptized and it worked out. We met with her and watched; “Finding faith in Christ” and just had a good lesson. At the end of the lesson we asked her; “are you going to interview to be baptized tomorrow”. She was way quiet and we just sat there and then bam! She is like ready! It was awesome!  Her only concern was her Mom saying, no to it so we committed her to talk to her Mom. Anyways little did she know we were cheesing, because we had already fasted that day for Naan to get baptized this week. Sure enough.... she calls us later that night and her Mom said no... So we are like; alright, well guess what Naan you are 20 years old so it really is up to you if you want to get baptized or not, not your Mom's. She said that she will have the interview, but doesn't say that she will get baptized for sure. The next day my companion is on the phone when we were supposed to be prepping her for her interview and teaching her a few more last minute things. So I just took charge and reviewed everything with her in like 15 minutes and sent her into the interview! After about 10 minutes she pops out and we were just like, whoa that was fast. She passed! The Zone Leaders said she was way money and ready to go. So we are like are you going to get baptized then and she said; yeah I want to do this, I feel good about it. So that was Friday. We already were trying to get her motivated to get baptized and said we'd do it in a special way for her and try to get permission to baptize her in the Mekong River. We tried calling President Senior that night and Saturday morning. After he didn’t answer either time we just gave up and told her we were sorry and that we would just have do it at the church with the other two people getting baptized. Naan wasn't hearing of that though, being who she is. So Saturday night when we were finding her a baptismal gown we called up President one last time and he answered. We were like; Hey President how are you and he said; so what’s up? We said we were just wanting permission and he said; for what? We said we were wondering if we could do a baptism in the Mekong River and he is like, “why are you asking for permission”. We thought that we needed permission for sure because last transfer Elder Vandenberghe asked the ZL's and APs if they could baptize an investigator in the river and they said; No! Now President Senior himself asked us why we were asking for permission. We had no idea what to say, so we were just silent for a bit and said; soooo, that means we can do it right? He is like yep, sure can. We were way pumped. So after all that, she got baptized in the river at 4 by my companion The Mekong River is just by our house, super cool! Sunday morning my comp and I had to go to the river and find a good spot to do it, so it all worked out. I think it is probably going to be the coolest baptism I have on my mission. I have to be honest it was way, more fun this way!

Anyway sorry for that super long story that is really the greatest thing that happened this week and was the biggest miracles. I really saw all the blessings we received from all of you back at home praying for her and us to help her. Fasting works too, by the way, even if you are hungry for a bit, it is way worth the blessings! That is really all I have for you this week. I'm cruising through the New Testament. I got past all the real big books and am I in Galatians almost done with that too. I can't remember where I was last week but I know I read all of 1 and 2 Corinthians this week. Really the hardest books to read are Mark and Luke because they are so similar to Matthew, but once you get into all of John and Paul writings you get recharged again. I'm loving it! I think I only have 100 pages left now. Then it is off to check off the Pearl of Great Price. I'm trying to read everything by the time I finish my mission. I've only have the Doctrine and Covenants and the Old Testament left really, since I can probably finish Pearl of Great Price in two more days! Love you all though and have a good week!

Love,

Landon