Prayer Conquers Satan and So Does Elder Johnson

Well it sure was good to see all of you guys Sunday on Skype!!!  That's the last call you’re going to get on my mission so I hope you liked it!  Hope you had a happy mothers day Mãe!!!

Oh, it has also come to pass that I will be staying here for another transfer and I will be killing Elder Coon.  That'll make him the third missionary that I've killed.  I guess president really likes me doing that.

Well I hope that you all know, that I am very tired, this last week took a lot out of me.  

So here's the story.

For the past few weeks we've teaching this woman, her son is serving a mission and she's the only member of her family who hasn't been baptized.  She is very very catholic and didn't want anything to do with the church.  Well that changed a few months after her son left on a mission.  For some reason she just decided to read the Book of Mormon.  She just felt like that was a good idea and started reading it until one day she flagged down the missionaries on the street and asked to be baptized.  The other missionaries passed her to us and we've been working with her ever since.  Well here's the catch, every week something always happened to stop her baptism and it was getting rather frustrating.  Last week I wrote about how frustrating it was and how I drowned my sorrows in Açaí.  Well I thought maybe she was trying to hide from us.  Elder Coon thought it would be a good idea to keep trying and see if we can work a miracle.  We went to her house and we were able to talk with her.  Turned out she wasn't hiding from us, but had something come up the week before, so we marked her baptism for this Saturday.

I swear, something happened almost every day to keep her from getting baptized this last week, it was ridiculous.  We had an emergency Thursday night, but we managed to save it, she said she wasn't going to let anything stop her from getting baptized.

We then came up with a great idea.

So her son is serving a mission and this last weekend was mother's day, which means he could Skype home.  So we thought, "Hey! Why don't we have him Skype her during her baptism?  That would be pretty sick!!!"  So we got in contact with his mission and we managed to get everything set up.

Satan, however, had other plans.

Saturday, we get a text from her saying she can't get baptized.  We walk over to her house, save the day, and then go on our way to lunch.  As we were leaving lunch we called our Ward Mission Leader who happens to be a good friend of the family.  He tells us she decided to not get baptized.  We left her alone for 1 HOUR!!!!! 1 HOUR and look at what happened.  I naturally was upset and it manifested itself (aka light pathetic weeping.)  We walked over to her house and she wasn't there.  More weeping ensued.  Our Ward Mission Leader said he was going to hunt her down, so we did the only thing we could do, fill up the baptismal font and get the Skype ready.  We waited and waited and finally, a few hours after the planned baptism, she showed up!!!!  MIRACLES HAPPEN PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!  She came and was finally baptized!!!  Her son got to watch the whole thing on Skype and it appeared like something out of a movie just because of how well everything worked out.  Everyone was happy and this family is one step closer to being united.  It was probably one of the most eventful memorable baptisms of all time, but it was also the most stressful.  Anyways, they all lived happily ever after.

So yeah, besides talking with you all this week, that was probably the most eventful thing to happen.  It definitely left us exhausted.  Anywho, love you all and I hope you guys had a wonderful Dia das Mães. I know it was one to remember down here.  To send you all off this week, I'll give you guys a couple of examples of good parenting I have seen this week:

-A Woman teaching her son to urinate in the middle of the road.

-A Father driving a motorcycle, with his little baby standing up on the front holding on to the handlebars.

Oh, parenting...

-Élder Johnson

P.S.  Everyone down here says that Dad looks a lot like the ex-mayor of Aracaju, Edivaldo Nogueira.  I have to say, you two do look rather similar.