Hey mom and dad.
Sorry that you get a nice little short and sweet email with two stories.
So we had Evelyn's baptism on Saturday. Holy cow. Satan was working HARD to stop that thing from happening. He tried really hard to get her to not get baptized in the first place as you may realize from all the times she said she didn't want to be baptized and such. But when we got to the church, we had to drain all the water in the font and then we found out that the water pressure in the font SUCKS! After 2 hours we probably had a foot and a half of water and we were freaking out. We had used buckets to fill it and everything but nothing was working. So I just said a prayer in my heart that I would get an idea. Then I thought, "Hey! Lets just baptize her sitting down!" So we started the baptism and when we got to the actual ordinance, she sat in the water and Elder Sureta (the story of why he baptized is too long to recount) kneeled in the water and baptized her. It was just high enough to where she could be immersed.
The crazy thing is that after that, she spent the next HOUR telling her conversion story instead of her testimony. haha. We where at the church until 9:30. haha. She's great though. She's planning on a mission next year.
The second story is about the Pana family. So about three weeks ago, we got a referral for this guy Don Don Pana and his wife. They live in Dap Dap Catarman and they have a little store. He is a guard at the temple. And that's all we knew. We also had a crudely drawn map on a receipt. haha. For the last three weeks I would say we have spent at least 12 hours searching for this family. The map made it look like their house was in this one spot that had a house and store but every time we went there, the lady that ran the store said that she was not Ellen Pana but Terese something. I thought she was lying to us because she didn't know her husband had asked to be visited.
Well, yesterday, I was near giving up. I was about to just throw my hands up and just say that I had done all I can and go home. But I decided to go back to the Terese lady and give it one last shot to see if she was lying about who she was. So we go there and buy some drinks and started to talking to her a little bit about the temple and asked her about her family and she still said that she was not Ellen. She siad maybe we want to check up the road. The map sure didnt make it look like that was the way but we tried it. There was a little path that went off and we followed it. There we saw a little store and a lady sitting outside. We introduced ourselves and she said that she was Ellen that and that her and her husband had been waiting for us for three weeks. We just laughed and I said, "That's funny. We've been looking for you for three weeks." I know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers and guides us and others.
Love you all. Thanks for the package! Its not here yet....?? I'll text and find out.
I'll be home for CHRISTMAS!!!!
Brandon
