Thursday, October 20, 2011

Subject: Baptism!
Wow the baptism was crazy! So the first councilor in the branch presidency always takes care of the baptismal font. It takes about three hours to fill up and also you have to heat it up a certain way. so on Saturday morning we came to the church and went down to make sure that he filled it up and of course.... it was empty! Talk about there always being something that goes wrong during a baptism! so I called the first councilor and he realized that actually he had filled it up but had just forgotten to turn off the drain so during the night the whole font was drained! So, we had two options, postpone the baptism until Sunday morning, or start getting it filled up and start dumping buckets of water from the sink in there in hopes that we can start the baptism as much on time as possible. The only problem was that if you chose the second one then the water would not be warm, it would be freezing. So, after talking to the people who were getting baptized that decided that they couldn't wait until sunday and wanted to be baptized right now! So... we started the process of filling the font! :) in the end the baptism was only postponed 30 minutes! The baptism was so amazing! 4 baptisms in one day! Sergei (the church guard who got baptized) was so happy! His whole family was there and they of course were just bawling! His wife got up and talked about how in here Patriarchal Blessing which she got many years ago it said that her husband and grandchildren would join in the church and at that point it seemed completely impossible. But, now the day has finally come! She was so happy! there was such an amazing spirit there and a great support from the members who have also been waiting impatiently for him to get baptized!Also this last week I went to my first Russian Ballet! We went and saw Romeo and Juliet! Hmmm... what do I say about this? It was pretty cool and I am glad that I was able to have that experience. But, lets just say that I don't have any plans in the near future to go to a ballet. Haha, but it was cool to have that experience! We also just got back this morning from Moscow because I had Zone Leaders Council. While we were there we went and saw Lenin's body. At Read Square you can go see it. Haha Elder Jones was way excited! But, it really didn't turn out that cool becuase all he could say at the end was... "wow Lenin is short" That was another cool experience though.Right now the AP's are here and one of the AP's is a profession Russian Basketball Player so we went and played some ball in the church today! It was awesome! He is a baller for sure! We had some fun! Well, it is starting to get cold here.. I think it is going to be snowing soon! I love you all! Remember who you are!Elder Weihing :)