What a wonderful day of miracles. Two baptisms in one day. The first baptism was a 9 year old girl. She is at the branch we attend and goes to Primary class with Sister Martin and today she decided to be baptized. She and her mother are both blind. Her mother gave one of the talks for the service. I noticed her reading a large braille set of scriptures before, obviously preparing to quote a scripture for her talk. Although she spoke in Amharic, you could feel her testimony of Jesus Christ.
After she was baptized, in very cold water I might add, the 9 year old stood before everyone and bore her testimony. We also had this group picture. It's great to see so many attend to give her support. What a wonderful feeling we all felt inside. The next day at church on Sunday she was blessed and given the gift of the Holy Ghost ("Menfes Qudus", that's one thing we've learned in the language). Even though I couldn't understand most of the words, I was showered with the warm peaceful spirit.
Interesting side note: We found out about her baptism less than an hour before it started and were lucky to be able to attend. Because of the language barrier, we don't understand the announcements in church. We were actually driving to go shopping with the branch president and another man. Our branch president told us he needed to go to a baptism so he was dropping us off at a shopping area. We asked what baptism? He told us about the 9 year old girl and we said we would rather go to the baptism than shop any day.
The second baptism we attended through a zoom call for our grandson, Miles. Even though zoom was quite choppy at times, we loved seeing everyone. The picture above was of several of our grandchildren getting ready to sing a baptism song together.
Our daughter Carol gave a talk about the Holy Ghost. She cleverly compared the spirit with a traffic light. As we do what is right in our lives the spirit may tell you through feelings to "Stop" when there is danger like a red light. The Holy Ghost may whisper to you a yellow light or proceed with caution or may give you a green light prompting when someone may need help and "Go" help them.
Our grandson Drew gave a good talk about baptism.
What a wonderful baptism event. Congratulations.
For church on Sunday, I walked in at the conclusion of Primary to see how Sister Martin was doing. She was the only leader and teacher. She ran the nursery and the primary by herself. Wow. There were nine children that day. She taught them the song, "Search, Ponder and Pray" and reviewed "I am a Child of God". She also took each of their pictures individually holding a picture of Jesus.
Sister Martin usually asks me to help her prepare some song charts to help them learn the song. "I am a Child of God" had Amharic translation available so I was able to copy and paste it below the English on the charts.
We made some chicken curry with naan bread again and shared it with the young missionaries upstairs. Soooo good. (The three Elders pictured above at the baptism, are the missionaries that live upstairs).
On a lighter note, we had a nice Family Home Evening (daytime, since none of us like to drive at night) with the senior couples. The Stanfords from New Zealand hosted the event and shared their favorite hamburger dish with us. Nice big buns with coleslaw, pineapple slices and more. We bought some treats from the bakery and others brought some great homemade deserts as well. They have a nice big table that fit us. We missed President and Sister Cowley!
We had a great time eating and laughing, especially during the candid couple Q & A. They had put together some crazy questions that you had to guess what your spouse would answer such as, "What do you do that upsets your wife the most" or "what's your favorite food?" We guessed correctly what each other said 12/19 times.
Sister Stanford, our hostess, wearing a traditional Ethiopian dress.
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