Janet Got Baptized!!

Marko August 14, 2012 1 Comment

Dear Family and Friends,

So much has happened in the past week.. I don’t even know where to start! Well, I guess I’ll start with the good news. Yaneth Chinchilla (Janet) was baptized on Saturday! It went really well.. we got a lot of people from the ward there and it was a great service. Our mission president and his wife came also! Janet was really excited. We got there an hour early with our ward mission leader to get things ready to go, and she was already there waiting for us! She was so happy, she told us that the night before she had a dream of her baptism and she woke up feeling really good! Elder Bruneel, my trainer, came too! He and Elder Erickson found Janet last transfer right before I got here to Denver Harbor. When it was time for her mom to get baptized, Yazmine, Janet’s 3-year-old girl pressed her face to the glass of the font.. she was really excited too! She looked down at her mom with a big smile, not even realizing how much she’d helped her take this step.

Originally, Janet didn’t want to talk to us. She tried to avoid us, but her little girl would always tell us that she was in the back and that she needs God in her life. Every time we would pull up in our bikes she would yell “los mormones llegaron!” (The mormons are here!) and she encouraged her mom to read the Book of Mormon and come to church. Janet said that if we would have told her two months ago that she would be feeding us and coming to church with us and getting baptized she would have thought we were crazy!
Janet was crying throughout the whole service! It’s crazy to see people grow and change as you teach them. She definitely has.

Here’s some crazy side stories relating to this baptism… when Elders Bruneel and Erickson first met her, they found her in the street and said it was a normal contact, she seemed alright. As they walked away, they both had the impression that she would be baptized, and they both said it at the same time. They were surprised, because she didn’t seem like anything special. That may have been true, but I have seen the Spirit work in her and she became something even greater. God knew her for her potential.

Something else.. when I first got into the area, in our prayers together I would ask Heavenly Father to help us have a baptism this transfer. Then, Elder Erickson started doing the same. We were very specific about that. Even though at first we had no one really to teach, in fact, we had dropped Janet at this time because she was not progressing. We ended the transfer with a baptism. God gives us what we ask for in faith!

Polo

Polo Martinez still hasn’t come to church. But this week, he had a new grandson born! He was really happy about that. We spent the week teaching him about the Plan of Salvation. He still has a date for the 26th of August, and wants to be baptized, but he is going to need to start coming to church. He just gets sick a lot and has to take care of his daughter that just had a baby.

Javier Serrano

On friday, we taught Javier Serrano a pretty good lesson. He is the boyfriend of one of the members here. Turns out, he didn’t really understand the Book of Mormon. He thought it was a compressed, shorter version of the Bible. We read the introduction with him and his girlfriend and he was able to grasp it. We talked about baptism. He said he would be baptized when he knew it was all true and he knows what he needs to do to get there. But he also said he doesn’t want to do this for his girlfriend or for anyone else. He wants it for himself. He came to the baptism and really enjoyed it! He keeps coming to church, and should be baptized next month.

Rick

Rick has been cutting back on smoking and he is ahead of schedule on our plan to be quit smoking and be baptized. He is still coming to church in the English ward, It’s pretty messed up when you have to teach the English missionary’s people for them because they won’t do anything… we are teaching some of their less actives and recent converts too.

Transfers

Well guys, here’s the bad news. Our last appointment on Friday was with Jacky. We talked about the Holy Ghost and how she would get her answer. I can’t believe I have been teaching Jacky for most of my mission. I feel like she is my sister, and she feels the same way about me. She is a really special to me, and I want her to accept the gospel so bad! She just keeps saying the same things, that she just wants to learn on her own, do her best and hope God accepts that. I asked her if that worried her and she said it did. Then, I asked if she thinks that God wants everyone to have a different opinion about Him, and I showed her the scripture in Ephesians that says “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.” God doesn’t want there to be so many conflicting opinions!

As we were talking about that. We got a phone call right in the middle of the lesson. Elder Erickson mouthed “Assistants.” So I told him to answer in the corner of the room. A call from them on Friday night, the week before transfers could only mean one thing.

As he answered the phone I continued the lesson with Jacky, but it was distracting. The bits of the conversation I could pick up from the conversation didn’t sound good. When it was over, he looked at me and mouthed, “flushed” and made a motion like he was flushing a toilet. My hear dropped. My fears were confirmed!

I won’t lie, I was a little frustrated. I still don’t really understand! We are getting white washed out of this area! Why was I only sent here for one transfer! I don’t want to leave. And all the sweet people we are leaving behind for two new missionaries who don’t even know the area. We are leaving a freshly baptized recent convert who is going to need lots of nurturing and care, Polo, Javier, Jacky, Rick… and some other people we have progressing really well that I haven’t even mentioned to you guys! They better still progress!

I’m really disappointed about leaving this area. I feel like I just barely got here. I was just getting to know the members. It seems like every area I have been sent to, there is nothing going there… and then I leave as soon as we start seeing success. In Broadway, Elder Bruneel and I baptized Haydee… the first baptism in years in that area, and then I left. In Channelview, Elder Worrell and I had one baptism and we were struggling to find consistently progressing investigators. After I left, three of the people we had been teaching committed to baptism! I am really excited for them, but I wish I could be there to see it! And now here… our district leader was pretty mad, actually. When we called him, he said, “why would they flush out the most flourishing area of the mission??” That’s what I wanted to know. I guess I’m a sower not a reaper.

Elder Erickson has been here his whole mission. Almost six months. Now, I am heading into my fourth area. I’ve narrowed down my most probably destinations. Back to Broadway in a trio companionship… or to Pasadena ( a suburb of Houston) or …. and I really am pretty sure this is what is going to happen… BANISHED TO BEAUMONT.

Beaumont is about an hour outside of Houston, close to Louisiana. It’s a decent sized town. The reason people are “banished” there is because it is a Spanish area in the middle of a bunch of English speaking areas. There are no other Spanish missionaries outside of Houston, except in Beaumont and Port Arthur. So, a move there would mean I would have to make all new friends, and an all new lifestyle since it’s predominantly English speaking there. It would seriously be like starting my mission all over again. No one will know who I am, and I will be so lost! Also, it’s the biggest area in the mission. It covers from Beaumont out to Lake Charles, Louisiana and up to Jasper, Texas. And… it is a car area. If I go there, I would be in a trio with Elder Hatch, who is actually really cool, and Elder Campbell, who will go home next transfer. After that transfer, Elder Hatch will probably leave since he has been there for so long, and I will be left out there on my own to train because there are a lot of new elders coming in in September. That’s what everone is telling me will happen, and is sure is looking that way. I’m getting banished guys.

Elder Erickson and I have been praying for the Lord to give us peace about leaving this area and to help the new missionaries coming in, and it has helped. I know that God sends us where he wants and that this will be a good thing, but it’s just hard to see that sometimes. We spent half of our day yesterday writing page after page about all our investigators so that the new missionaries will know what’s going on. They really could and should have a lot of baptisms here! I guess I was just sent here to teach Janet, and then to leave! I’m really going to miss it. I didn’t get the full “Denver Harbor Experience” but I still had fun. I guess it would be cool to go out and see Louisiana and Beaumont. Serving among the Spanish speaking, I dont’ feel like I’ve really gotten the Southern experience yet, and I would definitely get to try it out there. Elder Hatch and I were talking on the phone last night, because he is pretty sure I’ll be going out there, and we were talking about the work there. He said he is excited for me to come because I can help them increase their teaching pool. He was really positive about it.

But we will see what happens. Now that I have stressed out about going to Beaumont, they will probably send me to Broadway haha that just seems to be how transfers are like. Expect the unexpected. Leaving Denver Harbor was definitely unexpected.

Well guys, the good news about this all is that the church is true and I have a great testimony of that. Missionary work is so fun. You are actively involved in changing people’s lives. It’s just sweet. For anyone who is considering, take it from me and just do it. It’s the best thing for you.

I’ll let y’all know my new address next week. Send anything for now to the mission home!

Love y’all!
Elder Viitanen

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