Monday, May 05, 2014 5:42 AM Baptism! It's A Good Thing, Guys.

The theme of my life last week was BAPTISM. And boy howdy, if THAT'S not a beautiful theme to have in your life, I don't know what is!

We had Zone Conference on Friday. It was INCREDIBLY great. And guess what? It was in Bydgoszcz. Yes. BYDGOSZCZ. I was right there. Right in that blessed blessed city for a few hours. I almost cried on the train ride in. The other missionaries thought it was weird ... But it's okay! I got to go to B-Town! That place - I'm tealling you, it's ZION. Anyways. Zone Conference. It was so good! We talked a lot about our purpose as missionaries. Which is preachin' repentance and baptism. Yep. It talks about that ALL the time in the scriptures! "Go and preach repentance." You know. It says that. And then we talked about actually doing that. Weird, right? The Apes were like, "We need to actually preach repentance. And we've been doing that. Let us tell you about it." It turns out they actually DID do that! They walked up to people and said, "Hey! We're talking to people about repentance! And baptism!" Crazy, right? And then they were like, "We need to do that as a mission." And I was like, "Ummmmm ...." And they were like, "We're going to do that right now." And I was like, "WHAT?!" And then we actually did that. We hit the streets of Bydgoszcz and contacted people by talking about baptism! I'm not going to lie to you, I was QUITE QUITE QUITE hesitant about it. But guess what? It turned out kinda awesome! We talked to some REALLY COOL PEOPLE! About baptism! And also, it just made us feel really good to talk about baptism. Because baptism is important!

And. SPEAKING of baptism. Guess what? We may or may not have a baptism this Satuday. Yeah. We, being Sister Tobes and I. WHAT IN THE CRAZY PANTS IS THIS NONESENSE! It's so exciting! Our investigator - Ines - is getting baptized either this Saturday or next! She's SO COOL, and she's SO READY! We absolutely adore her! And I'm SO EXCITED! This is the first Polish baptism I'm going to have been to in this country! It's so exciting! Sister Tobes and I are running wild with joy and excitement. And Ines - she's incredible. She's a real Kingdom Builder. And she's going to be so solid in the church! GAH! We are THRILLED.

In other, less amazing but still fun news, I got to see a gagillion of my favorite missionaries at Zone Conference! It was SO MUCH FUN! It was especially fun to see some of the ones I haven't seen in a while. Oh, bless those little missionaries. I love 'em! And they're all doing so good! Missionaries missionaries missionaries. They're just so much fun!

Also, we had some SUPER funny contacting experiences last week.

Experience One.

We were talking to this woman, and she was like, "Who are you?" And we were like, "We're missionaries! From this church!" (Cue pointing to the name tags, because saying the whole church name takes a considerable amount of time) And then she was like, "What? No! You're JW's!" And we were like, "No. We're Mormons." And she was like, "What is this nonesense you speak? You're JW's!" And we were like, "No. Really. We're Mormons!" "JW's!" "...But really. Mormons." She would NOT get off it! That contact didn't make it very far ... We kinda just cut our losses and walked away. It was weird.

Experience Two.

We were talking to this OTHER woman about baptism, and we were like, "Have you been baptized?" Of course she has. She's Catholic. They're all Catholics. But we asked to make conversation and lead into baptism by immersion and all that jazz. So anyways. Have you been baptized. And then she says, "Yes! Of course I have! I'm Catholic! I was two weeks old." And we were like, "Oh, that's cool!" And then she was like, "I was two weeks old. I remember it perfectly!" And we were like, "Oh?" And she was like, "Yes! Perfectly!" ... That was interesting. Science isn't really in her favor on that one, but alight. Live your life, ma'am Live your life.

Experience Three.
We were talking to this man. About - surprise! - baptism. So we were talking, having a conversation, and then he just walked away. In the middle of our conversation. Just turned, and walked away. It was SO AWKWARD. We were like, "Um, what?" And then we giggled (because it was hilarious) and tried to decide what to do in a situation like that. So we creepily followed after him and finished talking to him and gave him a Księga to give to his friend. So it all ended well enough. But for a minute there - yeah. It was PRETTY weird.

Experience Four.
My Personal Favorite.

We were visiting a less active named Irena. Really nice lady. And she wanted to take a picture of us. She pulled out her phone (since her camera was broken or misplaced or something) to take said picture. Bless her, the woman's a LITTLE oldish. So she was holding the phone backwards. She was putting her eye to the camera, and the screen was facing us. So we can see the screen, and her eyes is taking a large portion of it, perfectly centered and framed, and she's like, "I can't see anything!" It was the funniest thing I've EVER SEEN. We explained she was holding it backwards, and she was like, "Oh. Okay!" And then it worked. But it was so funny!!! "I can't see anything!" And we, meanwhile, are getting a PREFECT view of her eye. It was hilarious! ... Maybe it's not as funny in the retelling ... It's okay. It was priceless.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO yeah. That was fun! We had a beautiful week.

Baptism.
Bydgoszcz.

B ... Uh. Nope. I've run out of words that start with B. (I wanted something about funniness, but starting with B. I don't think that word exists.)

Anyways. I'm gonna go. It's been real, peeps!

And Fam - I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOUR BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL FACES ON SUNDAY! 7:30, bright and early! Be there or be square!

MUCH LOVE!
Siostra Young