It was such an awesome Baptism, the spirit was so strong, and her confirmation was amazing as well. When the words "Receive the Holy Ghost" were said, I could feel the spirit enter the room so unbelievable powerful. It was a testimony builder of the power of the Holy Ghost in all things. I'm very grateful for the chance I had to be apart of that wonderful ordinance! I was asked to speak on Baptism at the service, and I came up with a cool analogy I'm sure you'll enjoy. I'll share it basically how I shared it, I didn't write it down so I'll try my best to capture all of the details.My grandparents have a cabin up on a lake in northern Utah. Between the Cabin and the lake is a huge sandy beach, and around the cabin is sand as well. One of the rules at our cabin is that there is no Sand aloud within the Cabin. Very similar to how our Heavenly Father is with Sin, just as the scriptures teach "No unclean thing can enter the presence of God". I remember when very young I would spend hours playing around in the sand getting extremely sandy and dirty, in this state, I wasn't aloud back into the Cabin until I was clean again. So, my mom would always tell me to go wash myself off in the water, now the water isn't always that warm in the lake, especially when the wind started to blow in the afternoon and the water temperature dropped. Now getting into the water might have taken quite a bit of courage, but once I was clean, I could finally go back into the cabin. The only problem was, that I had to make it across the beach, being wet, without getting any sand on me. Possible to do, except for getting sand on my feet and legs. Now, luckily, my grandpa had already thought ahead of this so we have buckets of water next to the entrances to the cabin that we can rinse our feet off with. I compare cleaning myself off in the lake to the Ordinance of Baptism, the original cleansing, and the bucket of water next to the Cabin the Sacrament. After we are baptized, we still sin, but the Sacrament allows for us to become clean again, time after time, no matter how many times we run through the sand after washing ourselves off.
(Cool news of the day, we just got a referral from SLC of a girl who lives here who has been taught all the missionary lessons! We'll be calling her in a bit, I'll report more on that next week!)
I had exchanges last week with Elder Taylor, haha, as you can imagine, every contact we had was pretty funny. 'Hi, we're Elder Taylor..." I'm sure everybody thought Mormon's were the weirdest people ever, especially since Elder Taylor is from Layton, UT. Right next door. We were in Brampton for the day though, and had quite the busy day! I also got to drive a brand new Dodge Caravan, I never thought I would ever say this, but driving that mini van was pretty dang fun. Just call me Elder Soccer Mom.
We started teaching a guy named Jay, he's a pretty fly guy! He met with the missionaries a few months ago, never got super into the Book of Mormon, and had some other questions that were never answered and decided to take a break. He walked into church a couple weeks ago though and we started teaching him this last week! We had a sweet lesson, first lesson we started off with was the purpose of the family and the Law of Chastity, not a typical first lesson, but a really good one at that!
We also are teaching a girl now named Jaspreed, she is from India, and I met her on a bus 2 weeks ago! She's super cool, and it's been a blast teaching her. Our entire lesson was on Jesus Christ and Prayer. It's fun to teach someone who has no Idea who Jesus Christ is!
We had Zone Conference this last week as well and got to see the new #PrinceofPeace video that drops on the 31st for the Easter Initiative! We're super excited for it. The Video is very very very powerful and we're excited to use it to help people understand the role of the Savior and his Resurrection. You can watch it on Mormon.org on Friday!
My first sunday in a YSA branch was super cool! Probably the most reverant/quiet sacrament meeting I've ever been too. It was quite the experience. I love YSA work so far, it's been tons of fun!
I love the gospel, I love the Lord, I love the Scriptures! They're all real. If you don't know, Search Ponder and Pray. You will!!
Love you all!
Elder Adam Taylor
PS We clean the Baptism Font in style
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