Miracles

Hey Fam,

So this week I made 5 months on the mish, I told my companion that I only had one more month until the "I don’t speak Portuguese" excuse doesn't play anymore. He said "oh now what are you gunna do?" I told him that we have to speak Portuguese everyday lol. He said that wouldn't work because then you wouldn't understand anything. haha. (He doesn't speak anything other than Portuguese) So this week I got a big nasty blister, I took a picture, it’s awesome. Oh and we baptized a young kid that we have been teaching for almost 5 months this past Sunday!!! It was amazing. My comp just said that we were going to exercise our faith and baptize Gabriel this week. His mom is a JW and already knows the church really well and was NOT wanting Gabriel to be baptized in the least bit. I had already gone to his house to talk with his mom three times about letting him get baptized but every time she just got more and more angry with us. This last Saturday I told my companion that Gabriel’s birthday was Sunday and that he told me he wanted to be baptized on his birthday when we first started teaching him and he just said "Oh! That’s perfect! We better mark his baptismal interview." Then he called the ZL's and marked the interview. I was like uh, what. Then after that we went to Gabriel’s house and to ask permission again. Yeesh. A very clear no. Then the next day our Zl arrives and we do a division. And I’m supposed to take him to interview Gabriel. I knew that it was possible but it didn't look good lol. Elder Dos Santos came to do the interview; he is so cool. We talked to Gabriel and he didn’t even want to be interviewed because he knew what his mom would say. So Elder Dos Santos was like "Come on man where is your faith!" Then he promised him a box of chocolate if his mom said no to him being baptized. Then we headed to talk to his mom. I was like what are you going to do? And he said, "I have no idea, but I know this boy is going to be baptized tomorrow, Heavenly Father won't let me say anything stupid. I think." Elder Dos Santos has a way with people but Gabriel's mom was tough. He got her to the point where she would let him be baptized only if he was truly prepared and if she felt it when he told her he wanted to be baptized. Elder dos Santos took that as a yes. We ran to take Gabriel to the Chapel to interview him and Elder Dos Santos told him his mom allowed it. Which was kind of true. While he did the interview I went into the baptismal room and got on my knees and just prayed. I prayed in every language I knew and just pleaded for the heart of this woman to be softened. When we arrived at his house with the paper for her to sign Gabriel walked up to his mom and said, "Mom I want to be baptized, and I want to be baptized tomorrow." It was like she turned into a different person. She almost broke into tears and gave him a hug and he was baptized the next day. Boom. That was pretty amazing. I love you guys and can’t believe you built a pond without me! What the heck!

Elder Romm