Fireside Guitars and a Baptism!

Elder Robb, Jeremiah, Brother Pehrsson and Me

Our guitars waiting to go to fireside

Hey dad and grandma and everyone else! How are you all doing? This week was not normal but that's good because we had a baptism for Jeremiah last Saturday!

The baptism: we have been teaching Jeremiah for about 3 months and it was so was amazing to see him be baptized on Saturday. We had a lot of members come to it and my trainer Elder Fisi'ihoi came too. He sang and gave a talk about the Holy Ghost. President Tanner gave a talk on baptism. The whole thing went by smoothly and the spirit was soooo strong there. I was very glad to see Jeremiah turn his life around and being able to start with a clean slate. He has changed a lot and it truly strengthens my testimony on how this gospel can change people's lives and bless them greatly for doing so. He was confirmed yesterday and now he is an official member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Now the next step is to help him prepare for the priesthood.

Hanford: so after the baptism on Saturday my zone leaders called me and Elder Gipper to ask if we could play guitar for a fireside in the Hanford Stake right after church. I said sure and so me and Elder Gipper quickly arranged music for the song " hark all ye nations".  We had only 20 minutes to practice before the show last night. The program began at 6:30pm and we had to be there at 6:00 and it was 45 minutes away so we left right after church. The office missionaries, Elder and Sister Mauro (they are from Pennsylvania) dropped us off there. When we got to the stake center we started to practice for a couple minutes and then President Gelwix (my mission president) said "Alright we begin in 5 minutes. I haven't finished making the program so I'm going to at random call you to play when I feel it is right. Let's make this look like a well planned fireside" haha.  So that's what we did... we played in the middle of it and everyone really enjoyed it.

After that President Gelwix drove us home.  It was really cool to talk with him and get to know him. Halfway through the car ride a mission president from Madagascar called and he had his blue tooth hooked up in his car so we called all hear them both speak. They talked about how much they love their missionaries and how they are trying to increase converts. The mission president in Madagascar said that one of the missionaries caught something and he is slowly recovering. President Gelwix said " if he doesn't heal up fast enough, find the local shaman and maybe he can fix it".  Elder Gipper and I were laughing pretty hard when we heard him say that.

Anyway, that was pretty much my week!  So I will talk to you and grandma next week. By the way, thank you for the package and I'm excited to read it!

Talk to you soon.

Love,

Elder DeMarco