Passport to Peru: Cambio Number 2--Tumbes!

My wonderful family and friends,

Happy Independence Day in peru!!

What a crazy week this week has been...literally one of the craziest ones of the mission so far. It's really weird saying that because I don't feel like I've been in the mission that long, but it's already been more than 5 months....crazy. I still remember being on the plane to Lima.

So going into this week, we were hoping for 2 baptisms this Saturday...Hno A. and Hno M. I know I told you guys about the difficulty that A. had when I wrote last week. We were seriously crushed because we thought that it might mean that he couldn't get baptized....but we asked the zone leaders and they said that because he'd been living the word of wisdom for like 5 years already and he just gave in to the temptation this once it would be alright as long as our district leader felt a sincere repentance from him in the interview. But we still went into the interviews on Tuesday a little more that a bit nervous. Long story short, the exact opposite of what we expected happened. A. passed his interview with flying colors, but M. didn't pass his. We were super excited about A., but way more than surprised about M.

The sad thing was that we weren't able to meet with M. for very long this week because he was super busy preparing everything for the festivities this weekend...and he wasn't able to come to church on Sunday because he was in a parade for his work.

We thought that M. not passing his interview would be the craziest part of our prep for Saturday, but we were wrong. On Thursday night, Hermano A. told us that he was really discouraged and didn't want to get baptized anymore. We were like wait, what? We tried to help him see that this discouragement was just Satan trying to keep him from doing a really good thing, but he didn't really want to listen. On Friday night we called him and Hermana C. invited him to pray one more time and ask Heavenly Father if this was really what he wanted for him at this time. We went to bed Friday night praying that Heavenly Father would touch A.'s heart...but really not knowing if we'd be having a baptism the next day.

Let me tell you...miracles do happen. We woke up Saturday morning with a message from Hermano A. telling us that his baptism needed to be today, and that he'd for sure recieved his answer. Wow. It was amazing. Saturdaywas the craziest day of my mission...trying to pull a baptism together in one day is not that easy, but with the help of the Lord, we were able to get everything worked out and it turned out beautifully. He was baptized Saturday night and confirmed Sunday morning. When we asked him how he felt, he said that he felt really happy and really good, and that he knows he made the right decision. It was such a neat thing to be a part of that experience.

The rest of the week included a visit from our Hermana Leader to do our intercambios, and an activity of karaoke that was super awesome on Friday night!

This week was also transfers and almost half of our zone is now gone :( But Hermana C. and I get another transfer together....YAY!!!!!!!! :) We were so happy when we found out :)

Thank you all for your love and support! Hope you have a great week and don't forget to read your Book of Mormon every day!

Love

Hermana Garner