weekly mission email (1st baptism)

Three baptismal interviews in one week! Man, we're pooped.

The ZL's in Fukutoku had us go down on Monday to see their candidate.
He's the perfect convert: young, male, Japanese. Exactly everything
any ward wanted. The ZL's really scored with this one.

Elder Ferreira has a guy ready for baptism over in Toyohashi (two
zones away). Problem is, Ferreira is District Leader and the Zone
Leaders don't speak a lick of Portuguese, so they had to pull in the
next best thing: DL Elder Ribeiro from Inuyama. Well, this turned into
an adventure. Turns out that Ferreira is also training, so that meant
that I got to go on splits with a Brazilian Bean (Mission newbie)
who's four weeks fresh. Elder Ferreira asked that I teach his bean
anything about Finding because they haven't been able to do that much
yet, so we went out to test our housing skills! Yeah!
It actually turned out almost miraculously because we ran out of
pamphlets to hand out within two floors, and then managed to place all
our BOMs on the third. Yeah, crazy.

Lastly, the sisters have been working with a Golden investigator who
has her date set for Sunday,  May 28th (yesterday). She was passed
good to go by Pres Ishii and just needed a follow up interview. Just
an incredible lady with immovable faith.
She took me entirely by surprise when she asked that I be the one to
perform her baptism. Haha wha? Why? Well, apparently I was her first
contact with the church when I passed her an Eikaiwa flyer out in
front of the station forever ago. I feel bad because I don't actually
remember that. But I was sure excited for her then!



So we had a beautiful ceremony on Sunday just full with the Spirit. It
was my first time baptizing someone. Wondrous to behold.
Nozawa came up to me afterwards and told me that today's baptism had
felt different than the ones he had see before. He felt more moved
than before. Fantastic! The entire ward has gotten excited for
Nozawa's baptism that's in a couple weeks after Brother Mizuno boldly
pressed him for it in front of the entire Elder's Quorum a month ago.
Hahah what a great moment that was.

I love this gospel and it is truly a miracle to see a person come to
the waters of baptism.

愛しています！ [I love you!]

カードん長老より
Elder Cardon