Leaning On The Arm Of God, April 13, 2015

Hey there, família!  This week was so awesome, and J. finally got baptized!  We´ve been working with him for a little more than 6 weeks, I think, and finally seeing him and his son baptized was such an incredible experience.

   We had an especially neat experience last weekend in which we were able to see how much embracing the gospel has changed his life.  As I mentioned a while ago, J. recently went through a divorce, it was shortly before we found him and began teaching him again.  At that time, he responded to a difficult situation by burying it under alcohol and violence.  When we arrived, he knew that what he was doing was damaging his ability to raise his son well, and recognized the need to change.  We´ve worked with him over the past several weeks helpind him to leave behind those bad habits, and that was put to the test last weekend.  When his son was over visiting his mother, she decided that she wouldn´t let him return to J.  This was devastating for J, his son is everything to him.  Rather than coping with this situation according to his previous pattern, the first thing that he did was pray.  We went to his house shortly afterward and he told us about the situation.  We brought him with us to one of the sessions of General Conference, where he prayed some more and took the opportunity to cool off.  He left the session well in control of himself, with the presence of mind to think through how best to deal with the situation.  In the past several weeks he went from leaning on man´s arm to leaning on the arm of God, and demonstrated the results of this by dealing with an incredibly stressful situation with grace.  

   All is well in his home now, and his ex-wife eventually agreed to continue to share time with their son.  It was so neat to see how he has understood what we taught, and applied it effectively in his life on his own.  

 

Elder U. and I were able to see J. and his son baptized this past weekend, and the other Elders here baptized 3 persons as well.  It was an incredible sacrament meeting for sure!  It was also neat to see D, the very first person that I saw baptized in my mission, perform the baptism.  It was awesome!!!

   I´ve got to go now, but I´ll include some pictures from the baptism!  Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Sweet