Among the Gaúchos: All in the Lord’s Time

Baptism Day for Olmiro- what a great day!

8/13/2014

To start things off lets go back to Wednesday when Elder Usieda and I had a lesson marked with Olmiro to get everything ready for his baptismal service on Friday. I don’t remember if I sent home pictures of Olmiro when we first met him but he had hair down to his shoulders and when we arrived on Wednesday he practically had a missionary hair cut! So that was cool and unexpected. Anyway we start the conversation and are going through the baptismal questions with him and he stops us and says "I’ve done my research and everything says that drinking coffee is good for you and I have to drink it at least once a week." Imagine the smile that was on my face slowly drooping down into a stupor of confusion. And Olmiro and his Mom who was also part of the conversation started to laugh and said that that was enough for the joke. Phew, back to all smiles, then he said "but seriously I can’t be baptized on Friday..." and again my smile starts to fade but he continues "... because my Mom will be working on Friday so we were wondering if we could have the baptismal service on Thursday, tomorrow?" So after a couple seconds of shock we were like "YEA... umm... let us make a few calls." So we called Bispo and our district leader and as if in a magic dream, or the power of prayer and the timing of the Lord, everything worked out and fit into place and we set up the baptism for Thursday evening. So Thursday we set up everything in the chapel for the baptism and had an awesome spiritual baptismal service with the missionaries, Olmiro, his Mom and another young man who lives in front of the chapel and was preparing to be baptized the next day as well. Haha we didn’t have time really to contact anyone else to come to the baptism but that also worked put because Olmiro wanted it to be smaller and intimate. I had the honor to be the one to baptize him and he is the first person that I’ve baptized in my life so that was an amazing experience, and I feel a bit proud that I did it right the first time.

And now on to Friday, transfers. So as usual we were waiting all morning but not too excited because the news doesn’t normally go out until after lunch when President Parrela unlocks himself from his office and then the phone calls start ringing down the chain of command. Elder Gama and I were talking all together about what might happen or where we would like to go if we could choose and we said cities like Cruz Alta, Uruguaiana, Livramento, Santo Angelo etc. etc. just waiting to get the news. And a thing I hate about transfers is that with all the prank calls and such it’s hard to tell when it’s the real deal or not. After 2 prank calls that I could tell were total fakes we got a call from our DL and the news that all 4 missionaries here in Ala Urlandia would be transferred, Elder Almeida to his house, Elder Gama for Uruguaiana, and Elder Usieda as DL in another small city, and that I would be going to Cruz Alta. Even after a pinkey swear I didn’t believe that it was true because Elder Usieda wanted to stay another transfer and Elder Gama and I would be going to the cities that we guessed before and it was just too good to be true. But then our LZ called too and all the information matched up and then it started to get real and then that night the imperial march rang and Elder Usieda got the official call from President Parrela that he would be a DL and so it was true and I leave for Cruz Alta Tuesday morning. Woohoo but it is a bit sad to be leaving all of the people that we’ve met here and these last couple days have been filled with lots of picture taking. Sunday Olmiro was confirmed a member of the church, received the Holy Ghost and my work here in this area came to a nice close.

Thank you all for all of your prayers support and love. My next email will be from my new area in Cruz Alta with my new comp Elder Gois, wish me luck!!!

Elder Pierce