Elder Chipman's Adventures in Africa: Week 7 - Chamanculo A

What it is?!

It sounds like summer has actually hit in Salt Lake and what a coincidence cause it feels like winter has hit here haha. But it sounds like last week was a rager, s/o to Burke and his little league team, s/o to Teags, Haddie Girl and Wrenly on their dance recital, s/o to all the kids who finished school, and s/o to Diem, who will be getting baptized this weekend, can’t wait to see the pics!

It was a good ol' week down here for ya boys! The highlight came on Saturday, with the baptism of Nelio, Junior and Lurdes. Everything went smoothly with Bishop hooking it up by filling up the font for us and with Xavier, who is our ward mission leader, putting together a star studded baptismal service. All three gave great testimonies but the one that hit out the park was the testimony of Irma Lurdes. Lurdes has been receiving the missionaries’ visits since April as a reference from a member. She loves the Book of Mormon and has learned a ton about the Gospel. The only thing that was missing was her Parent/Guardian permission to be baptized. Lurdes' mother lives in Quelemane and has never spoken with her. Her uncle and aunt were not super excited about her wanting to get baptized. Lurdes would always pray before/after visits asking Heavenly Father that her uncle and aunt would let her get baptized. So, last Tuesday we went by to visit her and she wasn't home. We started talking with her uncle a little bit and of course with a baptismal service already planned for that Saturday we started talking to him about Lurdes getting baptized. After talking and more explanation he said would happily let Lurdes get baptized and he even came to the baptism and said he loved it. In Lurdes' testimony she thanked Heavenly Father for her family, for the Book of Mormon and for the chance that she had been given to be baptized.

After the baptism, Nelio put together a little dinner with the help of Suzy and Dalia cooking. It was a super fun night being with lots of members and seeing the friendships starting between investigators, recent converts and older members. Other funny story of the week, when we were walking home at night, a lady stopped and said, "Alright, I see you guys everywhere. I need to know who are you?". We explained to her and she instantly sounded relieved cause she had been hearing that we were working with the CIA haha. After, a long talk with her about what it is that we do and what we share with families, her eye just shined super bright and said she would love for us to visit her and her family. Let’s hope all goes well with us trying to visit this new family this week.

Long update so I will try and share a quick spiritual guy. In the April General Conference, President Nelson gave a talk on how we can receive the power of Jesus Christ into our lives. He gives a couple of things that we can to do more fully receive this power. Such as studying and coming to know better our Savior, acting with faith and when we make covenants with our Heavenly Father and keep them with precision. The last thing that he mentions is a true desire to reach up diligently and receive His power in our lives. When I was studying this talk I thought to myself that this was obvious and something that everyone had but President Nelson spiritually back handed that thought of my mind when he gives the example of the women who exercised her faith but just touching the robe of Christ and was healed (Mark 5:28) and then says, "When you reach up for the Lord’s power in your life with the same intensity that a drowning person has when grasping and gasping for air, power from Jesus Christ will be yours. When the Savior knows you truly want to reach up to Him—when He can feel that the greatest desire of your heart is to draw His power into your life—you will be led by the Holy Ghost to know exactly what you should do." I instantly thought about the motivational video on youtube that I always watch to pump me up for football practice haha. But I know that as we search and strive to receive Christ's power in our lives and it will bless and help us through any personal problem or any social issue that we come across. This ended up not being a quick spiritual thought, but I hope that we all can continue to understand better, receive more and be blessed by the Savior's power that He has because of the sacrifice that He performed for all of us.

Love you guys so much! Have a great week!

Elder Chipman