Miracles and tender mercies...

Family and friends,

Interesting thing: I’ve actually had a couple new missionaries come up to me and say, "hey I hope this isn’t weird but I read your entire blog before coming on a mission.”

We are now down to a duo. Elder Eperania and I. Elder Thebaud got transferred to the Presqu'ile. Working as two is a little less complicated and we managed to improve on our numbers from last week. Each week gets better and better it seems. We continue to receive a bunch of referrals... which keeps us super busy. We actually had to do a split one day so that we could teach more than one lesson at a time.

Saturday we had the baptism of Mamie. She was super exited and invited her entire posterity.

We are going to start from the beginning.

My companion and I arrive at the chapel two hours early to start filling the baptisimal font. We open the tap and water only drips out slowly. We were very, very confused so we went over to the front of the chapel and a man stopped us and explained that a little kid broke one of the taps outside and water was spraying out of the tap, and that had caused the entire chapel to loose its water pressure. The man scrambled to try and fix the problem, but time was ticking away and we still didn’t have any water. No water, no baptism. 

We are now at one hour before the baptism, still no water. I was starting to get really concerned. What do I do? Do I cancel the baptism? What I did was lock myself in the bathroom and prayed, I said Heavenly Father, if it be Thy will, fill the baptisimal font. I came outside right as our bishop was pulling up. We spoke with him for a few minutes. We ended up finding a way to hook up a fire hose and run the hose through the chapel and fill the font. It filled that thing in like 40 minutes. MIRACLE NUMBER 1! 

Then we helped Mamie out of the car and got everything ready for the program. a bunch of family came and a bunch of members came to support the baptism. We then proceeded to the ordinance itself. We had spent weeks stressing about how we were going to baptise a 72 year old,130 kilo, half-paralysed and super-frail woman without killing her. We put four missionaries in the font, Elder Malca (The Baptiser) Elder Eperania, Elder Gilstrap and I in the font to hold Mamie and make sure she is well supported, because she is so weak. Four large Tahitian men carried Mamie and lifted her over the wall of the font, because the stairs were too dangerous. They passed her and Elder Eperania and I got Mamie and realized that she weighed nothing at all. I cannot count how many times my comp and I have gotten her out of a car and struggled to lift her, but now she weighed absolutely nothing. 

We lowered her so she was sitting in the water. the font surrounded by family, friends and ward members. We then started the ordinance itself and immersed her totally and brought her back up, she came out of the water with a huge smile and everyone around let out a big sigh of relief, some even shouting for joy. We then braced to lift her back up over the wall. I tensed up as if to do a big deadlift considering I was on my knees in the font, and now the 130 kilo Mamie was soaking wet, as my comp and I lifted her out and she basically weighed nothing. We passed her over the wall and they put her into the wheel chair. MIRACLE NUMBER 2! The most amazing baptism I’ve ever seen or participated in. Then the next day at the chapel I got to confirm her a member of the Church. Over all an amazing experience.

Amazing week. I’ve never seen so many miracles in my life.

I’m loving the work, I see the hand of God everyday. What more could you ask for?

Elder Goodwin

P.S. Oh and the beef jerky story. 

This week I got a couple calls from missionaries that I know in Papeete, they said that they saw a package for me in the mission office that says on it, 100 dollars worth of beef jerky. I was confused for half a second and then I realized that Stan Johns asked me a couple weeks ago if there is anything I miss, so I said beef jerky--- because that kinda stuff doesn’t really exist here. Next thing you know, I get a package with an unreasonable amount of beef jerky in it. Stan the man keep’in up the reputation of being probably the coolest person in the Ward.

Pure salty goodness! Thanks Stan!