Winslow Week Ten

Hello, friends!! This week was great. We had MLC (Mission Leadership Council) and some wonderful lessons.

This weekend though... was possibly the best weekend of my life.

JODIE WAS BAPTIZED!!!! She was SO happy and peaceful and joyful all week leading up to it. I have only known her for 8 weeks, but her faith has grown exponentially in that time. She is one of the strongest women I know and I love her to pieces. She has taught me a lot about full reliance on God and trust in His plan. She is so humble and full of love. Talking to Jodie, you can tell that she has been searching for this her whole life. She always says, "I know my Bible and I know it's 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.' I was afraid to join a church because I wanted to make sure it was the right one. But now I know I've found the right one." I know she's found the right one too. :)

Now let me tell you about this baptism. First of all, I have never heard of a convert baptism being completely seamless. And Jodie's baptism was no exception. The stinking adversary works really hard to mess these things up, but Sister Clement and I had a special motto for the day that we kept repeating, "Not today, Satan!". And we won. :) So our ward mission leader started filling the font at about 3:20 because everyone said it takes less than 1.5 hours to fill and the baptism was at 5. I was skeptical of it filling that fast, but decided to go with it anyways. So we get to the church at 4 because that's when Jodie wanted to be there to get ready and the font is about oh... 3 inches high. It filled 3 inches in 40 minutes. And we had an hour until the baptism and it needed to be at least 3 feet for this to work. In a very not-panicky way, we started getting water from everywhere else in the church and bringing it to the font. We didn't want the water to be freezing for Jodie, so we literally had every pot in the kitchen filled with water on the 2 stoves, getting close to boiling for us to dump in there AND we had giant things of water in the 2 microwaves heating up as well. AND Bishop found another line of hot water on the opposite end of the church and we used that until IT ran out of hot water. I guess the reason the water filled so slow was because 1 of the 2 hot water heaters that go to the font broke, so it could have filled really fast but it would have been straight ice water.... So we texted everyone and told them the baptism would actually be at 5:30 and kept trying to get this thing filled enough for a baptism by immersion. Jodie was totally fine. She was telling us, "I don't care how long it takes to fill, I've got nothing else to do tonight!" But by the time 5:30 rolled around, it was looking pretty good so we went forward with the baptism program. To summarize the whole program, it was PERFECT. The Spirit in the room was practically tangible. And then Jodie stepped into the font when the time came and THE WATER WAS FREEZING. So all our attempts to have warm water were to no avail. But so were Satan's attempts to stop the baptism. So Jodie was baptized in freezing water like the strong woman that she is. Afterwards, she bore her testimony to everyone and it was beautiful and absolutely perfect and SHE was beautiful and absolutely perfect. And then we sang "How Great Thou Art" as the closing hymn and it was beautiful and absolutely perfect. If you couldn't tell, the whole night was beautiful and absolutely perfect (minus the freezing water). Here's how I explained it to Sister Clement:

"My soul is heel-clicking."

That's honestly how it felt.

And on Sunday, Jodie was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and blessed with the gift of the Holy Ghost. And it was beautiful and absolutely perfect. It is amazing to see someone accept the true gospel of Jesus Christ and to see how it transforms them and their life. Greatest feeling in the world.

AND to top it off, we had the most incredible lesson of my mission with a family, the Paynes, on Sunday afternoon. To summarize that lesson: God's timing is perfect and He has a perfect plan.

WHAT AN AMAZING WEEKEND. I'm still just laughing at how funny it was to be running around the church trying to fill up that font. It was truly an unforgetable night! It's great to be a missionary.

All my love,
Sister Bohman

THE GREATEST LOAF OF BREAD EVER. 

This amazing woman named Jenny makes the sacrament bread and it's INCREDIBLE and we were gifted an entire loaf of it. :) 

With our favorite little kids cleaning the church