February 24, 2014
Hello there Family!
Hmmmm where did I leave off last
time? ....Oh yea...that’s right... The cliffhanger...well actually I guess it
wasn't a terrible cliffhanger because I was nice enough to tell you the short
version of the story. I am way too nice. I shouldn't have been so
good to you. I should have kept the suspense up a little bit.
Anyways, when the thought entered my
head that I might have just met the second person that The Lord had prepared to
be baptized in the month of February from our area I was obviously pretty
excited to find out if it had been an inspired thought or not. I started
with, "Mucho gusto hermano! Cuando estaba esperando
bautizarse?" His authoritative my-way-or-the-highway reply was,
"Hoy. Hoy día. Vine hoy día con ganas a bautizarme hoy.
Que tienes en contra a esto?" (He was quite heated about it)
My initial mental reaction was,
"Oh great Elder Ostler. Now look what you have done.... Now because
you didn't just tell him from the start that the soonest you could possibly
help him get baptized is next week you have gotten yourself in a pickle.
Now you get to use your smooth talking skills to help this guy understand
without offending him that it will be best to do it in a week...that is assuming
that he can be ready that quickly."
But I really didn't get a chance to
say much before he began with, "Mire. Tengo algo decirte...."
What followed was something I will
never forget. It was amazing. To explain it simply, he basically
started bearing his testimony on the truthfulness of the church and how he
knows that this is the only church on the earth where the restored power of the
priesthood can be found. It was rather passionately done. I had a
finger in my face and everything! And it was all done with the purpose of
him getting baptized that very day. Somewhere in the middle of his rant,
I actually started to think, "Wow, this guy has obviously come to church
enough times to meet baptismal requirements otherwise he would have no understanding
of half the things he is saying right now...if he meets all other requirements,
maybe he can actually get baptized today!" But immediately after
this thought had entered my mind, I received a warning, "Nope. Don't
do it. Don't let him fool you. He isn't ready today. But he
will be ready next week. Waiting a week will be the best thing for him.
He still has some preparing to do." Shortly after receiving
this thought, the missionary who had originally introduced this man to me
whispered in my ear before sneaking off, "I will tell you more about this
guy later." (I learned later that he was late for an appointment.)
So there I was in the hallway with a
man demanding to get baptized in that very instant, nearly no background
information on him other than what he personally told me, and the pressure of
the situation increasing with every moment that he raged on due to the growing
number of gawking members. By now he had pulled out a restoration
pamphlet from his backpack, which was heavily marked, and even handed me his
triple combination to prove to me how ready he was to get baptized. Oh the
excitement!
I tried several times to calm the
situation but there was nothing I could do about it. By now my companion
had joined me in the hallway, but that wasn't much help either because he knew
even less of what was going on than I. I could recognize that the
situation had become more of an issue of pride rather than an issue of getting
baptized (he couldn't stand the fact that it would appear to the gawkers that
someone less than a third of his age was setting the rules).
So, in an effort to not let the
situation get any more out of control, I took control of the rant and
explained, "Well Hermano, it appears to me that you may indeed be ready to
get baptized today. I'm sure in all your studies of the church you have
recognized the importance of following with exactness The Lord's established
order in His restored church. Part of the order that The Lord has
established in His church is that those desiring to be baptized must be
interviewed before baptism. You are in luck. I am one of the Lords
interviewers for baptism and I would be more than happy to conduct an interview
with you right now to see what we can do about getting you baptized."
With that, we went into a room and
had the most interesting interview for baptism I will probably ever have on my
mission. I knew from the start that I had to kindly find some way to fail
him without offending him and help him understand that we would help him prepare
to be baptized the following Sunday. It was pretty tough and stressful
because he was quite contentious. But everything worked out. It was
a miracle. He was calmed, accepted an invitation the be baptized the
following Sunday, and even left with an assignment to prepare himself for the
next visit that Elder N and I would have with him the next day to begin
helping him finalize his preparations for baptism. He even came the
baptism of our investigator who would be getting baptized that day so he could
have a better idea how his would go the coming week!
I was left wondering why in the world
I had felt the need to fail him on his baptism interview until our following
visit. I had some ideas, but he had been so careful and guarded in his
answers during the interview that I really had no proof as to why it was
necessary to fail him other than the feeling/warning I had received. But
once the pressure of having to prove himself to be baptized had been relieved,
I was able to understand what was really and truly going on with more clarity
as we got to know him on a more personal level in our first official
lesson/visit. It became very obvious that the prompting I had received
had indeed come from The Lord.
Well, a week of miracles later and he
was baptized! Woot woot! And when I say a week of miracles that was
really what it was. It was a week of him learning to put off the natural
man and submit himself to the enticing’s of the Holy Spirit as The Lord invites
us to do in Mosiah 3:19. And he did it!
Well, that's all I got.
It's been a wonderful week.
The gospel is true!
Love you so much!
Yours truly,
Elder Ostler
