Hello Family!!
Great News!! Our companionship will see its first baptism this Saturday!! We are really excited! My companion Elder Smith will be baptizing him about which he is very excited. He would not stop pacing the floor and calling missionaries the moment we got home to let them know he was getting to baptize someone. The story behind this investigator is pretty amazing and his desire for baptism completely came out of the blue. He has been investigating the church for the last 2 or 3 years. His name is Kolya and he is about 25 years old. Just thursday night we were on a lesson with different investigator named Michael who had seemed to be making good progress from what i had heard from previous elders. We met with him for the first time and i noticed that he kept showing doubts that Jesus Christ really did what he did. We were supposed to get him to the point where we could ask him the baptisimal questions so it was surprising to me that somehow he had made it through all of the lessons and believed the book of mormon was true without having a testimony of Christ. So, we've got some serious re-teaching to do coming up here soon.. but thats another story for another day. Sorry, back to Kolya. So, we had invited a new convert who is about his age to be on the lesson with us named Sasha who is a super great guy. He was running a little late but just happened to see Kolya at the bus stop and so he asked him to come on the lesson with us. He said sure and they both showed up. Since the concern we had for Michael was about faith in christ, We watched Finding Faith In Christ with him and testified. The movie was great but once it was done, Michael started get mad about how in the film he didnt help the rich and continued to talk about how he didnt think that Christ really performed the miracles he did. This is when the natives took over:) Both Kolya and Sasha defended our beliefs fearlessly and pretty effectively. What suprised us all was that Kolya was one of the first to testify because we had never heard him do that before. He told Michael that he wasnt even a member of our church but he had gained a testimony of the reality of what Christ did and proceeded to bear a great testimony. Though the lesson brought up some serious issues with Michael, we all came to the agreence that we needed to invite Kolya to be baptized and that he was ready. We set up with him the next day after institute and talked about his testimony that we had witnessed just a day before. He eventually told us that he was ready for baptism and everything thing went great from there. He has already been interviewed and seems to be doing great. It was amazing to sit back and see how the Lord has blessed us without us having really done much with Kolya. I know this is a result of the efforts we make to be obedient and i am so grateful for it. I can testify that the Lord works in mysterious ways. This baptism totally came out of the blue. We are excited for this baptism and it sounds like i will have the chance to sing at it too which will be fun. Anyways, thats about it for this week and i hope to fill you in on our other investigators this next week. I love you all and I hope you have a great week!!!
With Love,
Elder Ostler
