baptisms!!!!!

email sent 5/30/2011

Hey fam,
So the great news is that we BAPTIZED this week. Three. And I only have 4 chapters left of the Book of Mormon. And that means that I officially will have met the goals that our mission president challenged us to complete in this month. What a great feeling. Plus after like a million (okay, three) months without baptizing it was great to get back in the water, so to speak. Not that I´ve ever been in the water because I don´t have that special power from God that we spend the majority of our time talking about, but we did witness it. What a great feeling.
The baptism turned out really well, except for a HUGE failure that I will explain in a second. Our ward is so great and there was lots of support and everything. The girls looked adorable (see picture) and they were all really happy and HL was really happy too, it being her first baptism and all. We were all over the place like crazies this week making sure the girls were prepared and that everything else was prepared. And they were!
Okay, so we had plans to do a really awesome musical number with Christian, the guy in our ward who decided like a month ago to go on a mission, after not wanting anything to do with the church for several years. He´s 21, and he´s our replacement Daniel/our new best friend. Anyway, his sister, who is the aunt of two of the girls that got baptized (because her husband is their dad´s brother-- got it??) told us that he plays the guitar, so we went to investigate that situation. We told him to look up that one baptism Primary song, I Like to Look for Rainbows, or whatever it´s really called, and figure out how to play it. On Friday morning we got the okay from the Bishop to play the guitar inside the chapel, and Friday afternoon I was in Loa, another sector, on exchanges, so I told HL to go by and try to practice with him a little bit. She didn´t see him, but she left a message with his dad for him to be in the chapel half an hour early to practice. We got there and his brother was just dropping him off (he lives like two blocks from the chapel BUT here Evangelicals are pretty big and they always walk around with suits and guitars and he didn´t want to be confused with one of them) so we got to work practicing. We just listened to his guitar chords and then started singing along and it sounded sweet. We ran through it three times and every time it was perfect (it´s a pretty simple song, right?) so we thought we were all set. We also recorded it on HL´s camera so we could listen to it right before and get the note right. We start the baptism, have the opening song, prayer, the first talk, and then we´re up. We get the note right, luckily, but that´s about all. I guess because we were nervous we started singing really fast, and what we had practiced was a really slow rhythm, and Christian tried to whisper to us that we were singing too fast and so I tried to slow down, but we just got REALLY choppy and he couldn´t catch up to us. We started the second verse, thinking that maybe we could get that right and no one would remember the first verse, but it just kept getting worse. It was totally our fault, but it totally sounded like it was Christian´s fault. Or like we had never practiced. But we did! Ugh, it was sooooo embarrassing. Plus the three girls that were getting baptized were dying laughing, because they´re 12 year olds and were nervous on top of that. So horrible. The worst part is that Christian had to give a talk literally right after the musical number (leave his guitar and the bench and go up to the stage) so that was probably really horrible. Buuuuuut luckily we have that one recording where it sounded really good and I´m hoping that in the future that´s all I´ll remember about that song.
It´s the last week of the transfer and I´m going to (guess where) ANTOFAGASTA tonight. Oh, that´s something new. Go spend a day in Antofagasta, traveling through the night twice to get there! Haha. I´m not sure what it is, training for Hermanas, but next week I´ll have more details. Today we went to the beach (see the other picture) and made a pyramid! And I got really sunburned because I forgot to put on sunscreen (first time in forever). Isn´t it nice that it´s about to start winter here but we can still go to the beach and get sunburned? Sorry about your lame spring weather over there. It´s the last P-day for Hermana Marin and Elder Insaurralde (remember that he was my ZL in Iquique? He´s in the other zone in Arica now) and it´s so weird to think that in ONE more transfer I´ll be in that position. But luckily I still have to be terminated. Seven more weeks of this LOVELY, lovely mission.
I love you all! Thanks for your emails and I hope you have a great week!