Baptisms and Pen Pals

...still trying to catch up.

Sometime in the beginning of March, the full-time missionary Elders in the Cauayan Branch we attend came to us before Sacrament meeting. They had a question for Elder Koontz and hoped that he could help. There is this little family of five girls. We didn’t know for sure how they were all related, but we would sit by them in Sacrament Meeting. The eight year old was going to get baptized and wanted Elder Koontz to baptize her.
“Surely there a someone in the branch who could baptize her,” he asked.
“No, she would like you to do it,” they said.

March 23rd baptism of sisters (l-r) Joy, Carissa, and Joan.

A couple of weeks later, we went to the church to get ready for the baptism. Another  branch had a baptism in progress so we had to wait in the hall while they finished. Elder Koontz was dressed in his white baptismal clothes, and so were three of the girls in the family! Then we learned that he was baptizing all three of them!! They are sisters, and the oldest is the mother of the 1 and 3-year-old. Sweet family! So happy for them. Oh, and they each bore their testimonies in Sacrament meeting the next day.

We’ve since brought them an illustrated Book of Mormon (in Tagalog) because that is what the 8-yr-old Crissa prefers to read. She and Ellie have also become modern-day ‘pen pals’. Mail takes about three weeks between the states and the Philippines, and, they don’t really ‘deliver’ mail here. We email and print ‘letters’ between the girls.