Covered by His Grace: "When Thou Art Converted..."

Happy February Everyone!

Well sometimes the days seem long but really time is just flying by. This week I will hit one year on the mission... one year! Dad sent me an email as if I was an RM getting on the plane to head home, and I got really excited about the prospect of peanuts and English, but as I kept reading I was almost in tears. It’s true, leaving the people here is going to be hard. It doesn't help that I'm probably getting transferred here in two weeks to a different island and I'll have to leave my Palmarejo, Praia family and ward. Palmarejo e minha terra!!

Nadine was baptized on Saturday, she's a 15 year-old darling. However, because she's under 18 we had to get permission from her parents, and so our baptism almost didn't happen.

We went down to her house on Friday to get her mom to sign the ficha (the baptism form), but it didn't matter what we said, her mom's response was they were Catholic and so she was not getting baptized.

Bummed out of our minds, we went down the street to Gi's house to regroup before continuing on. There's just nothing quite like being at Gi's housel - outside with his ducks and fat Dalmatian, a pot of katchupa rolling over the fire, Grandpa separating beans from pods and Grandma yelling at us to speak Kreolo while she wacks Gi and passers-by with a rod - all while a soccer game goes on in the field below. Good regroup.

So after Gi's we started back up the hill towards our next appointment, but then we got a call from Gi (rather a tchmom, a tchmom is a message you can send to tell someone else to call you so that it uses their saldo or money - a very common message for missionaries) and so we called and he said, "Hey, you have to come to Nadine's house right now."

So we ran back down the hill, and back at Nadine's house where Gi's waiting for us outside with a grin... "I talked to her parents, Nadine's getting baptized on Saturday." Whatever he said worked, not only were they accepting of her baptism but they fully supported her! Her dad signed the ficha (every time we see him now he is just a little drunk and he likes to remind us he is Nadine's dad and her baptism was an honor for us all) and we had a baptism on Saturday.