Wild Week

Portugal

Dear family,

Well this week was a wild ride, and it looks like it was the same way for you guys too. Well, I'll start with the ending, because it is pretty good, and then I'll get to the rest: Tatiana was baptized! YAY!

Tatiana is an old investigator from when Irma Morrison was here. Irma Morrison found her mom and sister and taught and baptized them. Tatiana is another daughter and is 16 years old. My first week in this area, we marked her for baptism, but it fell through. She wasn't ready to live all of the commandments and decided that she didn't want to live the "old fashioned" law of chastity. But, something that I felt the first time I met her was that I had promised her that I would fight until she was baptized. I felt like I had promised her in the life before this one that I would do EVERYTHING in my power to help her be baptized. Well, that week didn't work out. We kept visiting her family because her mother and sister are recent converts. She still didn't seem interested until about last week...she actually came to church by herself (she lives 30 minutes away from the church by bus) while her mother and sister were sick. The young women's president in our ward has been following up with her since she started investigating the church months ago. She calls her EVERY DAY (which is something we didn't know--Tatiana never told us until then) and would just talk with her about life, and always invite her to come to church and to activities. Well, Tatiana never accepted to come back to church after her fallen baptism date...until last week. She said she just woke up and had desire to go to church. So she went. Cátia (the young women's leader) jumped on it and had her fill out a form to go to girl's camp that week. Tatiana accepted.

Tatiana went to girls camp and it CHANGED HER LIFE. I am being serious. I never thought I would see such a difference in someone for camping outside with a bunch of girls, but I definitely saw it. She met many young women of the Lisbon Stake and loved the activities and especially the testimony meeting. She has come such a long way...(especially since the first time I saw her and had a lesson with her, we decided to talk about the nature of Heavenly Father and the love he has for her. She said she began to feel very weird--something inside of her that she had never felt before. She said that she felt embarrassed and felt so strangely that she got up and left the room. Little did she know that it was the first time she ever felt the Spirit in her life and it scared her, but she said that ever since then she has felt it more and more every day, pulling her to act...) And she finally did. She went to girls camp and it was amazing. The next Monday, we went to her house and started talking about..oh, you guessed it...baptism. :) Tatiana was clearly having an internal fight. She said that when she was with us, she had a great desire to be baptized, but when she was alone, especially with her boyfriend when she was tempted, she didn't have a desire. She was worried about if she fell and broke commandments after baptism that she would feel guilty. I explained to her very clearly that baptism does not bring guilt--sin does. Baptism brings alleviation and salvation. We tried discovering more about her feelings until she started crying...I just kept thinking...what is happening? This is SO not like Tatiana. And then it clicked for me...Tatiana grew up in a home where her parents were not married. Her father abused her mother and did drugs. Her mother ran away with the three kids. Tatiana has an older brother who does drugs and mischief. She has NEVER had a good male role model in her life. She admitted once before I got her to the irmas that she felt the only person who loved her in her life was her mother. She had no concept of eternal relationships, other than her mother. She had no idea how her life could really be. She has never seen a normal marriage in her life, let alone a successful marriage. People of African culture do not normally marry, so these ideas were so strange to her, but something that she realized that night was that they were true and she had to live them. She wanted so badly to feel what she felt with us all of the time and she knew she couldn't. But, that is the great promise, was that she could. So, we told her to think and pray about it.

The next day, we returned and she opened the door quickly and said “I made a decision.” We walked in and she basically said just then, “I decided to get baptized.” WAHOO! We marked her for Saturday. We even prayed with her boyfriend, and he agreed that it would be the best thing for her. He was willing to support her and keep the law of chastity with her. YES!
So, after all of this, we thought we would just have to be vigilant with her and it would all run smoothly...hahaha...I am starting to wonder when anything will ever run smoothly :)

Well, the drama was: this baptism was treated more like a wedding than a baptism. Tatiana wanted a white dress to take pictures in, and didn't want to get baptized in a baptismal suit, wanted a special cake, special food, special guests (including Irma Morrison, who was invited with her family), everything...you name it, she wanted it. Her mother also had a "vision" of how she wanted the baptism of Tatiana to go. WOW. Her mother thought it was too soon to invite all of their family, make all of the food, organize the program how they wanted, find "the" dress with matching sandals and a cute towel. Oh, and her mother had to work and was having health problems, so she did not have time or energy. So, what do the irmas do? We go dress shopping for about three days to try to find something MODEST, and fitting, and flattering, and white that Tatiana would like. Talk about mission impossible. We found a cake, we did invitations and delivered them, we found dresses and tried them on and by the end of the week I felt more like a bridesmaid than a missionary. It was a little ridiculous. It definitely got a little superficial, but it all worked out in the end. Oh, yeah; more drama was that the baptism was marked on the same day as a wedding of someone in the ward and people were freaking out that the two things were happening on the same day...why do people always freak out? But, I am learning mountains of things of how I will plan things in the future...focus on what is most important and the rest just doesn't matter!

But the baptism was beautiful, everyone was crying, Irma Morrison was there with her family, it was pretty picture perfect. Tatiana was glowing and she even wore the skirt we gave her on Sunday and she was adorable as she received the Holy Ghost. It all works out in the end. We just have to make it there. But, I am glad that it is the end, but also the beginning of another grand adventure for her. So, for all of those young women leaders out there, girls camp really does make a difference and I personally appreciate it. Tatiana was baptized! One more young woman with all of the potential in the world. And she is even thinking of working to serve a mission. (If she thinks that a mission is dress shopping for people who are getting baptized, she is in for a rude wake up call, but we have explained and she still wants to, so we'll see about that...)

But, for now, I feel like I have found someone and helped them in a way no one else could because I promised I would before this life and I am so happy Heavenly Father let me complete that little mission.

But, on to my bigger mission and another great week...I am excited.

We are planning on having a picnic with the elders today in a park. We are going to have buckets of chicken, chips, soda, and apple crisp and ice cream!

Happy 4th of July :)

Love you all,

Irmã Pérez