Elder Braden Baker: One last baptism!!

Wow, what a historical week in the church!! The last few weeks were pretty busy and we had a lot of things to get done and stuff like that so I hadn't really had a set solid schedule yet to work with Elder Clawson. I wanted to get into a solid routine for him as he first starts his mission but things kept coming up!! Like, MLC, or exchanges, or planning for one of our many trainings. I felt like finally I had a week where I can train Elder Clawson and focus on him more and our schedule!!

I seriously kept telling him this week was going to be awesome because it will be all normal, no surprises, no more exchanges and it will be super great. Well, that was all wrong. First of all, Monday evening we get a call from the Assistants and they told us they plan to come to Hyderabad and do an exchange with us Zone Leaders tomorrow so they literally flew into Hyderabad from Bangalore the next day!! Tuesday and Wednesday I was with Elder Mungamari and he is a great guy and a great missionary but that means I wasn't with Elder Clawson. So, going on exchange with the AP's was the start to the "normal set week" I had promised to Elder Clawson just earlier that day.

The next day is when we woke up and saw the announcement from the church cancelling all church meetings including large gatherings and leadership conferences and everything. Well, we were having our mission president fly to Hyderabad today for our zone conference!! So, after I woke up and read this article, within 10 minutes my mission president called me and said that he won't be coming to Hyderabad to do zone conference so we are going to have to do it over video call. I was soo excited for our zone conference and to see president and sister Thomas so I was a little sad. It actually worked out pretty smoothly. It wasn't the same but it was pretty good over technology! We has all the Elders video call in from their apartment and president and sister Thomas were in Bangalore. It was super cool! We even did our interview over a video call.

Missionary work is kind of weird right now because we can't bring people to church and we also have been told not to baptize until further notice!! What?! How are we supposed to fulfill our purpose without baptizing. Anyway, they gave us permission to baptize this weekend only if people were prepared so I told Vijaya and we made it work!! She was seriously so prepared for baptism. She has been coming to church for a long long time and even pays her tithing. Her daughter Sowmya and I served together on my mission and even started together in the mission home. Sowmya has been waiting a long time for her mom to be baptized also so they can go to the temple together. It was really exciting to see both of them so happy in their family now they are all members. It was a super unique and special baptism service. We got to baptize Vijaya with a small group of only 4 people came because it has to be a small gathering. Right after I performed the baptism, Elder Clawson confirmed her a member! It was cool to do the baptism and confirmation right then and there at the waters edge. We will see how long all of this lasts but I'm glad Vijaya got to be baptized before the baptism hold.

Anyway, I think this is just a super cool time to be alive and be a part of the Lord's restored church. We are so lucky that we have a prophet of God and apostles that literally are communicating with Christ to help us during these times. Well, it sure is fun to go forward with faith. It is becoming a lot more necessary to walk by faith rather than by sight. We are lucky to have a Prophet of God to follow in these days. By the way, this all hit me and I understood God's plan. God is having every country shut down everything so there is literally no distractuon to "Hear Him" for this bicentennial conference. How cool is that!!

I love you all! Have a great week and stay safe.

Love, Elder Baker