BIG News...

September 4th, 2013

Hey so I called the mission president today and told him that I am extending.... I have been praying and thinking about it a lot these past couple weeks and I know its the right decision

September 8th, 2013

Dear family,

 So it's all official and I am going to be staying until the end of February.. I'm not going to lie at the start was was really unsure of the decision but I kept reading the Book of Mormon 30 minutes a day and all of the doubts or excuses I had went away and now I am sure that it is the right choice and God will bless my efforts. And the mission President didn't ask me to I just felt like it was necessary because the mission is really young right now and there are a lot of greenies that can use my help.

 As for this week things were pretty crazy. First it started with ''the baptism of john''. Joao our investigator is deathly afraid of water and before his baptism his only doubt was so deep the water would in the ocean because he was scared he was going to die. The morning of his baptism we went to work out right next to the beach and saw that the waves were HUGE probably the biggest waves I have ever seen in my life. I just kinda brushed it off and hoped that things would settle down by the time the baptism came. When we got to the beach with our 7 investigators and joao the beach was completely full of surfers and tourists which is really rare for where we went but joao had to get baptized so we went ahead and did it there. The first second and third time we tried the baptism waves came and messed it all up. I told the member that was baptizing him to just say the prayer, let the wave pass and then dunk him. The prayer was said and then the wave came... But this time it came bigger than normal picking up joao and pushing him into the sand. My first thought is ''oh crap joao is dying of fear right'' and I would have thought he was drowning but he was just floating in the water on his back looking confused. I told him to stand up when he says to me ''Am I baptized yet''? Apparently joaoheard the prayer and figured he could just dunk himself in the water once or twice and call it baptism. The member, my comp and I couldn't help but just start freaking out and laughing almost to the point of dying. He said it so seriously and was actually convinced that he was baptized.

And my comp by the way is super cool. He both work together perfectly and are teaching and baptizing like bosses. We call ourselves the dream team and our secret weapon is the book of mormon and acts 22:16. This week we ended up being in a room full of people and taught them all about faith and repentance and baptisms and then we marked 8 of them with baptismal dates. It was super cool. God is blessing us a lot right now!

Well I hope all is well with you guys! Love you all tons.

Elder Edwards