The Baptism

 Saturday was the big day - My good friend became a member of the church.  It was a delightful experience to baptize him in Ljubljana, where there is a nice font.

Mission rules made it a little complicated, but we worked through it.  Liz and I drove down with just the two of us in the car, while the sisters accompanied D. on the train to Ljubljana.  Nobody can be in the mission cars except missionaries.  We met all the other missionaries at the Ljubljana church, one of only two real church-owned churches in the mission.  Several members came as well.

The water in the font wasn't as warm as we'd like, and, when we arrived, the elders were busy heating pans of water in the kitchen to try to heat it up a little bit.

  D.  was nervous as we changed into white clothing.  He had questions, and asked me to show him, again, how to hold our hands during the baptism.  I was nervous that I'd be able to support him properly, especially with my gimpy knee.  But it all went very smoothly.

  During the program, President Fidler presided, the sisters played a hymn on guitar and viola, Sister Ashurst gave a nice talk.  D. bore his testimony, but of course, I didn't understand it because he was speaking Slovene.

  We brought a carrot cake and several others brought desserts to go with it.  Everybody had a good time.

    I was talking to one of the members who lives in Ljubljana, and he mentioned that there is snow on the peaks.  We hadn't noticed on the way down, but on the way back it was very clear that the highest peaks had a layer of snow - the first snow of the season.  I tried to take a photo, but the bumpy car and the distance to the peaks combined to thwart me.

We are about to move away from our apartment, so we have been taking a few last-look photos.  This one is the sun dial with our kitchen window to the left and the neighbor's kitchen window to the right, and the topiary tree in the middle.

It was a cloudy day, so you can't tell what time it is.

Our next few days will be taken with packing, moving, and unpacking.  Moving is always a big mess, but we have high hopes for good results from it.