Our Dear Friend Lelia's Baptism Day


We had a very special baptism in the Kihei Ward.  Our dear friend Lelia.  Lelia is married to James and they have been attending our Book of Mormon Class since we arrived in December.  We did not know them at first but soon learned that James was a member and had even served as a bishop. He was divorced and he and Lelia got married just a few months prior to us meeting them.  Lelia had been attending our ward for about 2 years.  She had never been baptized but just loved coming to church.  She had spent a lot of years going to many different churches and spent a lot of time in other religions.  We learned all this as we got to know her.  We found that they lived close to us and shared a house with another member in our ward Natallia Hill. As the weeks went on we all became very good friends and we were often invited over for lunch and we would always have good discussions but there really wasn't much discussion or expectation that Lelia would join the church.  That is why we were very surprised one morning to wake up and find a text from Lelia.  She expressed that it was her birthday and they were in Kauai and she had been given spiritual revelation that it was time to join the church.  She asked us if we could help her with that.  We were very happy to hear this.  She wanted us to be the ones to teach her but we convinced her to have the missionaries involved.  We assured her that we would sit in on every lesson and be there beside her every step of the way and answer all her questions.  It was a very wonderful experience to participate in teaching her about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  
Lelia wanted to be baptized at dawn and so we did the baptism at 6 am.  In order to do that the missionaries volunteered to spend the night at the chapel and to fill the font which needed about 4 hours to fill.  It was so nice that they did that. The baptism was so spiritual and really wonderful.  We are so happy that our friend Lelia decided to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  












 

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