baptisms!

We were able to celebrate nine baptisms this past Saturday! This did change from the number I last said, because, well, I’m not really sure. Whoops! Nine people total were baptized–five from our community and four are other connections from the church. Of those from our community, three we know very well and have for years; two we have met more recently.

We all met at our house first, at 9am on Saturday. Of course the neighbors came at 8:30am, so we took a photo of just our community group, played songs and chatted for a bit while we waited.

I’ll just tell you now that smiling in photo is very unpopular. We’re working on getting the kids to smile, against all cultural norms, and look! It worked on the two we spend every day with 😁 So despite the many frowns you will see in the following photos, it was a joyous day!

And then the group from church arrived.

Our pastor prayed, shared about baptism, and we had a cake that I had made. Cake is very, very popular in both the community and the church, so I try to find celebratory excuses to treat them!

We also gave new towels as gifts to the nine being baptized.

We then piled into two cars and headed out to the nearby reservoir. It’s just a few kilometers from our house, but right when it came into view our neighbors were ooh-ing and ahh-ing about how beautiful it was. I often forget how little they leave our neighborhood.

It was really stunning, and one of the most picturesque baptisms I could imagine.

I won’t show you photos of each baptism–but they are beautiful, and will be printed for each person to hang in their homes!–but I will include Yaminoo.

There is another post coming about what it means to see her be baptized, but for now, this is beautiful enough.