Yeah! Zacks First Baptism

hey everybody! hows things going. im going to cut to the chase and just start writing. first off we had a meeting with all of the new missionaries this past week, and this poem was on the whiteboard. president monson used it in a talk he gave titled Finishers Wanted. the name of the poem is the Champion and it reads ´¨The average runner runs until the breathe in him is gone, but the champion has the iron will that makes him carry on. For breathe the average begs when limp his muscles grow, but the champion runs on leaden legs his courage makes him go. The average mans complacent when hes done his best to score, but the champion does his best and then he does a little more.¨ When i read this i absolutley fell in love with it. its aplicable in all aspects of life, and the only question to ask yourself is this..do you want to be a champion, or the average man. so there is my thought for the week. 

im going to tell you about a miracle that me and elder alvarez recieved this week. so weve been teaching this older lady about the gospel. she knows a lot and she wants to get baptized. we were teaching her this past week on monday or tuesday, and she said she wasnt going to be here for this weekend. saturday, sunday and monday she would be gone. so we had scheduled her baptism for friday night, and she was a little weary, but we scheduled it. then we had divisions on thursday with the zone leaders, so i was with elder pineda. we went to teach herthursday night, and she told us that she didnt want to get baptized on friday, becuase she wanted to learn more before baptism. we had a good lesson, but we were thinking that we werent going to baptize her becasue she didnt have the desire. then on friday me and elder alvarez went to her house around 430 in the afternoon to teach her. she still had that same attitude of i want to learn more before i get baptized. we taught the baptismal interview questions to get her to recognize all that she knows, and then i asked her to pray, right there in that moment, on our knees, and specifically ask if today (friday) was the day for her baptism. she agreed, so we prayed. she said a silent prayer, so we sat there for about 10 minutes in complete silence. when she was done, she said...¨okay. puedo hacerlo¨ meaning okay, i can do it. we baptized her that night around 730, 3 hours after having this prayer, and i had the privelage of baptizing her. such an awesome first baptism, and definitely a miracle! the power of prayer is real, if executed in the right way. also this past week we had the privelage of giving a blessing to a sick hermana in our ward. i have never done this before in english, let alone in spanish, so that was slightly interesting, but it worked out okay! hope all is well and everybody has a happy thanksgiving! somebody please eat a piece of pie for me! preferabbly banana cream, but whatever will work! Love you!

love, elder slaymaker!