Baptism, Birthday and Good-Bye!

This very morning Elder Christensen was able to baptize another one of our wonderful investigators, Josie, as Elder Wilderspin and Norgaard witness.  It has been an amazing Sabbath with our chapel overflowing with members and non-members.

The rocks were a little sharp, but the Mediterranean Sea was the perfect temperature.

Josephine is so happy to finally be a member of Jesus Christ's true Church.

A small but happy group attended in the warm morning Cyprus sun.

A few days ago another investigator, Amanda, invited us to her birthday party!

She really packed on the food for only six of us coming to celebrate!

This seems to be turning into a cooking blog, but we had a nice missionary discussion after we ate and opened gifts.  I love how Filipinos put on their own birthday parties!  We need to start that traditions. 

Amanda gets lots of support and encouragement from some of the branch Filipino sisters.

We love our district line up of elders, Baret, Norgaard, Nichols and Wilderspin.

The Church auditors came to Cyprus to help in the branches, and we fell in love with the Madsens!  What a great couple from Sandy Utah.  

They serve in the Regional offices of the Church in Germany.

These two huge ovens cooked the most amazing lamb and potatoes!

Come to Cyprus for a visit and a taste of the great Greek cuisine!

Another great Cyprus Zone Conference was held yesterday in Nicosia.

These Young Women and Relief Society sisters sang in RS today.

JoAn has been here in Cyprus for 5 years and is finally getting to go home to be with her family!  She has mixed emotions leaving all of us and especially her primary kids.

Our Hearts are so full of love for these wonderful people that we get to teach and baptize.  We could not have imagined a more interesting and fulfilling mission--in every way! We feel so blessed.

Come visit us in Cyprus!!  You will love it too!

Baptizing Marvellous and Rebecca!

Our good friend Marvellous got baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in the Mediterranean Sea on

 August 25th 2012.

He is one of those amazing elect of God individuals that the Lord has been preparing to hear the truth.  So three months ago I gave him a Book of Mormon as he was standing near our car, but we had to leave quickly, and as a result, lost his contact information.

When we ran into him quite accidentally a month ago, he wasn't happy that we hadn't gotten back with him, but consented to be taught anyway. He said he was looking for something to change his life.  His father is a minister of a congregation in Nigeria.

Some unsuspecting people on the beach viewed the baptism in amazement, not knowing the great change in Marvellous had began.

Elder Wilderspin, Marvellous, Elder Norgaard and Mo in the water. Elder Norgaard got the privilege of baptizing him.

Favor with Marvellous and Favor's husband, William, who marvelous Marvellous invited to his baptism and church.  Hopefully we will be teaching and baptizing them soon.

A beautiful dark couple with an old white lady pose as Elder Christensen causes an obvious camera shadow.

Mo baptized his eight year old daughter, Rebecca, in the Ivanov's pool that day too. Elder Christensen and I were honored to be able to teach this amazing little girl the lessons before baptism.  She knows five languages very well, Greek (mother a Cypriot), Persian (father is Iranian), Tagalogue (step mother Filipino) German (grandmother) and of course, perfect English, through which she tries to communicate and translate between her family members, hoping someday to have it as the one common family tongue.  She is a small genius of necessity.

She even speaks a bit of Bulgarian with Rosie and Alexis Ivanov.  The Mediterranean Sea in the back ground is where Marvellous chose to be baptized.  It was a good day for the Larnaca Branch!

Thanks for sharing our mission with us through our blog.  And thank you so much for your love and prayers!! This is an exciting experience in multicultural church membership, and we love it!