Exciting News!

We had four baptisms today!! Can you believe it? I'm still giddy from the whole experience. Along with that, we had a new couple join our family. Praise the Lord!
The first to be baptized was Larisita (in yellow, just to the left of Sam in the picture), the youngest daughter of Larisa. She's been wanting to get baptized for a while, but we wanted to make sure she wanted to do it for her and not just because her mom and sister were baptized. Summer studied with her and was able to see in her a heart ready and willing to be placed in God's hands. She's been anxiously looking forward to this day and was so glad it finally arrived!
Ofelia (second from the left) was the next to decide that the time had come for her to give herself over to the Lord. She is Rosa's sister-in-law and has been coming regularly for some time now. Her son, Marco, was baptized at our church retreat last December. She has gone through some hard times with her family in the year or so that we've known her, but has been able to see how the Lord is working through those situations and through her life to glorfiy his name. It was so wonderful to finally see her make this important decision.
We'd been planning Larisa's and Ofelia's baptisms for a few weeks now, since we don't have a baptistry of our own. We've also been praying that more would step forward and take this opportunity to follow Jesus. Well, the Lord answered our prayers! This week while Sam was visiting with a new family in our church, two of them decided that they were ready to accept the invitation. The first was Irandi (far left). You may notice that she is a little bit pregnant. : ) She started attending cell and church with her mother-in-law, Reina, who'll you'll meet in a minute. The Lord has touched her heart on more than one occasion and she didn't even wait to be asked if she wanted to be baptized. She was absolutely positive about her decision. And then her brother-in-law, Daniel (in the middle) decided he wanted to make the same commitment. So, our plan of two baptisms doubled to four! You can't really ask for anything better than that, now can you?
Well, it did get better. Daniel's parents (and Irandi's in-laws), Pepe and Reina (in picture #2), have been Christians for quite some time and have been looking for a family to worship with. In the month since they first arrived, they've attended cell regularly (Pepe can't always make it because he's a taxi driver, but Reina is there every week) and we've seen in them a desire to be a part of this family. So, today we officially welcomed them into the Río de Vida church. They are a direct answer to prayers you have prayed for new families who are ready to dive head first into what the Lord is doing through this church in Morelia. It was a very special day for them today, seeing their son and daughter-in-law dedicated their lives to God. Please pray that the rest of the family joins them in that decision in the near future.
After we celebrated these new lives and this new family, we all sat down to eat and, of course, watch the final game of the World Cup. Go, Italy!! It was an afternoon filled with blessing, communion, laughter and tears. That's about as good as it gets, don't you agree?