Our most recent joy has been the baptism of a beautiful young woman who is attending our institute class. Her name is Annette Saurdi and she is small but a bundle of enthusiasm and joy for the gospel. She is so excited and so enthusiastic. Her friend, named Jose, invited her to hear the missionary discussions. He was baptised in November of last year. She has been attending institute for a year and no one had invited her to take the missionary discussions. She is a pioneer in her family (as are most of the youth that are members in the institute). She is the first to join the church in her family. Another couple, the Roberts has also been instrumental in fellowshipping her. There is a great support group for her as well that attended her baptism.
We also attended an institute activity at the temple where the youth went to do baptisms. There were 39 youth from the institute there. One of the young men was so excited. He had his father's name and was going to be baptized for him. As we were watching those wonderful youth being baptized, I thought of the first pioneers and what an honor it would have been to be with them in the Nauvoo temple as they were doing baptisms for the dead. Then I thought about how much of an honor it is to be with these pioneers here in this country who are the first in their families to receive the gospel.
We also had another activity as a group of senior couples which was interesting and fun. Brother Bowcutt arranged with the government officials here to allow us to have a guided tour of the National Palace. It is a beautiful building and was very interesting. There are about 16 senior couples as well as some single senior sister missionaries serving here. They are all delightful people and make our time here so very enjoyable.
The Palacio National was build in 1947. Over the years there has been a strong US presence here and as a result their government is a constitutional government with a president and house and senate. The building we toured was the presidential palace equal to the White House in the US. The rooms were elaborately decorated and of course are used for entertaining dignitaries from around the world.
There is an election scheduled for May so right now there are huge bill boards all over the city with the pictures of one candidate or another. The people here seem to have the same dissatisfaction with their politicians as we do.
