In the past he has struggled with the church, for his own reasons. I have been going to church now and then for years with Ariana. If I didn't go to church my Mom would usually take Ariana. Years ago I gave up all hope on having Will get baptized and never believed it would happen I would just struggle trying to figure out how to raise Ariana. We knew she loves going to church and she but taking her alone wasn't the same. Everyone is there with thier family and part of my family was missing
Last year Will decided he really wanted to change, he was tired of being the person he was becoming and decided it would be great to go to church as a family . Lowes didn't give him the religious accommodation and he couldn't go, although I had finally gotten Sundays of work it wasn't the same going alone and having to raise our daughter going to church without her Dad. So when we decided to move to Utah we made a commitment to each other, that we would be home at night together, and we would have weekends off together. Although I loved my last job one thing we realized we needed was more quality family time. It's been hard trying to find a job that Will likes and does well at that will allow him to work Monday thru Friday 9-6 . Considering he doesn't have any formal college training and basically only retail experience we have been lucky to get the job he has now. I know we got it because of the faith we have been showing and everything is always seeming to work out.
Anyways.... When Will moved to Utah in April he left Washington with the mind set of life will be better, I will be a better person, this is a chance for a fresh start. Will really ran with that in his head. He started taking missionary discussions by missionaries he met in Temple Square in April. When he moved in May he met with other missionaries and then when we lived into our ward in Draper things really started to progress. On Tuesday night Will was finally baptized and is now a member of the LDS church.
The baptism was awesome he had about 50 people show up. There were 6 former Everett missionaries there that taught him in Everett. One missionary, elder Olive' was in SLC on vacation with his family (he is from new Zealand ) and he was part of the service. Some other men that was involved in the service was a few men from our ward in Draper, the current missionaries, and a scout master Will had all thru growing up.
I made the program and Will kept changing it and I was being frustrated by Thursday night I didn't allow any more changes. But he put thought into how he wanted it done. Everyone involved had a personal part helping him progress in baptism, whether it be a missionary who served in Everett 5 years ago in everett, a childhood boy scout master, or the men that came over every week for the past 3 months to give Will a church lesson. Every person he chose had some sort of spark in Will that helped him make his decision. Over the years I had seen Will go thru ups and downs of wanting to be baptized but I'm glad it was finally done and we are now on the same page together.
We are now looking forward to when Will, Ariana and I can get sealed in a temple. We will be doing that on our 11th anniversary. A sealing is a special ceremony that happens inside an lds temple that binds a family together after death so "until death do you part " no longer exists. We believe there is continued life in heaven and thru a sealing we will still be a family while in heaven.
This man and his family has become very good friends with us since living in Draper. They have taken us to the Ogden Temple Open House, he had taken Will out to lunch several times to talk about goals and continuing to be a better person. They call thier outings "man dates". Will asked him to baptize him.
Will just got into his whites and had to take a self.
Elder Meranda, he was the main missionary to teach him in Draper before he went home.
Sister Mullin and Sister Lampinen (she's from Finland) temple square missionaries they helped teach Will via phone.
Sister Mulliner, Lampinen, Nelson the 3 Temple Square missionaries who helped teach Will.
The weekend before Wills baptism we got tickets to attend the fall LDS general conference in SLC where we got to hear the prophet and apostles of the church speak.
Just before conference started we saw sister Lampinen and Sister Lee (from China).
The view from our seats we were close!
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