Baptism service

Today Jay and Rachel were both baptized, as well as two other people from our church. One lady had come to Erick a few months ago and expressed a desire to be baptized. We were thrilled, because it was the first time someone in our church had asked to be baptized. The only problem was that our church doesn't have a baptristy. In the past, our church has held baptisms at a lake or at the river, but that just wasn't going to work out this time. First of all, most of our congregation is very elderly and on walkers or in power chairs, and navigating a river bank would be simply impossible. Since baptism is a public commitment of one's faith, we felt it was important to have it at a place where the whole church would be able to come and support them. Second, we were in the middle of a drought, and there wasn't enough water in the lakes and rivers to baptize anyone. Erick joked around about laying the lady down and rolling her back and forth to get her wet, but she didn't seem to think that was such a good idea.

Finally we contacted our sister church down the street, the one where our kids go on Wednesday nights, and arranged to have a joint baptism service with them. They ended up having three brothers who wanted to be baptized, and we had four altogether--the original lady who asked to be baptized, an older man who had been in the church for quite some time but had never been baptized, and two of our kids--Rachel, who had never been baptized, and Jay, who had been baptized but wanted to renew his commitment to the Lord. Timothy wanted to at first but then changed his mind. He's a little shy about doing things in front of people, so he wants to wait until he's a little older.

It was a beautiful service. Erick preached, and he did a great job. He's such a good speaker now. I remember when he first started preaching how I'd spend the whole time being nervous for him. Back then, when we'd have a guest speaker I'd be excited because I'd finally get to hear some good preaching. Nowadays, when we have a guest speaker he's usually not as good as Erick. :)

Here is a picture of Erick with the four from our church that were baptized: