Rosie's Baptism

About a year and a half ago, our whole family gathered together in my parents' family room and watched as they opened their mission call. Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Mission.  The room was silent until Rosie yelled out, "Puxatony!  I'm going to be baptized in Puxatony, Pennyslvania!"

Fast forward to today, Rosie's baptism.  We are in Pittsburgh, close enough to Puxatony, with our Grammy and Grampy, and we had a wonderful experience, one that we will never forget.

Rosie has been so excited for many, many months for her baptism.  She loves her white baptism dress and her new scriptures with her name engraved, Kristen Rose Oettli.  (The Distribution Center spelled our last name wrong the first time, and they had to be redone.)  She also picked out a very cute scripture bag and baptism journal.  We celebrated with our Salt Lake aunts, uncles and cousins before we left.

The whole week before we left for Pittsburgh, Rosie prayed, "Please let this week go by fast and please let the week we are in Pittsburgh go by slow."  Finally, we arrived in Pittsburgh and Rosie was so happy.  The morning of her baptism, we went to a farmer's market to buy fruit for the reception afterwards.  I must have sat in chocolate in the huge missionary van, and had a chocolatey backside.  Everyone laughed at me.

  

Back at home, Grammy and I had much to do to get ready, and we were both very nervous.  About an hour before we needed to leave to go to the church, I couldn't find Rosie's white jumpsuit, that we brought from home, for her to be baptized in.  I finally found it, folded  in a corner of the kitchen counter.  I grabbed it, and ran upstairs to put it in the bag we were taking to the church.  The front of the jumpsuit was covered in chocolate!  I showed it to Rosie and she said angrily, "What did you do, sit on it?"  Grammy came to the rescue and cleaned it all up.  

The calamity continued; when we arrived at the church we discoved Grandpa's church keys were on his other key ring and we couldn't open the font or the bathrooms.  The missionary with the keys didn't arrive until the part in our program where we at the font, ready to watch Rosie be baptized.  By this time, however, I was feeling very calm and happy that our family could have this special experience.

Grammy and I gave talks for the program and Bud and Rosie sang a beautiful baptism song.  Coleman was ejected from the program right after he called out during the opening prayer, "Bud, I can't hear you!"  A missionary took him to the nursery, away from being able to disrupt the program any more.  

Grammy and Grampy invited the two office couples to the baptism, as well as several sets of missionaries.  As word spread that President Summerhays' granddaughter was being baptized, the missionaries wanting to come grew and grew.  About 30 missionaries came, in addition to the couples.  Also, three investigators came.  One later told Grandpa that he had never felt the Spirit so strongly.

When I stood to give my talk and looked into the eyes of all these missionaries, it was very touching to me.  There was a very warm and loving spirit in the room.  Rosie was smiling and Grammy and Grampy were happy.

Then it was time for the baptism.  Rosie was glowing and smiling as she came out of the water.  Then, as she left the font, she looked back at the water and asked loudly, "Can I do a cannonball?"

Later, Jono confirmed Rosie and blessed her with many gifts and told her how much we love her.  Grampy finished the program with some touching remarks and then we had cookies and fruit with the missionaries.  We took lots of pictures and many of the missionaries wanted their picture taken with Rosie using their own cameras.  It was a neat experience for us to talk with the missionaries.  They all love Grammy and Grampy so much.

After our wonderful experience, we went to Ichiban's for a delicious Japanese dinner.  We ate so much food; filets, shrimp, veggies, noodles, rice and ice cream.  It was a perfect baptismal day for our sweet Rosie. 

We Love You Rosie!