What a momentous day...

Even though it doesn’t count as an “outdoor” adventure, I am including the recap here because it is certainly an adventure in its own right. Not my own adventure, but Maria’s. Today she was baptized.

This has been a long time coming. She wanted to do it over a year ago, but we coaxed her into holding off a while. We wanted to make sure she understood what it was that she was doing. When she first starting asking about baptism, we did some talking and some reading with her, and found that there is a huge gap in the Christian book market – we were hard pressed to find a decent kids’ book that explains baptism really well. As God would have it, Knox offers a really great kids’ class by Jennifer Donovan on the sacraments, so she enrolled in that and we thought we’d just wait and see where things went afterward. That was last spring. Well, silly mum wrote down the date of the class wrong, so we missed the class (which is, unfortunately, only offered once a year).

Fast-forward to spring 2005. She is still really anxious about getting baptized, so we (re)enroll her in the sacraments class at Knox. This time we actually make it to the class, which is so well done that I think Jennifer ought to offer it for adults! We both came out of there having learned some things, and she was definitely still chomping at the bit, so away we went. After meeting with one of our elders, a wonderful man named Hershel Janes, she was, by everyone’s estimation, ready.

During her meeting with Hershel, she received a little booklet where she could record some of her thoughts about Jesus and her baptism. Here are a few snippets of what she wrote. The bold type is what was in the book, and the italics are what she wrote.

I love Jesus because: "he dide for me and others, and he is perfect, and never sinned."
I want to serve Jesus because: "he is the powerfullest person in Heven and Earth."
I want to celebrate because: "he is the Lord and my ferm foundashon.
I belong with God’s people because: I love him so much."

True, some of this is parroting what she has heard us or others say… but I know my kid, and I know that, as much as an eight-year-old is able, she understands salvation and has chosen to give her life to Christ. And this will be the most significant adventure of her life.