Olivia's Baptism

n November 5th, 2011 Olivia was baptized. Honestly, it turned out better than I pictured. I learned so much and was buzzing for several days afterwards.

What you should know about Sydney, Australia is that there are hardly any Mormons. Olivia has been the only Mormon in her entire school and she has been in two different schools so far. In her Sunday school class there are no girls,(just stinky boys) so when we asked her who she wanted to invite to her baptism she said her friends from school. We ended up having 20 non-members come to Olivia's baptism and 10 members (30 all together).

I am embarrassed to say most of my friends did not know we were Mormons. In fact quite a few had spoken to me during different play groups, about documentaries they had seen the night before about a crazy religious group in America... more specifically in Utah...and then kept going from there. When I invited them all to the baptism I explained that we were "mainstream Mormons" which was not what they had seen on TV. I think most of them came because they felt bad that they had been bashing my religion in front of me, without knowing it. To their credit, they all brought gifts and were perfectly on time. The Mormons all showed up 15 minutes late.

Olivia's baptism was a tad nontraditional. For starters we had it at a secluded beach instead of a font at our church building. The beach was a 45 minute drive to collins flat beach. Once you got there it was a 200 meter hike through some bush. The hike was beautiful, you got to cross over a steam, climb through some big rocks and then when you got to the bottom, there was a small waterfall running over the sand. The beach was small, maybe 200 meters long and 400 meters wide. There was no tide because it was protected from the ocean by a gorge. Because of the gorge it did go deep pretty fast and there were lots of big rocks nearby.

Olivia with and her classmates waiting for more people to arrive

Mom giving a talk about Baptism and the Holy Ghost

Olivia & I singing "Child's Prayer"

Walking out to the water

Elliot Sung (from primary) played his violin while Olivia & Stan changed. The violin was so beautiful against the sound of the waves!

Stan giving his talk, I love his shoes!

Stan spoke on 'enduring to the end'

Daddy giving Olivia a hug!

Tayla her best friend from school, giving the closing prayer. She typed it out and gave us a copy. It was so precious because she prayed that God would look after Olivia because she was her friend.

Olivia & Tayla Brown

The Australian spread. The pavlova has all the fruit on top (it is mostly a meringue), lemingtons- those brown coconut bars on the left, fairy bread (basically white bread, butter and sprinkles, tim-tams, lollies and a fruit spread (mangoes, rock-melon (what Aussies call cantelope), strawberries, and watermelon) -it was perfect!

Grandpa Andre & Olivia. Thank goodness he came, we barely had enough priesthood at the baptism (30 people and 3 priesthood holders).

Granny Joanney & Olivia (she and Andre flew all the way from Montana for the baptism)--THANK YOU for coming all that way!