(I think alliteration may be the height of my creativity. And to think, I participated in UIL Journalism Headline Writing in high school!)A highlight of every semester at our church is baptism day. In the spring, we use a local pond which is such a wonderful location, but extremely cold! Everyone getting baptized writes out their story of coming to faith in Christ and has it read by a friend or family member. Robert used to stand in the water with each person while their story was read and then baptize them, but due to the threat of hypothermia 🙂 the procedure has been changed a bit! All stories are read (with everyone on dry ground) and then they enter the water one at a time for the actual baptism. This past Sunday, there were 10 people from our church and a new church plant baptized and a huge crowd out for the exciting event.

Don’t know if you’ve heard that the only cases of swine flu in Massachusetts are at Amherst College or not, but it is just across the street from our house, and our church is full of students from that campus! We have not been all that concerned – though I did make the kids wash their hands when we got home from the service on Sunday. But imagine our surprise when Robert was on campus today and a student asked him if he had a cold and was feeling alright…..

Turns out that the second (I think!) person Robert baptized was very ill that day but didn’t want to miss this special day she had been preparing for. (She is not the one pictured above!) One day later she tested positive and had to go home. Please pray for our friend to recover quickly, and for the protection of her family, our church and our family!

Robert had already been torturing the kids with squeals, and snorts, and other “swine noises” since we heard of the outbreak across the street. You can only imagine the increase of this behavior since he has indeed come into contact with a verified case! 🙂