Jalen's Baptism

Today was Jalen's baptism. He has been so excited for it for the past year and he has been hanging out for when he would turn 8 and could be baptised. For the past week he has been counting down the days.

He has been talking a lot about what it means to be baptised and last week he had an interview with Bishop Prebble to make sure he was ready. Jay said the interview was 'awesome', and now wants to have more interviews with him!

Yesterday Jay was so excited and he said 'only one more day till the best day of my life'!


He was very lucky and had a lot of people from both East and West wards come to the baptism. I asked him tonight how he felt about so many people coming to see him get baptised and he said he 'felt grateful and happy', which was nice.



Uncle Chrish came all the way from Sydney for it, and we were worried that he was going to be too sick to come, but he came in at the last minute. Poor Chrish looked and felt terrible, but it was nice to have him there.

Aaron's Dad and Carol and also his Nan and Pop came too which was special for Jay. They all seemed to really enjoy it - especially his Nan and Pop.


Jay's primary teacher - Merle Challis gave the opening prayer. She has taught Jay in Primary now for 4 years in a row, so it was nice that she could be a part of the day as well.

Grandma and Uncle Jared both gave really great talks before he was baptised. Jay said that when he was listening to the talks he had 'happy tears'. It was nice to have everyone participate in different ways. Becky played the piano and Nicki did a great job of choristering - even though she was not very confident with it.



Jay and Aaron said that the water was really cold, and Jay was 'lucky' to have to go under twice as Aaron mucked up a couple of the words.

The primary kids sang two songs while Aaron and Jay were getting changed and they sounded so good. Little Charlotte sang so loud during 'I am a Child of God' and everyone cracked up - it was very cute - she obviously knew the song very well. Noah sat with the Primary kids while they were singing, but was in a cranky mood all night and just started yelling, so Grandma had to move him away. Harri was also in a cranky mood (he didn't have a good night last night and ended up sleeping in bed with Noah and I, while Aaron was in Melbourne) and didn't want to go to anyone but Aaron or I, which made it difficult when I was playing the piano for the Primary kids. It all worked out okay in the end though.

It was a very special and happy day for Jay. It was nice to have so much family there - we missed Eden, Steph and Chloe.