We live in the wilderness as far as the LDS church goes. They call it a "branch" -- a group of people spread thin across four counties of Upstate NY who come together every Sunday and whenever a special occasion calls. We're kind of like a family. We laugh and learn, bicker and forgive, love and serve and listen to each other. We raise our children and nurse our elderly and cry when one moves or another dies. All this in faith. Because faith is what brought us together. It is our commonality. It is the thread that binds us. This Branch, it isn't always (or ever) perfect, but what family is?
Most LDS congregations have a big huge tub called a baptismal font with which to fill with warm water for immersing those wishing to be baptized, but in our undersized branch building, a font we have not. Sometimes we travel to the next closest font in Ithaca's chapel, but other times we improvise with pools, ponds, or a lake. I've seen them all.
Last week, one of the boys just a bit older than Nolan and Gerret was baptized by his dad in my parents' pond. It was reported that the water was warm, the mud gushy, and the algae thick. The rite was followed by refreshments by the dock and a trampoline full of bouncing, bumbling children. It was my boys' first experience watching one of their peers be baptized.
"What did you think?" I asked Gerret later in the afternoon. "Would you like to be baptized when you turn eight?"
"No, thanks!"
I inquired why not.
"I don't want to get water in my eyes," his matter-of-fact reply.
