Dayne's Baptism

Yes, I am finally writing about Dayne’s baptism. Dayne decided, rather spur of the moment, to get baptized and become Mormon on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010. That gave me 3 whole days to come up with a program, invite people, get work off, etc. Niiiice. To top it all off, he couldn’t just be normal and get baptized in a baptismal font. None of that would do for Dayne! He chose to be baptized in the reservoir above the Spanish Fork gun range. I don’t even remember its name.

It was a cold, rainy day that Wednesday. So cold, in fact that we thought that we might have to do the baptism indoors, after all. We had the program at Ruth’s ward at 11 AM.
Ruth gave the opening prayer, then we sang “The Iron Rod” because Dayne likes it. Renee Van Buren played the piano for the program. Matt gave a talk on the Holy Ghost and Nate Wilkinson gave a talk on baptism. Then we had the closing hymn “The Holy Ghost” and the closing prayer by Denise.

By this time, the sun had peeped out from behind the clouds and the rain had stopped, so we sojourned to the reservoir and proceeded with the dunking. Jim did the honors. It was a very touching and beautiful baptism, in such a natural setting, and they didn’t freeze either. Since everyone was already there, we just decided to confirm Dayne a member of the Church right then and there. He changed out of his white baptismal clothes and into his suit and my dad proceeded to confirm him. Dayne had about 10 men in the confirmation circle. It was really neat.

The people who attended were the Bishop of Dayne's new ward, Bishop Smith and his wife, the Elders who taught Dayne, Elder Gooley and Elder Moore, and pretty much everyone in the family, except Abbey (who I believe was out of town), and Karla’s family who couldn’t get the time off on such short notice. Dayne’s friends, Adam and Tad Legas came, along with Adam’s wife, Jen and their mutual friend and fellow fighter, Sean Whalen. Nate & Rachel Wilkinson came, along with Brenda Llewellen, and Nicole came too. Renee Van Buren, who has known Dayne pretty much all his life and one of her nephews who is a friend of Dayne’s as well, named Matt, came too. Even Ty was there, in spirit.

Here are some pictures of the event:

Sophia, Liza, Stevie, Jimbo in back with Denise, Dayne, Gramps and Ruth

Bean's Girls, Jerika, Eliza, and Devri

Jim, Elder Moore, Dayne, Matt and Elder Gooley ham it up.

Matt and Dayne in a race to the water

I think this picture is really neat. It looks like it should be used to illustrate baptism.

 Dayne the happy convert and Jim, just happy to be out of the cold water!

Elder Gooley congratulates Dayne on his newborn, sinless life.

Getting ready to confirm Dayne

Matt, Dayne, Dad, and Adam with Nate in the background.

 The confirmation circle. Nate told me that he opened his eyes during the prayer and 4 angels were in the circle and Ty was next to Ruth grinning his huge smile. He said he saw them as if they were actually there. Neat. It gave me cold chills. Nate has a wonderful gift for that sort of thing.

Congratulations! Everyone's happy for Dayne

As soon as everyone changed and we left to go to the Peppermill for lunch, it started hailing like crazy and rained hard the rest of the afternoon. I think someone up there wanted Dayne baptized!