Baptism and a Surprise

Ethan was baptized on Sunday, and it was quite a special day! He was dressed in a baptismal outfit from my parents (a very boy-ish and adorable fancy shirt and romper), and we all headed off to the church together, for once with plenty of time to spare. Ethan usually is great in church, but he also usually sleeps in the Moby most of the service, so I was a bit nervous about how he'd do when the Moby wasn't an option. He spent the first half of the service gnawing on a teething rattle and hiccuping so loudly that people were laughing about it. While he yawned a fair bit, he still wasn't fussy-tired, so thankfully he was still happy when we finally got to the baptism.

Standing at the front with Helen and Donald

He was very interested in the font and water

He let out a couple of fusses when the water poured over him. In his defense, it was fairly cool water and there was a lot of it! The two weak cries led to a lot of laughter from the congregation.

Donald remarked that this was the first time his hair ever laid flat. That also brought laughter.

Ethan had a lot of fun holding on to Donald's stole, and when Donald gave him back to me, he had to detach him first!

With our parents' help, we got several good pictures, plus two videos of the baptism, and the church's sound tech also gave us a CD of the audio of the entire service. This was especially nice since the baptism was just the beginning of our involvement (though it remains the most important part to me).

After Ethan's baptism, we remained at the front and were joined by another individual as the three of us joined the church. It's been a long time coming (OK, only a few months, but it seems like longer), and it means I will be transferring my candidacy from the SC Conference to the NC Conference.

After this we sat back down, but we still had one more surprise in store for everyone. The prayers were said, the scripture was read, and to everyone's shock, I got up and approached the pulpit. Donald began by thanking me for my work this past summer, including a remark that I was "greatly pregnant," and then I had the privilege of preaching on the day my son was baptized and we joined the congregation. We'd kept it a secret from everyone except Donald and his wife so neither of our parents knew, nor did anyone else at the church, including the associate pastor. ((FYI, this was the project I kept alluding to in earlier posts. It's quite hard to write a sermon during nap times!)) Ethan made it through about a third of the sermon before he started to get antsy so my MIL took him out and almost got him to sleep before the final hymn began.

After the service, we of course were speaking to everyone, and Ethan started to cry in earnest so we went ahead and strapped him in the car seat, and he promptly fell asleep! All in all, it was an amazing service, and Ethan handled it beautifully!