"I'll try not to cry, but I feel so emotional, so hopefully you will understand me. So I just want to say thank you to all of you, for opening the doors of the house of God, because God is love and God is forgiveness, and I have learnt to love even more and to forgive people, but most important, to forgive myself. Because we all make mistakes, but God is here to teach us through all the way. I'm really happy to be part of this family. Thank you for taking care of me and thank you for teaching me. Please continue doing that. God bless you all." This was Laia Pla Aguilar's words just before her baptism 26 June 2021.
Laia heard about the Seventh-day Adventist church for the first time from her friend Saray, a young lady from Central London church (CLC). She was invited to come for a Sabbath service, and immediately fell in love with the warmth of the CLC members, even though she did not understand all the things the Bible was saying.
At the first lockdown in March 2020 the church closed, but during this time Laia was still showing interest and wanted to learn more about God. She was invited to attend online Bible studies with a friend she met in church; her name was Melissa.
When church was allowed to reopen in October 2020, CLC started a project called Reset, an afternoon programme with the intention of involving more young adults and helping people to restart their lives in a more beautiful and healthy way and connect with God.
While having studies with Laia, Reset became the perfect place where she would feel even more loved and integrated into the church as a family.
She felt so happy and made close friends with the Reset team and had a sense of being loved and valued. It wasn't long until she made her decision for baptism and she was so excited that she began telling everyone about it. She invited her housemates and shared the online link with her family in Spain. Her housemates attended the service and her family watched online from Spain.
Her baptism was beautiful, the church was thrilled! Everyone was there to make her day special, everyone genuinely showed her how much she is loved. During the baptism the praise team sang her favourite songs, her friend Saray, who brought her to church, made a beautiful and emotional speech, and after the service in the afternoon, it was celebration time with the Reset team and her friends.
She will continue her Bible studies weekly, but now in a deeper way, as she is looking forward to growing in the knowledge of Christ and to continue sharing with others about Jesus.
This is what she wrote on Sunday, the day after the baptism, to the Reset team:
"You have no idea how happy and blessed I feel," said Laia. "I really appreciate everything you did for me. Yesterday was a really important day and you made it even more special. I have no words to describe how I feel but I just want to say thank you, I have never ever felt that loved before. I am proud to call you my family and to say I am a daughter of God."
She will continue her bible studies weekly, but now in a deeper way, as she is looking forward to growing in the knowledge of Christ and to continue sharing with others about Jesus.
This is what she wrote on Sunday, the day after the baptism, to the Reset team:
“You have no idea how happy and blessed I feel. I really appreciate everything you did for me. Yesterday was a really important day and you made it even more special. I have no words to describe how I feel but I just want to say thank you, I have never ever felt that loved before. I am proud to call you my family and to say I am a daughter of God.”
