In Chile in the mid 1970’s, there was not a lot of LDS church buildings. There was only two in my entire mission, with a third built just before I finished. They were all in the Concepcion area. This of course meant that baptisms were mostly conducted in makeshift fonts, rivers or even the ocean.
I remember one such font in Osorno. It was built by the members and a few missionaries, and resembled a small above ground pool. It had a wooden frame, and then a thin sheet metal interior that was soldered at the seams. There was holes in it, and we had to conduct the baptisms quickly before the water got too low to properly dunk the new member. I later learned from my fluid dynamics class in collage that the water streams shooting out the side of this font perfectly demonstrated water pressure vs depth.
In Talca the members had made a cement font in the courtyard of the building we used for a church. To heat the water, we got a hold of an old car radiator. We connected the radiator to a faucet, and then the output was directed to the font. Then a fire was built around the radiator. I kind of worked!
The most memorable place we conducted baptisms was in Coronel, at the Piscina de Las Monjas (Nun’s Pool). The rocks on the beach formed some waist deep pools of water, that were perfect for baptism, and evidently bathing if you were a nun! I baptized nine people in these pools. Besides the shear beauty of the place, it was also special, as I was baptized as an eight year old in the ocean in Laie Hawaii.
What are some of the unique places you have seen a baptism conducted? Are they more special when they are outside in nature (river, ocean) than in a LDS church building?
Bishop Bill..Thank you for your post. Your experience should be treasured! Living water baptisms are truly what was originally intended and the example of Jesus’ baptism. Many of the church presidents had that experience, and as a past Primary president, I eagerly gave a stake baptism talk about the hog scalding troughs and rivers they were baptized in and swimming pool Pres. Hunter was baptized in.
Sadly, my daughter and husband wanted a living water baptism for my grandson with a bishopric member easily present . Grand son needed some extra encouragement. Requested of the bishop…DENIED!
Apparently, THE HANDBOOK highly discourages such experiences. What should be a special and personal experience needs to be highly controlled with a program and in a designated area! Control seems to be more umportant than the experience…too bad. Grand son still awaiting baptism as a 9 year old convert baptism…count it!
A lovely experience of rising from living waters should be relished by you…not all are able to have it.
My favorite was performing a baptism in the hot springs of Saturnia, Italy. There were no members for nearly 100 kilometers except an elderly woman who ran a hostel in Saturnia. Her husband joined the church and was baptized across the street from their home in the 4 ft deep creek that came from the hot springs.
I got to see a couple of baptisms performed in the Little Belt area of the portion of the Baltic Sea that borders Jutland, the peninsula of Denmark. Both were performed in the summer and the weather was fantastic. Although unique, I can’t honestly say the Spirit was any more or less intense that some of the other baptisms I saw in a font around the same time. I suppose an ordinance is an ordinance, regardless of where it is performed.
We had one investigator who probably would have liked to have done it in the ocean as well, but opted to do it in a font instead purely for the convenience of the older gentleman he wanted to baptize him. The latter wasn’t the steadiest on his feet, but the two had become such great friends, and I don’t think the investigator would have it any other way. It was hard to argue with his logic.
I was stateside, so I didn’t have anything out of a normal US chapel font.
But I did have 2 sons that had some interesting baptisms in central and south America.
One area they had an above ground cement font outside. In order to get the water heated enough not to be cold my son had to grab 4 240V “Doucha” shower head/water heater. If that wasn’t enough they were each tripping the breakers, so he bypassed the breakers. Nobody died, but they were flirting with disaster to fill the font.
I had another son that had a baptism in a few hours, so the went and turned on the water and left for a bit . They estimated how long it would take to fill up the font and when they returned it had flooded the bottom (all tile) floor. They were able to squeegee the floors so that in a few hours when the baptism was held, nobody noticed anything (or at least said anything). The tile floor was probably cleaner than it had been in a while.
Central America 1980’s. I remember doing a single baptism in a river. No other times during mission, for some reason. That was special and I was excited at the time.
What I wanted to comment on was doing baptism in the LDS fonts with bugs and cockroaches. We would clean out before service. But there would be bugs sometimes in the water during the baptism.
In the river and the ocean at least…… would not have had to deal with the bugs.
I baptised two people in Greece. The first in the deliciously warm relatively still Mediterranean sea in the height of Summer.
The second in the depths of Thessaloniki Winter. Rather than opting for the Sea we hired a hotel swimming pool. But the heating wasn’t turned on so when we got in we may as well have been in an ice bath. I gingerly stepped in, glad to only be going waste deep. The new member got in (with some choice words). Performed the baptism and she ran off to get changed (slipping and banging her head in the process). But before I got out my letter of the law companion who was witnessing mentioned I had the pronunciation wrong and said that we should do it again. The sisters told the new member who shouted No, but got back in the chilly water anyway in a new jumpsuit. Bless her.
In the flat that we used for a chapel, we also had a blow up 4 foot deep paddling pool. But filling it and emptying it took FOREVER!
I was baptised in the sea off Westward Ho! in North Devon England,aged 10, after dark, in October. It’s a place known for its surf breakers, but the missionaries were probably not aware of this. There was a font available at about three hours travelling time away, and I’m really surprised that my mother allowed it to be otherwise. Just goes to show what 18 year old boys might do if not carefully guided.
However it’s a source of great joy to me now that I was baptised in the sea in an area that I love deeply, but I can see that a font would have been a safer option all ’round!
@wayfarer
My niece was baptised at Abbotsham, Devon on what my sister thought was normally a mill pond-like sea. Every time she had been there it had been very tranquil. But on the day we all trapsed down to the beach and it ended up having 3ft waves. We presume she was fully immersed.
Bill, you bring back two memories of mine. First, the week I was baptized the water broke in the only building nearby that had a font. The elders shoveled in snow and allowed it to melt. When it came time to get in, it was still slushy and about thigh deep. I looked at the friend who was baptizing me and told him, “You’ve got one shot at this.” He accomplished it and we ran for warm towels. The second memory was working on a chicken farm and wanting to clean up after. The owner had connected a series of 5 or 6 car radiators and lowered them into the pits of decaying manure. The water came straight from the well, through the radiators, and ended at a shower head. The water was the perfect temp, no matter the weather outside.
Running water and electricity were a luxury during my mission, making nearly every baptism a challenge.
Most chapels had an underground cistern (a concrete box the size of a large room). The purpose of the cistern was to collect and store water during rare occasions when the people in charge of water management doled out the water. Usually the water management people rationed out the water enough to ensure people had a decent amount of water in their cisterns.
We had a baptism scheduled and when we arrived at the chapel we found that the cistern was nearly empty. There was water in the bottom of the cistern, but the pipe used to pump the water out of the cistern didn’t quite reach the water level. Two of us climbed down to the bottom of the cistern with a ladder (nearly 10 feet deep), placed the pipe inside a plastic garbage can, and used other garbage cans to bail water from the bottom of the cistern into the garbage can with the pipe so that the elders on the outside could pump the water out of said garbage can into the font. It took hours.
The water we scraped out of the bottom of the cistern represented the dregs. The baptismal font was eventually filled, but with dirty water. The SP arrived for the baptism, saw the state of the water, and got very upset with us. About this time the water management people turn the water on, a baptism miracle. The SP decided that we would drain the font of the dirty water and use the fresh water coming in. When the font was halfway drained, the water management people turned the water off again. We ended up performing the baptism in thigh deep muddy water.
We had the opposite problem for my second cistern story. There’s no water coming in to fill the font, we open the hatch to the cistern to find that the cistern is filled all the way to the very top with water, but the pipe used to pump the water out had detached from the pump and was laying on the very bottom of the cistern. I volunteered to go in and fish the pipe out of the bottom of the cistern. We were able to get the pipe reconnected.
I found myself inside underground cisterns often during my mission.
My oldest was baptized in Utah County. Given the number of children in the stake, I can understand why leadership had a “no exceptions” policy. My other three were baptized in a river in North Idaho (the most recent in 2018). There’s a font at the stake center, but the beauty, simplicity and Spirit at an outdoor service cannot be matched. I can send a photo if an admin emails me. Imagine primary songs played on a guitar with a stream murmuring in the background.
My mission in Northern Mexico led to several memorable baptism experiences. My first involved filling the font with a garden hose, which only reached the lower thigh, and made full immersion quite difficult. We once planned a zone-wide baptismal service to coincide with a District Conference the Mission president would be presiding at. Unfortunately, stormwater had flooded the cistern, and the water in the font was the color of chocolate milk. The president wanted his baptisms, though, and gave a rousing speech about how the font closely resembled the water of the Jordan River where Christ himself was baptized! Then there was the time the elders tied to heat the water in the font using flat irons (used for clothes).
My husband was baptized in a river in Ontario Canada in the 1950s. They then sat him on a hood of a car to confirm him. I don’t think there were any chapels in the area at the time. In more recent years we attended several baptisms that were performed in the ocean off Vancouver Island. Always a lovely experience.
We performed a baptism at a seaside villa in a town near Agrigento, Sicily in the record-heat summer of 1988. (I really didn’t want to know what 47 degrees Celsius worked out to in Fahrenheit!) The Mediterranean was shallow a long way out, so the candidate, the baptizer, and the two witnessing elders all had to walk about a hundred yards out into the sea to get the water up to waist-high. Then, of course, the witnesses had to get down to our necks in the water to make sure that the candidate got all the way under, and we had to stay that way for a few minutes to discuss the situation and come to a consensus that all had gone well. 🙂