House Church Talk - Re: Baptisms and some updates

[Vanessa DiDomenico]

--- Dan Beaty <dlbeaty at copper.net> wrote:
> Vanessa,
> 
> It seems I have been out to touch, when I read today that you are now a
> Quaker.

I had mentioned it a few times, before i stopped writing on the net for w
few months because i was pretty sick, mostly due to medicine disappearing
because of political turmoil in Venezuela.

I had to join them, because all my beliefs were absolutely identical to
conservative/evangelical quakers -there are many kinds of quakers, for the
organization has no official creed or doctrine, since we think God can
communicate individually with people- and all quakers support house
churches.

> My knowledge of the Modern Quakers in very limited, but their history
> really fascinates me.

Yes, my children and I have been doing work for school on historical
Quakers work, including the freeing of slaves and William Penn's founding
of Pennsylvania, with the signing of treaties with the natives later
destroyed by other people and such. Now, i might even begin to do some
work pro-natives with Quaker groups from the UN.
 
> Many close friends and preachers I know also see water baptism as
> ridiculous
> when we have so wonderful a privilege of being baptized in the Holy
> Spirit.

> I would not kill anyone that disagreed with me on this though!

Of course not, neither do any Quakers think it is a sin to baptize
yourself in water... just useless, and distracts from the true baptism. In
my case, why bother with water if I knew I already had the Spirit? I felt
it would have insulted God, as if I were going back to first grade after
getting a PhD!

Quakers came to visit us here, and made us members of their Meeting in
Oregon. They were an older, wise couple, and the man spent a month last
year training doctors in Iraq with other doctors from the Northwest Yearly
Meeting medical team. I was hoping they would come here, and work with a
baptist clinic, but the war in Iraq and now the earthquake in Iran has
taken them! BUT...

I just got a phone call from a man in North carolina, who wants to start a
new community, and is going 2 weeks to Costa Rica, 2 weeks to panama, and
then coming here for 2 weeks. We talked for over 30 minutes, although he
caught me off guard. I will put them in my father's business partner's
hotel, just $5 a night, so they can donate the rest to our project with
working children, and they will go visit the farm that this baptist clinic
is setting up for ex-drug addicted street teens. They may help finance the
work there. They may also buy land nearby, at the end of the Andes. 

So march will be very busy for me, and I need prayers from ALL of you so I
can do this right: the first week will be the first support group meeting,
3 in one week at different hours, for the epilepsy support group at a
clinic near my parents' house, then from march 15 to 30 i have to guide
these people around, show them the working children, show them farms and
the native Wayuu tribe, which still governs itself, and the president of
all their judges is my friend and someone I have been helping out with
some paper and carpets and pens and pencils... they are considered
dangerous, but if you know how to treat them, they are great, and
converting to Jesus at a FAST rate! They may be descendants of jews, for
they kill their animals as if kosher food and have flood myths and other,
and only ONE God in their myths!

And mother and I are planning to do a party for the working children at
the center of the city, so we may be able to get funding for that from
these people coming here. Just $200-300 will probably be enough, for we
are also asking the mothers of Jessica's classmates to donate bags of
gifts, with notebooks and pencils and other school items, and we have a
bunch of leftover items from the party mom did for my daughter on
Wednesday, which was quite a success. I even met a mother who is a
psychologist and will be in my group as a volunteer! Pray that we can do
this, for July's child day! 

Love to all,
Vanessa from Venezuela