Tae is baptized!

All Saint's Day will forever have new meaning for our family.  Tae's baptism that Sunday was a beautiful, big, fun, and festive celebration of his identity as a beloved child of God.  Tae's "Grandmary Jane" (Mike's mom) made a beautiful baptismal banner for Tae that hung behind the font:

As a pastor, I have a new appreciation of the promises that parents and sponsors make when a child is baptized.  Here we are making our promises to raise Tae in faith and love:

We feel blessed that Tae has such fabulous sponsors -- our siblings -- to help us keep those promises.  Here are Mike's brother and sister Pete and Julie, and my brother Mark (being "held" by friend Leslie via Skype from La Paz, Bolivia where he and Michelle are travelling in South America for 4 months -- see their great blog Wanderings about their adventures!):

The water being poured - Tae becomes God's child forever:

I got to mark Tae with the sign of the cross on his forehead with oil from the Holy Land: "Tae, beloved child of God, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever."

Prayers for Tae from Pastor Marj: "Sustain Tae with the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forever. Amen."

Our baby is baptized! May he live forever wet!

Our families -- our greatest teachers in the faith -- surrounded us on this day:

Tae loved playing in the baptismal water (we mixed some Jordan River water which my parents brought back from Israel into "holy" San Luis Obispo tap water).  We pray that Tae will daily plunge into his baptismal waters to remember he is a beloved, forgiven, claimed, named, beautiful child of God!

Two other special things about Tae's baptism...

A few weeks ago we attended a Korean-speaking church in SLO and watched 4 baptisms which helped us talked with Tae about baptism - about the "great bath" he was about to have.  Since then he used the sign language sign for "bath" whenever we talked about his baptism -- he gets it! :-)

Plus, in the middle of his baptism, Pastor Marj said "Hallelujah" and Tae lifted up his hands, Hallelujah!  Here we are celebrating it again.  Hallelujah, indeed!