Alice's Baptism

It was a big day for us at church today.

We became official members of River Community Church (which is an Evangelical Presbyterian Church) and Alice got baptized!

Having grown up baptist and having gone to baptist churches until now, infant baptism is kind of a foreign thing to me.  But Stephen and I have been discussing infant baptism since before I was even pregnant.  After much study of the Bible we agreed with presbyterians that baptism (simply put) replaces circumcision as the sign of being members of God's covenant people from the Old Testament.  It can become a very confusing theological debate and if you have questions, ask Stephen :o)

But all that to say, now that we are members of a church that practices infant baptism, we could finally get Alice baptized.

I was really nervous about the whole thing because I had maybe seen one infant baptism in my life so I wasn't really sure what to expect.  I also was confused on whether Alice was supposed to wear white or not but I think the dress I got was a safe choice, and adorable too :o)

So it started with the pastor giving a short explanation of the meaning of baptism.

Alice did a good amount of squirming, though Stephen had a pocket full of teddy grams to distract her with.

Thankfully a lady in the church started making faces at Alice and that made her give everyone a big smile.

 We also took vows, to raise Alice in the fear and admonition of the Lord and to live out the Gospel in front of her.  And the congregation also took a vow to come along side of us in raising Alice to love and serve God.

Then she was baptized.

It was sobering in terms of our responsibility as parents and encouraging that Alice is now officially a part of the church family.

We got her a pretty Bible with her name engraved on the cover as a baptism gift.

Obviously, it will be more appreciated when she is older :o)

Some pictures we took when we got home.